A Zurich based startup aims to bridge the shortage of educated blockchain engineers, entrepreneurs and executives. A first successful workshop focusing on smart contracts marked the launch of the initiative.

Blockchain and smart contract technology has piqued the interest of banks, financial services firms, insurance companies and central banks. With 40 of the world’s leading banks prototyping a blockchain for commercial paper trading and Bank of England about to create a Bitcoin-like rival cryptocurrency, this Fintech sector is making big strides towards mainstream adoption.Concurrent with these developments, the blockchain industry faces a massive shortage of skilled developers and business people.

Validity Labs – a startup created by several experts of blockchain technology in Zurich – aims to bridge this shortage by educating blockchain engineers, entrepreneurs and executives. Their first workshop introducing smart contracts was held on Saturday, 12th of March. It brought together a diverse mix of participants who were exposed to the fundamental components of blockchains, tools for developing blockchain applications and an overview of the application space.

The workshop conveyed the revolutionary potential of the technology by staging live demonstrations and coding sessions. Of note was their on-stage creation of a Decentralized Autonomous Organisation for managing a Swiss voluntary association (Verein). A Decentralized Autonomous Organization is a business structure like GmbH or AG or Inc, but created and managed on a blockchain. This allows organizations to be created with little effort and able to leverage the full power of smart contracts.

Demos were followed by a hands-on coding session. Participants were taught to use the Ether Camp IDE, a set of programming tools used by professional smart contract developers. Participants then created their first smart contract application, a rock-paper-scissors game!

Validity Labs plans to hold future events teaching advanced smart contract development and are available for enterprise engagements. Check out their website and events at: https://validitylabs.org.

Validity Labs is a scientific partner of the ETHZ Chair for Computational Social Science COSS. The collaboration with ETHZ is currently being worked out, our aim is to establish smart contract courses at the university.