XPLORE 1.0- Stacks Pakistan’s first Blockchain conference
As Blockchain technology continues to take the world by storm, Stacks Pakistan, with the sentiment of spreading the advancements within the Pakistani youth, decided to host its first-ever Blockchain conference on the 15th of August, 2021- XPLORE 1.0. Notable personalities, and highly experienced professionals in Blockchain, came from all over the world on the forum to educate the Pakistani masses. This conference covered all the hot topics that are on the Blockchain scene right now- from Smart Contracts to Non-Fungible Tokens, the speakers made sure to not miss out on anything!
The event began with an opening keynote from Dr. Muneeb Ali, Co-founder and CEO Hiro Systems. Many discussion panels and events then followed. Jenny Mith, Ecosystem Development Lead, Stacks Foundation, and Marvin Janssen, Lead Engineer, Hiro Systems PBC held individual sessions. A panel discussing “Why do we need a world where we control the internet?” was led by Night Dad, Founder and CEO Digital Rights Foundation, Faisal Aftab, Co-founder & Managing Partner, Zayn Capital, and Sulmaan Hanif, Chief Revenue Officer, Fasset. Another panel discussing how Blockchain is going to be different in Pakistan than its global counterparts was led by Yusuf Hussain, Head Venture Capital, Habib Bank Ltd., Waji Bukhari, Country Lead, Fasset, Ali Farid Khwaja, Chairman, Ktrade & KASB Securities, and Misbah Naqvi, General Partner i2i Ventures.
Proceeding the informative sessions were evaluations for the top 5 teams of Stacks Pakistan #Hack4Impact. Yasir Qayyam, COO Kwik Trust, Zartaj Ahmad, CEO & Co-founder QriosityNet.com, and Dr. Taha Ali, Electrical Engineering Assistant Professor at NUST, held the nerve-racking assessment, in which Team Overflow emerged winners! Dunder Mifflin and Last Byte were the first and second runners up respectively.
To inculcate further passion and love for the technology, Clarity Cohort members, Summer School members, Let’s Write competition winners, and Smart contract developers were awarded shields and certificates. Furthermore, to honor the efforts of the Core Team members, they were also awarded shields. The awards were presented by Nabeel Qadeer, Country Consultant of Stacks Pakistan, and Faisal Sherjan, Strategic Advisor, COLABS. The two, along with Kaleem Ullah, Product Growth Director, Co-Grow COLABS, shared their thoughts with the audience.
Mr. Sherjan proceeded to conclude the event with a closing note, highlighting the importance of knowing about Blockchain and Crypto in today’s world.
The conference remained a huge success, with attendance from university students and other professionals, hoping to learn more about the booming technology. XPLORE 1.0 managed to fulfill its main aim of reaching the masses, since it received a lot of attention, not only from social media, but also through special news coverage from notable news channels of Pakistan, such as DAWN, and Hum News. XPLORE 1.0 would not have been possible without the contributions of the Stacks Pakistan team, who worked day and night to make it a success. And of course, a major contribution lay in the support from its sponsor, Fassets, its digital partners, YDPC BUITEMS, YDPC ITU, IDG Pakistan, NIC KHI, IEEE ITU, NIC Lahore, NIC Peshawar, exclusive partner COLABS, and lastly its community partner, Stacks China.
Stacks Pakistan aims to make blockchain and cryptocurrency mainstream in the country, creating awareness about and educating the young developers on CLARITY — Stacks’ proprietary smart contract language. This conference was the first step in the right direction, with the sole aim fulfilled. We will keep trying to achieve our aim through our consistent efforts. Keep on the lookout for more interesting updates through Stacks Pakistan!
