Blockchain for Global Social Impact

This book focuses on my conversation with
Samantha Ouyang, who is a 17-year-old TKS Activator. Samantha has been working on blockchain research and development for the past 18 months, taking special interest in the social impact of blockchain. She first started off by researching cryptography, the technical workings behind blockchain, and current limitations, publishing her own articles and videos explaining technical components and reviewing interesting applications. She then moved into blockchain development after teaching herself Solidity, building her own decentralized applications (dApps) and other blockchain-related projects to tackle global issues. This included dApps and frameworks to secure property rights in developing countries, prevent cyberattacks on nuclear power plants, render the pet industry more transparent, combat bias in AI, and reduce blood donation expiry, winning hackathons and other competitions that allowed her to present her ideas to companies such as S&P Global. Her efforts compounded, and she was soon presented with a job offer.
For 5 months, she worked as a smart contract developer at ViewFin, a global FinTech company based in Toronto and Shanghai. As the youngest employee, she integrated a decentralized indexing protocol into the company's token exchange platform and spearheaded her own project there to prevent child labor in the chocolate supply chain. Over the summer, she got to conduct research on smart contract evolution under the guidance of a professor at the University of Waterloo as well. As she grew, her network in the blockchain enterprise solutions community, she has also gotten the chance to moderate fireside chats with leaders in the blockchain industry and spark insightful conversations about the potential of blockchain in ESG. She hopes to take her work in blockchain further by delving into IoT, bridging the gap between hardware and software so that she can innovate with the synergized power of both.