foreign
[Music]
thanks for coming
uh welcome to my talk balkanize Learn to
Earn so let's start with some Universal
truths that we can hopefully all agree
on
um number one
some countries are poorer than others
and frankly some countries are probably
just poor often we call them developing
countries
number two
although markets have been doing not
that great lately I think some of you
might still have made some money
number three
some people or if we're being honest
actually most people especially in these
developing countries they're lacking
awareness of this whole web free space
but at the same time we need more web
free literacy and we actually need more
web free Developers
so now let me actually introduce myself
hello GM
buenos dias
um
this is me hello
uh my name is uh Dennis or Dennis which
God
I was born in 1998 in former Yugoslavia
today's Bosnia I moved to Germany in 92.
at the beginning of the war
lived there most of my life and then
uh 2014 I actually moved to Switzerland
for a PhD
I studied industrial engineering had
like a focus on energy economics worked
a bit and then did this PhD at eth
Zurich we have a focus on machine
learning eth Zurich is like the
Technical University in Switzerland it's
not affiliated with ethereum or the
ethereum foundation
I then worked as a data scientist last
stop was at eBay
left
uh that position at the end of last year
and
um yeah I'm now with this little project
that goes under the name enot.io
and I'm also a partner at very early
Ventures like an early stage Venture
fund
um I've been involved in this crypto
space for a few years now this is my
second def con first one was in Prague
I did this weird thing in 2018 where we
built like a Bitcoin client in Python
from scratch
and I'm a quite regular user of Dune
analytics for all sorts of like
on chain data analytics these things
together
with my background will become somewhat
relevant to the actual design or
architecture of the program
okay now let's dive into some local
truths
um Bosnia the place that I'm from
it's probably safe to say that it was
hardest hit during the wars in the 90s
it's still ethnically quite divided
youth unemployment rates are quite High
think until recently the numbers were
around like 60 65 percent they claim
they're lower now if the numbers are
true then I think it's mostly because
people are emigrating to the West
and at the same time the GDP per capita
is around 5K US Dollars like 400 USD per
month
would that would translate into 400 USD
per month average salary uh which is not
that much interestingly if you look at
it on like purchasing power parity basis
it's a factor 3x higher that basically
just means that life there is quite
cheap
uh students there usually have a strong
theoretical basis they often lack
opportunities for practical experience
and when they get practical experience
they often end up choosing like a weird
text deck or some outdated Technologies
that's kind of a little bit of my
opinion though
okay now let's look into some hopefully
generalizable Solutions
I am of the opinion that with guidance
incentives
and arbitraging this purchasing power
parity uh you can achieve quite a big
impact both for these people but also
for our whole industry what does that
mean
guiding basically
um telling people what they need to
learn and how they acquire these skills
then incentivizing by mapping this
learning this is the Learn to Earn
component mapping the learning to some
monthly income
and then the purchasing power parity
Arbitrage which basically means
funneling money from a place where a
beer costs seven euros to a place where
a beer is one Euro
doesn't mean the people have to spend it
on beer but it's just my personal Big
Mac index
um and I think through that you can
achieve quite quite High leverage good
type of Leverage
so that's the theory what does it look
like in practice I currently have eight
students in this first batch in Bosnia
and Serbia they're aged 20 to 25 years
they have a background in computer
science or physics either final year
students or graduates they receive 150
Euros per US dollar per month per
student
they're supposed to learn like a machine
learning track blockchain training as
well the learning is outsourced I'm not
doing that myself I think I'm lacking
the patience for that but the projects
are in-house I'm making sure that they
learned what they were supposed to learn
the expected duration is like 9 to 12
months currently they're about to enter
the third month
for more information you can see
inert.io scholarship with a few funny
pictures
and only quickly let's look into the
curriculum or the timeline what are the
students actually learning I mentioned
they usually have a computer science
background they did some Java maybe some
JavaScript some front-end development
that then transition into python
mastering the libraries that are
essential for data science and machine
learning numpy pandas then first level
we're actually doing machine learning
and because every data scientist or
machine learning engineer ends up
spending quite a lot of time with SQL I
make them use Dune analytics to actually
work with real world data which is quite
useful for me as well because I don't
have to yeah host any fake data
and then eventually in the next uh
modules or levels the students will be
interacting with the web free python
Library I'll make them do what I had to
do like re-implement uh Bitcoin from
scratch uh in Python and then eventually
we'll be going into smart contract
development
um
okay
um what's next covertis well uh a minor
point it would be nice if we got like
some more crypto native remittance
currently it's still revolute
transferwise but there's just no local
economy for the students to to do
anything with usdc A4 or whatever big
question is what is this becoming will
this be an education Ponce or will there
be like income sharing agreements at
some point to to fund next Generations
all open questions but the most
important thing and that's kind of why
I'm here is to spread the word and make
people that are interested are in a
similar position uh copy pasta uh not
just code but uh maybe even this type of
setup where you can guide and
incentivize and support people in other
places and hopefully push them into uh
yeah this web free space
big Vision it's written here it's years
decades centuries maybe a way who knows
maybe not
um yeah
that's it thank you a really good talk I
I would like to ask you how or yeah how
do you think you can incentivize
investors into getting into the Dao
to have more scholarships
um yeah that's a good question
I think
my deliberate Choice was initially to
just do it myself don't do any outside
funding next steps might be to talk with
some of the organizations that are here
you know Giver for talent protocol I've
already
spoken with a few of them maybe that's
like the leanest or easiest way
uh I guess any investor funded approach
yeah might be related to just investing
in in talent that eventually would work
for you
uh Germany Switzerland they both have
like this apprenticeship culture
which essentially is like uh you you got
young people and you're um paying them
to to become actually productive
uh workers
so I could imagine something like this
working now this would be very tight to
a company
if we get this income sharing thing I
mean I like to think about these ideas
but I think that's still a philosophical
conversations but