JB Carthy: 0:00

Welcome to Helios Horizons, episode 37. Today we're chatting to the Kid Ruge. We're chatting about education pathways bringing people to employment in Web3. Kid is the founder of Rujira Academy, who recently launched the Blockchain Futures Program with Bristol University. Delighted to have you on my friend. How are you keeping today?

Kid: 0:26

Very well, thank you. No, glad to be on as well. I mean, we've probably had about a million calls together, but I haven't had a chance to get you one-on-one. So, yeah, really looking forward to this.

JB Carthy: 0:38

No for sure, man, it's going to be a good one. Looking forward to having a chat. Think, uh, the whole concept of like maybe legitimizing web3 pathways and showing people what's possible, showing people there's and new industries to develop in, like the new generations of developers, coders, computer programmers, you know, maybe even robots, but yeah, and making people, making people aware there's a pathway to employment, to opportunity, to career progression in Web3 is definitely important if we're to progress as an industry, attracting more talent in. Really looking forward to having a chat with you about this today Before we jump in, maybe for people who aren't familiar, who are tuning in for the first time, and give us a little bit of a background into the kid.

Kid: 1:30

Of course, of course. So, yeah, as you'll know, I'm Kid, I founded Rujira Academy and yeah, a little bit about myself. So I am 23 years young, my birthday was last week, so, yeah, heavy on the celebrations. Getting back into things now, and yeah, so I am an economics and management graduate from the University of Bristol. I graduated almost two years ago now and I've been involved in the space, I'd say actively, for the past two and a half three years.

Kid: 2:09

I originally started out as a copywriter. You know I was. I was in first year. I was kind of similar to probably a lot of people in dgen mode and I thought you know what the the technology behind you know what's behind the curtain? It actually interests me. So I started copywriting mostly just to educate myself but also to try and communicate those ideas to other people, and I've done that for the large majority of my first year. And as I went into second year, I was lucky enough to be picked up by Cambridge University where I worked as their lead web free writer. They had a financial newsletter, sort of a weekly financial newsletter, and I wrote sort of pieces from basic Web3 and DeFi concepts to more specialist technical pieces and I would say, those sort of two years gave me a really good foundation into understanding what Web3 was about. You know its potential to reshape industries, etc.

Kid: 3:09

Now, as I headed into third year, I was at that stage where I thought, okay, well, what the hell am I going to do with my life? I wasn't particularly interested, I'd say, in the corporate world, traditional finance, that sort of thing, and if I could make web free work, I wanted to. So I also. I mean, I was also aware that copywriting would only get me so far. So I really want to try and expand my skill set and my knowledge base. And I applied for a bunch of internships again, fortunate enough to be picked up by binance for their summer, amp program, advanced management program and I worked on that for three months in the summer of my third year, my final year of university, and that that was incredible, to be honest with you. It really gave me the skills and experience and insight necessary to do what I do now, which, yeah, takes that to present day. That same summer I came up with the concept for Ruggiero Academy and I've been building it ever since.

JB Carthy: 4:13

No, 100% man. Definitely have a nice diverse background there. Obviously, I'm sure the economics background from the undergraduate definitely helps when trying to understand some of the concepts and the tokenomics and the products and how they all work and how it all ties together. But I'm super interested to learn a little bit more about, obviously, binance, one of the giants and probably one of the, if not the biggest brand in crypto, and Web3. Interested to learn more about the intern program, the summer program, and what it was like having exposure to like such a major brand and how they operated.

Kid: 4:53

Yeah, of course. I mean you know I'd done a number of placements and sort of schemes at more traditional financial businesses and it was definitely very different. So it was a three-month program and we went sort of over all the business units, from content creation to marketing, seo, language, model, training, and I think that the aim was to give you sort of a foundational understanding of each of them so that if you were to choose to, to go forward and web free, you'd have that basis. Now I was tasked with probably my main project. I was tasked with training their internal ai model staff through gpt and essentially they asked me to generate uh token descriptions on the live price page. So you type in, let's say, tau, live price. The first thing that will come up is Binance and if you go to that, it will show the live price feed, the chart, some background behind the application, and I essentially by the end, was able to generate a model where you could put in a very, very simple prompt and it would sort of spit out a whole host of information.

Kid: 6:08

So, yeah, really good opportunity. They. They work uh, as I said, quite different to your more traditional protocols. Yeah, everything was, I would say it was. It was quite yeah, I mean the team itself were really well connected. So I had the opportunity to meet a lot of the sort of, let's say, the big dogs, the top guys, and you know that differs quite greatly from Web 2, where you don't really have that opportunity.

JB Carthy: 6:46

So, yeah, very good experience and taught me a lot and, let's say, leading on from that, obviously you were saying you got to chat and thanks for sharing your experiences about it, by the way. But, um, leading on from that, then you obviously said you got to maybe chat with a few of the big players, the people who were and maybe, maybe um building big things, had big aspirations and as a result of being part of this program, and was there anything about that experience? Maybe that, if we move on to obviously finishing uni and and founding Rujira academy, anything about that, that inspired you, emma, in relation to starting regira academy?

Kid: 7:26

yeah, for sure. I mean, don't tell them. But violence academy was was a great model uh to use for regira academy. You know they they had quite a comprehensive suite of different products and opportunities and being able to see it from the inside really helped me when I was formulating uh, what, what Ruggiero Academy could be now. They obviously had a more industry-wide uh perspective which they took and I kind of looked at that and how they did it and and what their core aims and values were and it really helped shape what I wanted to, what I wanted to do and I wanted to achieve. So, yeah, definitely helpful.

JB Carthy: 8:06

And let's move on then to Rujira Academy itself and the founding of Rujira Academy. So, yeah, I'm sure, man, you could talk about this all day, but yeah, let's chat about, like, just the start. Like, take me to the beginning, take me to, okay, you're sitting there, you have the idea. You're like, okay, this is what the web3 world needs, and let's, let's go through the journey of Rujira academy.

Kid: 8:32

All right, sure, I mean. I guess the first question to answer then is why did I start it now? I, I would say and I said this in in a live stream the other day but a good creation is born out of identifying a problem and and providing a solution right. And when I was interested in web3 and wanted to get more involved, I quickly noticed that there was kind of a severe lack of infrastructure in place to help guide and support students through that whole process.

Kid: 9:03

In Web2 traditional finance you've got a whole bunch of things, whether it's access to educational resources or internships, placements, insight days. You know, really, there's a whole network to help guide you down that path. And when I started on my journey, it was really hard to find the opportunities. It was really hard to find the opportunities. It was really hard to sort of just navigate how to go about it, and I quickly recognized this. And if it was, if it was like that for me, it was going to be like that for a lot of other people. So I, you know, I thought if this is a gap that I could help bridge, it would be incredibly useful. So that was sort of the starting basis for Ruggiero Academy and you know we, we set out really to one bridge the gap between students, universities and blockchain technology you know as a former student myself and then to to provide clear employment pathways into Web3. As I mentioned earlier, the sort of difference between web two and web three in terms of infrastructure and and that that that guidance was severely lacking. So you know, we, the first thing that we ever done was our ambassador programs, and actually one of the guys listening now, ale, who's a an absolute legend by way, he came through one of our ambassador programs and what he's aimed to do is provide students with a prescriptive guide to start their journeys in Web3. So, okay, I have limited or no knowledge. How can I get to a point where I could actually contribute to a blockchain protocol or project? Now, again, I'd say it took quite a similar format or template to what we've done for Binance what I've done in Binance, sorry and we hosted a whole bunch of online lectures, seminars, workshops surrounding copywriting, marketing, language model training, but also event management, and these were relatively successful. In retrospect, when I look back, there's a lot of students who came through these programs that are now contributing to real life blockchain projects. A number of them still work with us to this day, on that note, actually.

Kid: 11:21

So we had an ambassador. Well, we had a lot of of ambassadors, but sort of. The two notable ones were a guy in lisbon and a guy in nigeria. Now the guy in lisbon helped us set up kujira lisbon, or rugira lisbon, as it would be now, and this was essentially a event series where we partnered with the block lisboa, which is our venue out there, and we gave the sort of the native uh applications within rugira a spotlight. So we had the rugira team there themselves, we had nami uh, we had akla and then we had a dev workshop there, and this sort of gave gave those protocols the opportunity to to reach new audience, to establish a new community, to explain their projects and their protocols and their applications. And, you know, it was very rewarding to see that someone that we'd worked with, who we'd, you know, I'd say, gave a base level of skill to, was able to bring it back to us and actually utilize it.

Kid: 12:27

The second thing was and probably my proudest achievement today outside of the Blockchain Futures Initiative at the University of Bristol, was Kujira Africa, now similar to Lisbon. This was a two-part event series. But instead of being focused on working professionals and individuals, it was focused on universities. So we partnered with the University of Port Harcourt, which is one of the leading Web3 institutions within Nigeria, and we held a blockchain futures initiative. So we were able to onboard over 125 students, had over 100 wallet downloads. We had, I think, 75, 80 people come into our Telegram channel and we followed that up with a blockchain booster month where we gave them, I'd say, a more informed understanding of the Kujira ecosystem, so what the different applications for what were whether that was Ghost, pilot, orca, etc. So that was the ambassador program and kind of the follow through of the ambassador programs.

Kid: 13:38

Outside of that, we have also written, I think maybe 65, 70 articles at this point. You know, the aim here at the start of our journey was to improve the provision of information in the Kujira ecosystem and through those articles that's exactly what we've done. These were sort of foundational, basic articles on Web3 and DeFi and then the more specialist and technical pieces on kujira's applications. So, yeah, it's been, it's been a hell of a journey.

Kid: 14:10

I won't talk too much about the university of bristol now, but, uh, yeah, to summarize, we've we've made an awful lot of progress on our initial aims. You know we we've helped to improve the provision of information to the Kijira ecosystem. We've helped bridge the gap between students, universities and blockchain technology and we've also given quite a few people. I know the ambassador programs had 55 students across four different continents, but we've given quite a few people their start in Web3. Four different continents, but we've given quite a few people their start in Web3. And something that I do think is missing, which we have made a real step towards, is on the ground real life impact. A lot of stuff within Web3 is done online and, I'd hazard to say, is done for the sake of it, but knowing that we were able to go to different countries and really make an impact Hello, sorry, I think I cut out there. I was just saying that all these initiatives being able to make a real life impact in universities worldwide, in students and individuals all around the globe has been incredibly rewarding.

JB Carthy: 15:36

No man, that is a phenomenal journey and I actually have a few questions and I don't really know where to start because there's there's so many angles. But we'll go back to even the start. I want to get on to like the location, specific boots on the ground, why it's so important, in a minute. But let's go back to the start of the ambassador program and some of the foundational components and that you included in it and obviously you had some of the more like if we want to call them Web3 specific components related to the computers and the technology itself. But then you also had things like copywriting and event management and maybe when people think of Web3 and they think of programs, they're obviously going to be thinking of the coding and the technology and the computers. But yeah, why do you think those softer skills are also as important to include in a program like this?

Kid: 16:26

That's a great question. I think you know developers are the bread and butter, they are the backbone of web3, but the large majority of people you're going to be uh, promoting your, your protocol to are non-technical people such as myself, and you want to give them a basic understanding or a foundational understanding of of what web3 is and and, potentially, what pathways or careers there are for for those individuals. So, as a not, as I said, as a non-technical person myself, I think being able to give anyone the opportunity to contribute to Web3 and sort of find their way within it is very important. As we sort of near mass adoption or the reach of Web3 grows, you're going to want as many people sort of behind you as possible, and something like the ambassador program, which targets perhaps people who aren't developers, is going to be very important in that yeah, as so, as like, let's say, web3 develops and probably what will happen is, I'd imagine, like the, the lines will blur between what's a web2 application, a Web3 application.

JB Carthy: 17:44

Applications will just naturally evolve and move towards blockchain as their rails, because it like have the skills to um, market, explain benefits, explain features, hold events, all those things. It makes complete sense, man and and I think that kind of comprehensive, well-rounded approach is um is not something that you see too often in the space. So and sounds like a really well-structured program and obviously with the, with the, with the you guys, and obviously talking about two of your specific kind of ambassadors that went through the program. Obviously, we have Ale here Shout out to Ale, as you mentioned earlier but from Lisbon and Nigeria, another two participants where you guys then went off and held location specific events, and I actually I agree with you. I think location specific events are so critical. But to you, like, why are those events so important? We had the Lisbon event, the Nigeria event, kijira Africa, and that, as you said, that boots on the ground impact, like, why is that just so vital?

Kid: 19:04

And that, as you said, that boost on the ground impact, like why is that just so vital? Well, I think, firstly, why did we choose Lisbon and why did we choose Nigeria? I mean, fairly fairly self-explanatory Lisbon is obviously the crypto hub of Europe, with one of the fastest growing Web3 populations and communities there, so targeting that made a lot of sense. In a similar manner, I think nigeria is the leading adopter of web free um technology, so it just made sense.

Kid: 19:36

As for you know why I think these, these on the ground events, are so important, again, I think it's really quite simple. In a remote world or in Web3, which is primarily sort of on a computer, the ability to connect with real people and form real relationships. That's where business is done, that's where collaborations and partnerships are made, and if you can go to somewhere and build a real community, rather than you know a couple replies on twitter, it, it's really going to add value to your efforts and give you credibility. Uh, you know if, if we had just kept everything online, I don't think we'd be anywhere near where we are now as a, as a program, as a Rujira academy?

JB Carthy: 20:34

yeah, yeah, no, 100 percent, um, I I don't think you can underestimate the, the power of the personal impact, and I actually think you know, with the crypto conferences I've been to a few of them now at this point, but I actually think one of the and things they're missing are one of the things they don't do so well is, a lot of times it feels like people are going in and it's like the, it's like the converted, or preaching to the converted. Like you know, everyone, everyone there is already convinced that the technology is important and they're all just walking around telling each other how important the technology is, when in reality, it should be going out and finding new audiences to educate, finding new audiences to, and it's it's funny when you think about it, though. I'm finding new audiences to connect with and bring them in and help them solve new problems with the technology, bring a new perspective to what is possible, rather than just everybody telling each other how good it is and admiring like how good it is, when they already all each other, when they all know that each other already believes in the future of the technology and the value of the technology. And so, man, I think the ambassador program, the way you guys approached it in terms of trying to draw people in from what I know, that is your mantra in terms of bridging the gap between traditional education and Web3 pathways of employment, the gap between traditional education and web three pathways of employment, and but yeah, I think it's a a fantastic approach and one that is, like um, going to be very valuable going forward to the development and future of the space.

JB Carthy: 22:03

Um, but it's actually really interesting in terms of how you were talking about nigeria as the leading adopters of web three and I remember, and if I remember correctly, during, like, let's say, even when bitcoin was at relative um lows compared to its all-time high in dollar terms in nigeria, I remember, against their currency it was it was in the news making like all-time highs against the nigerian currency, and I suppose we don't really understand um, like thanks to, like geographical privileges, if you want to call them of, like economic stability or relative economic stability, and the value of like a global and, first of all, a global permissionless, decentralized currency, which obviously I'm talking about bitcoin, and then probably, secondly, a global permissionless, decentralized financial system within which you can use your assets, within which you can use your assets, within which you can and you can get loans, you can earn yield, you can send money to other people.

JB Carthy: 23:00

So tell me what you, what you saw on the ground over in Nigeria in terms of like the impact of this technology and how excited people were about it being able to solve problems for them in their lives yeah for sure.

Kid: 23:14

Like I, I'd use a very useful example, which is remittance fees. So remittance fees just refer to uh, let's say you're, you're in a resident country such as the uk and you're sending money back home, ie nigeria. A remittance fee just represents the cost of the transaction of sending money from one place to another. Now, in sub-Saharan Africa, the average remittance payment for a $200 transaction is 7%. Right, so you're sending $200 and you're having to pay $14 in fees. What DeFi is so incredible at. And you know just to add to that quickly, banking infrastructure is completely broken in these less developed countries. You know it's much harder to get a bank account. Many of the population are unbanked and it's also very hard to access loans or even micro loans. If you're a small business there and you don't have a credit history, you know good luck to you trying to get a loan.

Kid: 24:15

The beauty of DeFi and what Cugia offered at the time is all you need is an internet connection and a computer or, with Sonar, just a mobile, and you can send a transaction with minimal costs. You know fractions of a penny that arrives instantly in someone else's bank account. You know. Secondly, with something like Ghost, which is a savings platform or saving application, you're going to get access to that yield and you're going to earn interest on that deposit, whereas previously, if you were a small business owner, you had no chance of doing that. You know you'd also be able to access loans. So if you want to go and start a business, you can and I think that was the main message or takeaway that I got from the event that DeFi.

Kid: 25:10

You know and as you said, we're incredibly privileged in where we live and perhaps it's less useful here, but DeFi really has the potential to transform less developed economies and unlock billions of new capital, which you know is previously just completely out of the economic system. So there's a real incentive and there's a real value proposition of something like decentralized finance. You don't need these expensive rails that you'd have in Web2 infrastructure. It's very easy to send money, it's very easy to deposit money and for a community or population which is largely left out of that financial system, something like DeFi can really change the way they live in a huge way.

JB Carthy: 26:00

No, definitely, and I think you know sometimes we lose sight as we're talking about like. So it feels like crypto and blockchain have almost become like synonymous with each other. And obviously crypto couldn't exist without blockchain, but blockchain would exist without crypto each other. And obviously crypto couldn't exist without blockchain, but blockchain would exist without crypto. And it's a case of like people are kind of not necessarily paying the respect the technology itself deserves for the problems it can solve, because they are too consumed with essentially using the technology to basically facilitate speculation on the price of assets, um, and being distracted from, like, the actual impact it can have. As you're kind of um very succinctly outlining in terms of in nigeria or in unbanked populations for like, a wide variety of people I don't know what the exact statistic is, but it's a it's a very, very significant, if not like double digit and like far like significant double digit and percentage of people that are unbanked so in morocco it's 80 percent, 80 percent, yeah four out of five people.

JB Carthy: 27:06

It's crazy, like you know, and like those people are essentially cut off from um, cut off from any sort of like economic interaction with the global economy. And then I think the power, or like the potential power, of the internet and like facilitating global trade and global commerce, combined with things like cryptocurrency and blockchain, which is like unrestricted, global, permissionless access to a decentralized financial system, really has the ability to transform the world in like so many ways. And obviously the the biggest impact are those people who are going to have like the least efficient financial systems and have the most trouble accessing any sort of um integration and cohesive and financial infrastructure that allows them to transfer value um or restrict their ability to transfer value um. But I think even you know for us over here and people don't realize the impact of going like. Okay, you know you used to want to and still do to some extent, although with solutions like revolute and stuff, it's not as impactful anymore. You just have to go to things like the western union, solutions like Revolut and stuff.

JB Carthy: 28:13

It's not as impactful anymore. You just have to go to things like the Western Union and like you'd have to send money and they just take a significant percentage of the transaction simply for the fact of going like oh, you said you want to send this, and simply for the privilege of sending this and us allowing you to do it. We're going to take, like, like, as intermediaries, nothing else but middlemen. We're going to take a huge percentage of the value you're transferring and you could extrapolate that across the wide like lending and borrowing. Like you know, people put their savings in the bank for minuscule like, not even like like APRs, with like a couple of zeros on the end of it like interest, like aprs, with like a couple of zeros on the end of it after the point.

Kid: 28:56

Well, they put it into a bank with interest that actually depreciates in real value when you take into account inflation. Uh, and you know it's a the. The point I really want to make with this is it's easy, in the worlds that we live in to to to lose sight or get lost in the noise, but we've got to remember what the core concept or functionality of DeFi is and its potential.

JB Carthy: 29:20

No, definitely, and it's just going to make the financial system more efficient. And if banks want to remain competitive, they want to remain feasible. If financial institutions want to remain feasible, to remain competitive, they want to remain feasible. If financial institutions want to remain feasible, they're ultimately going to have to um, they're going to have to compete with, essentially, defy, which eliminates the need for middlemen, and therefore, as a result, they're going to need to um, use blockchain so and build their own protocols, and it's going to be um. It's going to be interesting to see how things unfold on that front, like over the next few years.

JB Carthy: 29:56

But I agree, man, I think we underappreciate it over here, even though, if you think in the concept of like, okay, um, what do foreign fx offices or fx desks?

JB Carthy: 30:07

They just make money with people changing from one currency to another.

JB Carthy: 30:11

But what about when stable coins and tokenization of currencies becomes commonplace and like, you can just go, okay, I believe in, like the european economy and I believe in the us economy and I'm just going to hold some tokenized and euro and some tokenized dollar, backed and like regulated by the respective um central banks or banking institutions and rather and rather than banks having all the power and because they have all the liquidity being able to facilitate big swaps.

JB Carthy: 30:40

Every single person can deposit liquidity into these pools, no matter how big or how small, and benefit and from being the intermediary layer that is providing this opportunity for people to transfer these two assets. And I think, when you really like, the power of rwas is going to be like powerful and then when you think of like I think really defy, I do think will start to take off. And when things like over collateralized loans and when people find a way to do over collateralized loans and so for things like cars and mortgages and big payments that are the main reasons people use traditional financial institutions anyway, and but when we find a way to like bring those on chain and regulate them effectively, integrate them with all the different bodies and that kind of govern these things in the different jurisdictions, I think DeFi will amplify in its power. But like I think people are underestimating, like it's like w or wa has kind of become a cliche at this point, but I do think it's got.

JB Carthy: 31:42

It's like, oh, it's, it's become a narrative to pump price it's just a yeah, I do think people are underestimating the potential impact and some of these innovations could possibly have and I think if we look five, ten years down the road, it'll like. It'll all be so obvious in hindsight, like you know yeah, it's.

Kid: 32:00

It's frustrating because I think so many people who perhaps are native to crypto, they'll dismiss it based on on what they hear or a very limited set of information.

Kid: 32:11

And it's just about and this kind of leads to why we're doing what we're doing it's about educating the wider population about how web3 and blockchain technology can actually augment and reshape industries and change the way we do things. Ultimately, now there are a number of hurdles to it. You know you mentioned banks or governments or regulatory authorities. What incentive do they have to adopt blockchain technology? Really, all the incentive is to stop it happening because they cede control. But if we can do our jobs correctly and educate people, then it should become very, very obvious. And I think from there, the sky's the limit for Web3. It's got so much potential. The sky's the limit for Web3. It's got so much potential. Whether it reaches it or not is dependent on if we can get to mass adoption, if we can educate people correctly and if we can provide sort of clear pathways for people to consider it as viable or prospective employees to consider it as a real career pathway.

JB Carthy: 33:13

And I think that brings us beautifully into obviously, you guys um with, as was announced this week, the blockchain futures program, um in in conjunction with the university of bristol, so you guys are trying to bridge the gap between traditional education and web3 employment, as you, as you mentioned, and just and provide some of those pathways and bridge those gaps and and facilitate the adoption and integration of the technologies across a wider variety of industries to solve a wider variety of problems. And but, yeah, let's go into like, okay, we went through Rujira cat, we've we've kind of learned a little bit about Rujira academy. We've learned about the early journey, some of the early impact that was made. And now, if we fast forward to today, where we're at, and this week and our last week this week, this week I'm announcing the launch of the blockchain futures program with university of bristol and let's dive into that a little bit yes, yes.

Kid: 34:13

So yeah, it's been a hectic couple of weeks, to say the least, but really glad to have kicked this initiative off as a sort of a general overview of what the Blockchain Futures Initiative is. It is a two-part program that aims to provide students, but also individuals and those interested in the web free, with a structured pathway. Now, as I said, it's a two-part initiative, the first being the graduate program. Now this will be a four to six week summer internship scheme available to students at the university of bristol but also wider community. It's targeted at student developers or just beginner developers, and what it looks to do is get you involved in two gamified, incentivized and on-chain learning modules on developing on Cosmosm, and the idea is okay cool. I'm a student or I'm an individual that would like to get involved within web3 or is considering a career in web3, but I don't know where to start. What these modules will do is take you through, firstly, the the basic concepts and functionalities and features of smart contract development on Cosmosm, and then the intermediate module is going to act as a continuation of that and dive into the more I'd say dive into the complexities of, of developing on Cosmosm. So what we want to try and do through that program or that that uh let's say developers track of the program, is give you the skills that you'll need to actually go and contribute to a blockchain protocol.

Kid: 35:52

Now, the second track within the graduate program, and probably one I'm most excited about, is the employment track. So I've now got the skills. How do I actually go about marketing myself? How do I go about identifying and finding opportunities? As we discussed earlier, web3 doesn't really have that infrastructure. You have to go through this trial and error process and really waste a lot of time trying to figure out how to go about it. What we want to try and do through this track is enable you to transition that, let's say, technical understanding into practical application. So it's going to involve a web3 employment handbook, cv workshops, guidance on creating a portfolio on GitHub and then, finally, access to our network. Now the web-free employment handbook, in short, is going to provide a comprehensive list of how to find opportunities, how to approach protocols and then how to actually secure or apply for these roles.

Kid: 36:53

The cv workshop it's, I think, one of the most important resources within this entire program, because if you can't communicate your ideas effectively to someone or an employer, you've got no chance of getting a job. You know, it's something that I have quite a lot of experience in. As I said, this is something I had to do for binance and, you know, applying for a whole bunch of different roles for example, my, my role at Cambridge University and I well, myself, as well as other members of the team are going to provide an initial workshop as well as one-on-one feedback. So if you're a student that has gone through the developer's track and, you know, has looked at the handbook and is now attending these workshops, by the time you come out of it, you're going to have a tailor-made cv to the web3 industry that you can send to any and all employers and and really improve your chances of getting seen and getting noticed, because everyone submits a cv. So how are you going to differentiate yourself? It's in how you communicate your ideas and how you communicate your skills, and this is why a CV is so important, and this is a huge area that we think we can add value now creating a GitHub portfolio fairly self-explanatory but again, when you're applying for roles, you need to have a reference to the work you've done, and I've seen some peoples and they don't tend to communicate their ideas very effectively. So we're going to provide guidance on that.

Kid: 38:23

And the last and and something that's also incredibly important, is access to our network. When I started I it was really hard to reach out to the big players because you're not noticed. You're a small fish in a big pond, and by having access to our network and being able to leverage it, we're going to directly connect you with industry leaders, with lead educators, people that are really high up in the space and can actually give you real insight into how to go about finding employment. So that, in essence, is a graduate program. We want to transition technical understanding into practical application. It's targeted at developers, but you don't need extensive experience. You can come in at the ground level at zero and, hopefully, if you engage with the resources and you really make use of them, you can come out of the graduate program with the opportunity to actually go and work in blockchain or Web3.

JB Carthy: 39:24

So something I'm very excited about, something that I've been working with the core team at Ruggiero on, and I really think this is one part of reshaping Web3 education no, I agree, um, and I think you guys have obviously come up with a pretty comprehensive approach to and preparing somebody for the industry and giving them like the foundational grounding, both from a technological perspective and obviously also in the softer skills as well, like um, presenting themselves and presenting their abilities, and appropriately, so that employers are more likely to understand the value they could bring.

JB Carthy: 40:08

But let's say, for example, in a changing I would say world from even like 10 years ago, five years ago, two years ago, where the CV might not hold quite so much weight anymore because I actually was chatting to somebody about this the other day is like it used to be a case if you had to go to college to go like, okay, you need to get this degree to prove, to prove you know these things, because there's no other way of me knowing that you have the credibility and competence to do this thing unless you acquire this piece of paper.

JB Carthy: 40:42

But now, obviously, with like social media, with um, personal distribution channels, with newsletters, with youtube, with all these ways for people to showcase their competencies and their skill sets, and without necessarily needing validation, to practice, and how does that change the dynamic of looking for employment and, if we want to call it like web, web three and every other sector really, but the proof, the proof of work movement, like you know where um essentially is it, is it as valuable? Obviously, people have to present themselves well and put forward the application strongly, but um, how, how important is showcasing that proof of work on a consistent basis and publicly yeah, no, um, I think.

Kid: 41:33

Well, cvs are still obviously very important, but you know, I think what we've tried to design here is is something that can take you through that whole process. And I look outside, or even inside of Web3. And there really isn't that infrastructure. It comes back to the same point I made earlier you need to be able to if we're ever going to reach mass adoption and let's say we do you're going to need a talent pool to choose from, and the state of Web3 at the moment there's just not going to be enough people. So something like this, I think, offers a lot of value to bringing the next generation into Web3.

JB Carthy: 42:14

No, 100%, man, 100%. And let's say like, obviously thinking about this a little bit more and looking forward to and the next steps and looking looking forward to where this is going to be going in, like three years, five years, and we actually had um alay in the comments saying that, like um, because of you, he's still paying for chat gpt premium I'm sorry I think you own like 60 quid or something like I love to spend the invoice yeah but man, how do you see the role of ai reshaping everything about this industry?

JB Carthy: 42:50

and even, like, let's just look at regira academy, let's just look at, like, the technical, technical skills, like, I think open, a open ai, or sam altman was saying recently and that, like, the most powerful open AI model currently ranks as in the top 50 computer programmers in the world.

JB Carthy: 43:06

So if it was, if it was benchmarked, it will be in the top 50 computer programmers and by the end of the year it's going to be number one. So, theoretically, by the end of the year, like, every single person in the, every single person in the world is going to have access to a, to the world's leading um, computer scientist, computer engineer, coder, in their pocket, in their computers. And and how will this change the industry? Do you think? I'm not expecting you to know, it's just something because none of us know until it actually happens. But you know, obviously being entrenched in the education sector, and obviously people studying for these skills and studying to acquire these competencies, and it's a very fast moving world. So, yeah, like, how do you see like an AI is probably the fastest moving piece in the puzzle, how do you see it kind of impacting education and employment. All these, all these factors.

Kid: 44:01

Education, employment, all these factors. Yeah, I'm probably best positioned to answer in relation to education, but you know it's absolutely crazy. I mean the uptake it's had in the last few years and really we're still at the beginning of the bottleneck. You know it already is impacting industries and education, but that's only set to grow. You know, I saw something earlier today actually, and saying most research is now done through ai. I know a lot of students are using ai for their degrees, in the writing of their essays or the research for their essays. And you know I remember gpt coming out in my final year of university and and it certainly made a big difference.

Kid: 44:40

So it'll be very interesting to see, let's say, let's take the, the university space, for example. How will it change the university space? Because a lot of the skills that degrees teach are going to be obsolete. Um, you know how will it change curricula? Because if those skills are now obsolete, then you're going to need to, I guess, endow students with a completely different set of skills. So I imagine, from the university perspective, it's going to change the way students are assessed and it will be very interesting to see how that changes.

Kid: 45:15

And then, in terms of employment, look like loads of statistics are thrown out and it says 50%, 60% of jobs are going to be taken by ai, etc. Etc. My personal take is I think it's similar to web3. It has the ability to augment industries and, in some cases, replace them, but the people that are going to get ahead and the people that are going to to do the best are those who learn how to utilize, utilize ai to augment their own processes and roles. So, yeah, I think it's poised to change a wide number of industries. Uh, specifically in employment you know employment, but but also the university space and I think it's going to radically change what is deemed useful, because if they can do half the jobs, or potentially more, that we used to be able to do, where are the jobs going to come from? Engineers are going to be incredibly important. Anyone within coding, but let's say those lower skillset roles it really is going to be incredibly important. Anyone within coding, but let's say those, uh, lower skill set roles.

JB Carthy: 46:22

It really is going to be interesting to see who is displaced and and what they're going to do instead no, 100 percent, and I think all any of us can do is really like observe and watch and let time unfold and let what happens unfold. And because none of us, we can all make predictions and there's lots of predictions, as you mentioned, flying around, but the only test is time. I think humans it's going to move to a place like where, obviously like university and education traditionally, because obviously there was never this ability to call upon such a powerful artificial intelligence models that could essentially provide you with any answer at any time and analyze any data in seconds and provide you with contextual responses. So, essentially, humans had to be like the information, the information, the knowers and the processors and like I think it's going to drastically transform how work is done, it's going to free up mental bandwidth and it's going to drastically transform how work is done. It's going to free up mental bandwidth and it's going to reward far better the innovators, the thinkers, the creators and the people who can and like see solutions, because they're going to have the tools available them to be able to contextually. They're going to have the tools to be able to contextually address any problem they see and whereas in the past you know there was I, I like, let's say, for example, in coding I I think coding is a great example like in the past it was the case of okay, if someone wants to build an app or saw a great solution that they could, they could build for the internet, they would have to um, learn how to speak to the computers before the computer could speak to the internet.

JB Carthy: 48:03

So it's like okay, I have an idea. Now I have to go speak the language of the computer, which is code. I have to go learn that. I have to, almost like, translate what I know into the code of the computer and then the computer will speak that to the internet. And now it's a case of like okay, I have this translator that talks to machines in my pocket and I can like, through my own language that I know and understand, I can, like, I can give prompts and inputs that are like like, I don't, I don't need to learn new languages, I don't need, I just need to imagine. And this space between ideation and execution is narrowing so much that it's essentially the only barrier, the only barrier to action is thinking it's crazy man.

JB Carthy: 48:51

So I just think it's gonna. I, I think it's going to unleash, like like, everybody in the world is going to be an innovator, creator, an artist and a builder at some point in the future. I think navale I don't know if you follow navale and ravikant, but like yeah, and he has some he has some interesting kind of um quips and one of them was like there's like six billion or seven billion people in the world and one day I hope there will be seven billion businesses. So essentially, what he was saying like is that everybody will become an innovator, everyone will become a builder.

JB Carthy: 49:21

Everyone will become their own business, provide their own value, and I think with AI, we're getting closer and closer to that idea of like thinking in units of value and literally everybody is just providing units of value and getting and the blockchain fits in beautifully to this is getting and people are getting rewarded directly for the units of value they create and through smart contracts, in real time. It's like we're we're moving to a truly a truly decentralized, truly um meritocratic, um system. If, if applied correctly, but obviously if, if misapplied and misaligned, it also has and the potential to um not go so well. Like you know, it's positive coming out of america, the stuff about like, let's say them not going down the cbcbdc path, um and like, yeah, like, if the blockchain is, like we said, crypto is not blockchain, crypto is on blockchain, but blockchain is not crypto. But the thing is like if, um, if the wrong actors were to like maybe drive it in the wrong direction, and if it might have quite the same positive impact, which is what you're saying about like okay, and we need to educate, we need to drive mass adoption, we need to make sure that we're making these positive impacts at a faster rate than um that negative impacts can be made.

JB Carthy: 50:42

So I think it's, it's super interesting, man, I I'm at this moment. If anyone, if anyone in the audience, wants to pop up, ask a question, and feel free, but we'll while, while we're waiting for that, or if someone drops a question in the comments and I'll leave you with a final question. Man of like, where do you see us going in the next 12 months? Where do you see the space evolving 12 months, 24 months? But in the short to medium term, where do you see crypto, blockchain, web3 moving?

Kid: 51:12

Yeah, what are you?

JB Carthy: 51:13

excited about.

Kid: 51:17

Yeah, it's. I mean, it's a very good question and, to be honest, I think the the 24 month or two year, three year, four year, five year time scale it, you can probably give a very similar answer for all of them. I don't think any of us would dispute the fact that web, free, crypto, blockchain technology has incredible transformative potential. In a similar manner to ai, you know, it has the ability to reshape industries and has a multitude of applications across, you know, supply chains, governance, healthcare, etc. So we know that the technology can can transform industries, right, but will? It is the bigger question. And and what is what? What would stop, let's say, what would stop us from reaching mass adoption, or what would stop us from web3 having a truly positive impact? Number one is the actors, right.

Kid: 52:14

Something that I read a long time ago, which has always stuck for me, is that the technology isn't corruptible, but humans are, and if humans are in control of the technology, then it's doomed to fail. So we need to find a way to govern it properly. I you know. I'd also say, if we're going to reach the masses, we need that infrastructure in place to truly educate everybody, and you know this is why I say that infrastructure and having the right people in place is so important because without it, I do think Web3 will struggle to reach its potential.

Kid: 52:53

You know we've got a number of hurdles still left to vault in terms of regulation, in terms of, you know, adoption as well from institutions and even traditional investors. So my answer to your question where do I see it within the next few years? I think it really depends on who's behind the wheel and how well we can educate the wider space or the general population wider, the wider space or the general population. I I would hope you know my, uh, I guess my ideal outcome is that, whether it be rwas or defy, it completely augments the way that finance you know finance works, um, and it opens up a whole whole new economy or opens up to a whole new population. That is the ideal. Whether that happens or not is is is another question and personally I'd love it too, but you know there's there's a lot of hurdles still left to vault no 100 man and you are.

JB Carthy: 54:01

You are here contributing to vaulting those, vaulting those problems and solving them, and with Rujira academy.

JB Carthy: 54:07

So hats off and hats off to you, sir, and great work and really looking forward to seeing how and the blockchain futures program evolves and how the future of, and the bridging of the gap between, um, traditional education and web three evolves, hopefully with you guys, um, at the forefront of it. So, and thank you very much for joining us and really appreciate it and this was helios horizons, episode 37, and today we chatted to the kid, ruji, and founder of Rujira Academy, doing incredible work in terms of like as we touched on bridging gaps in education between traditional education and Web3 employment. We went back through his own journey and through university, through the early days of Rujira Network or, sorry, Rujira Academy right through to now where they are, where they're partnered with a university University of Bristol in England and they are helping to deliver a program that's tailor-made to help people find employment in Web3. So thank you very much for joining us the kid, and thank you very much for everyone in the audience. Hope you have a good evening and talk again soon.