High school students take prize in Barclays, Clearmatics blockchain hackathon

Last week Clearmatics hosted a hackathon for its Ion blockchain interoperability protocol at Barclays Rise in London. Although it sounds like a corporate affair, a four-student team from Bedford School landed third place. What’s even more surprising is that until two days before the event, none of the 17 and 18 year-olds had any blockchain technology experience. Despite this, they managed to set up blockchain networks, install software, develop a project, present it, and even raise some technical issues re the open source code which were nick-named “Bed bugs” by Dr. David Wild, their maths and computer science teacher. Wild wanted to put his students in a scenario outside of their comfort zone. One that would make them think, use their interpersonal and coding skills and also develop an appreciation for coding beyond bite-sized 45-minute lessons. “It’s about much bigger problems, and being part of a jigsaw of people that need to fit together in order to produce a solution that’s coherent and well presented,” Wild elaborated.

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