Gapstars looks to strengthen Lankan blockchain link through new training project

Dutch IT firm Gapstars has decided to elevate its engagement with Sri Lanka’s nascent blockchain industry through a unique training program, held in collaboration with global blockchain giant NEM. Together, they will train 100 local developers over the course of 2018 in the use of this revolutionary internet technology. 

The initiative should provide Sri Lanka with a decisive edge over several of its regional neighbours while providing it with significant impetus to emerge as a blockchain leader in South Asia. This new project constitutes the latest step in Gapstars’ drive to develop blockchain technology within Sri Lanka. 

This year, the B2B service provider has already invested $1 million in the Lankan tech sector and the company’s co-founder and CEO, Hugo Hemmen, says that this figure is slated to increase over the coming years, and set to double in 2018 alone. He said this heightened investment will primarily seek to establish South Asia’s first R&D centre solely dedicated to blockchain technology in Sri Lanka, something which Gapstars is pursuing in partnership with the Faculty of Information Technology of the University of Moratuwa. 

“Gapstars is planning to invest heavily in the Sri Lankan tech community and kick-start blockchain development. Blockchain is dubbed by many as ‘the new internet technology’, following in the footsteps of the Internet Protocol and the World Wide Web,” Hemmen stated. 

NEM, one of the largest blockchain platforms in the world with a current market cap hovering around $2 billion, has agreed to work closely with Gapstars to bring this project to Sri Lanka. 

Hemmen said, “When we discussed the idea of setting up blockchain capability in Sri Lanka, we found our training partner NEM to be very enthusiastic. They are willing to contribute and establish themselves as the first blockchain platform on the ground in Sri Lanka in cooperation with Gapstars.” 

NEM Foundation President Lon Wong confirmed: “We are indeed very excited with the commitment of Gapstars to bring the NEM blockchain technology into Sri Lanka. We believe this initiative will benefit the people of Sri Lanka as we continue to strive to be the best holistic blockchain technology in the market.” 

Blockchain technology works as an enhanced ledger with records of transactions that are secured through cryptographic hashes. The technology has been rapidly gaining traction in Sri Lanka, with the secure and transparent nature of its decentralised payment infrastructure stirring great interest amongst banks and other financial institutions. The overall efficiency it brings to transactions also offers an attractive proposition to Sri Lankan policy makers, who see innovative uses for it across multiple industries. 

Additionally, NEM will be introducing its latest peer to peer file storage system that is tightly coupled with the NEM blockchain in the first quarter of 2018. This new service offering opens up a wide range of industries that require immutable and irreversible data storage of records, whether in text, image or in video. 

This is all going to be bleeding edge and bodes well for Sri Lanka as Gapstars begins to introduce this technology into the country. 

For Gapstars, the decision to first utilise this novel technology was a no-brainer after several of its Dutch software-as-a-service (SaaS) clients began requesting blockchain-related services. After consolidating its bloackchain operations in the Netherlands and expanding into the US, it eventually decided to facilitate the growth of blockchain technology in Asia. 

Gapstars has been operating in Sri Lanka for the past two years, with a staff of 50 engineers, and has found the country to be greatly receptive and enthusiastic about blockchain’s potential. Locally, apart from the efforts of the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka, a set of computer engineers curious about the new technology recently established Blockchain MeetUp Sri Lanka. 

Gapstars has communicated with these parties to further its idea of a blockchain R&D centre, cooperating closely with Blockchain MeetUp Sri Lanka to disseminate information about the initiative and reel in interested engineers to further explore this emerging technology. 

Furthermore, Hemmen says that Gapstars is constantly looking to recruit and train local talent to fully explore Sri Lanka’s blockchain potential. It flies down several business delegations from the Netherlands every month to work on this project and would be happy to collaborate with local knowledge partners, engineers and other interested parties on its proposed R&D centre. 

For more information on Gapstars’ new training project and work with blockchain technology as well as possible avenues for collaboration with the company, visit www.gapstars.net or email [email protected]. Details on NEM and the potential uses of its blockchain platform are available at www.nem.io.