Developer Showcase Series: Saurabh Tiwari, Pegadroid – Hyperledger Foundation

Next up in our Developer Showcase blog series is Saurabh Tiwari, founder of Pegadroid. A quick reminder that this blog series serves to highlight the work and motivations of developers, users and researchers collaborating on Hyperledger’s projects. Let’s see what he has to say!

What advice would you offer other technologists or developers interested in getting started working on blockchain?

1. a) It is important not to get carried away with the blockchain hype. We’ve met many people lately, who just want to get blockchain into their projects without understanding its real implications, use cases and potential. Not every business fits into the blockchain model and therefore developers must first explore and discuss with experts before jumping into implementing a solution.
2. b) I would recommend all the developers to get onto rocket chat right from day one. It is the only place to engage with the community and get your questions answered, which makes on-boarding quite a smooth experience.

Give a bit of background on what you’re working on, and let us know what was it that made you want to get into blockchain?

Our product brings innovation into recruitment, by leveraging state of the art blockchain technology for onboarding organizations, partners and candidates to build an enterprise community which is trusted, secure and transparent. Our platform stores all the candidate profiles and documents as assets over blockchain, which are then verified/endorsed by the auditing partners. These assets and endorsements are shared with recruiters. The data is created by the community for the community. It helps recruiters save lot of time and money on background verification, as well as offers rewards and incentives for our auditing partners. We also provide  an enterprise collaboration platform called Slabber, which can be used to effectively communicate, share content, schedule events, process interview feedbacks, create discussion forums, sign contracts and everything else important from the recruitment point of view.

The traditional background verification model has mostly been centralized, all these years. Most of the data is replicated and stored with different auditing companies, which leads to data discrepancies and higher costs to recruiters. Blockchain enabled us to think differently, and we realized that a decentralized community can do wonders. We did enough research, talked to many industry experts and then built a prototype. The results were amazing. Later, we decided to convert it into a full fledged product.

What do you think is most important for Hyperledger to focus on in the next year?

1. a) Stabilization of Hyperledger Fabric
2. b) Extending containers with Kubernetes integration
3. c) More documentation
4. d) Campaigns & marketing

What’s the one issue or problem you hope blockchain can solve?

The two most important ones are –

1. a) Refugee Identity Crisis –  We have seen few incidents recently, where instability in a country led it’s people to cross borders and take shelter in other countries. Their identity is lost. In some cases, they are not allowed to return to their home countries due to lost identities. Having a shared blockchain ledger of this data across globe can possibly help in such cases.
2. b)  Healthcare industry – Counterfeit  drugs have been a major problem in all countries. I feel, blockchain can help control nation’s drug supply and can certainly improve the situation.

Where do you hope to see Hyperledger and/or blockchain in 5 years?

Hyperledger is a trend setter and is rapidly evolving over time. It is already adopted  by many organizations. I am sure, it will penetrate every business where security, integrity and trust are the top priorities. Blockchain can do wonders in the next five years.

What technology could you not live without?

Every technology has emerged for a purpose, which is to make our lives better. Technologies combined with people is a powerhouse, which can resolve many real word problems. It is hard to imagine life without technology.