Despite studying Business Administration at graduate level and Home Economics/Hospitality at graduate level, Ayodeji Awosika has always been a strong believer in technology.
The founder of Web3bridge says he was the person his peers always turned to for early setup of Java and Symbian phones. Little did he know that the experience was preparing him for something much bigger.
In an interview with Technext, the renowned blockchain developer and web3 evangelist shares his experience and the amazing work he is doing with the web3 bridge. According to Ayodeji,
“My love for technology has always been there. I always knew technology would help. And after graduating from school, I decided to transfer my knowledge to help graduates and undergraduates with their research and stuff. I did this from 2013 to 2017 when I discovered blockchain.
Ayodeji Awosika’s foray into crypto
Ayodeji first came into contact with blockchain technology in October 2017 when his friend attended a program and returned to tell him and his peers about the nascent financial revolution. Most of the guys around him had the financial capacity to buy tokens and wait for returns, but like most noobs, Ayodeji Awosika entered the space to hunt. airdrops.
However, due to his quest for knowledge, he began to research and understood how space works and he came to see things that others could not see at that time.
Building on the experience he had coupled with his passion, he decided to join and make his contribution to space.
“I had the time and I had the knowledge of the trick. So I thought, why not bring what I know and start working in space? I’ve always had a passion for community support and management and that really helped me. Home economics teaches you to be caregivers and to listen to clients. Bringing this and the research I undertook after graduation helped me understand and navigate the space more in order to contribute.
On the development of the blockchain and the start of Web3bridge
Upon entering the crypto space, Ayodeji Awosika discovered that there was a disconnect between the product, the users, and the developers who built the products.
“Safe to say that most of the developers then were still understanding the space. So I thought to myself that the only thing we could do was to start grooming the users to understand.”
He has launched crypto education campaigns and meetups sponsored by Blockchain Waves, a company Ayodeji worked for during this time. After that, Ayodeji Awosika joined Hydro project as one of the ambassadors. It was this experience that opened his mind to the difficulties of web developers.
After seeing a developer-built product fail on one of the major technology platforms, he committed to training developers. So he continued his campaign for young developers.
As fate would have it, Joseph Lubin, the founder of the Ethereum consensus, tweeted about one million developers in October 2019. Ayodeji Awosika saw this as an opportunity to prepare developers, so he explored the potential for developer training in Nigeria.
The team saw his tweet, discussions began and the rest, they say, is history.
“…we started working on it and 500 Nigerian developers were trained in a pilot program and luckily for us a number of developers came to support the event. So the motivation and inspiration was while the people of Nigeria would benefit from the upcoming developers the space itself needs developers who could benefit from the numbers we have in Africa and the development as a new space could actually help people make money.
According to Ayodeji Awosika, the journey with Web3bridge was simply amazing and awesome.
They were able to train more than 600 web3 developers and around 800 to 1000 web2 developers. The students have gone far. They have worked with amazing teams all over the world and the graduation rate has improved since they started an onsite design for the program.
Blockchain development is widely believed to be a niche for geniuses and extremely talented people. Ayodeji says that’s not entirely true and Web3bridge makes it as simple as possible.
“I think that’s not entirely true, especially if you don’t build protocols. I believe someone who is persistent and constantly learning as gradually as they can beat a smart person. So this what we do is create a curriculum in a way that starts from the known to the unknown Mentors are great people who are dedicated to what they do, they take their time to teach. So over time, we’ve broken down the process and made it easy to learn. It’s an amazing learning process.
The requirement to be integrated into the web2 program is quite simple. The Web2 program is intended for those who have no experience in development, or those who are still in the learning phase, and wish to improve their knowledge. While the web3 program is for experienced web2 developers.
“For the web2 program, we expect nothing. We just expect you to have interest, time and availability and a good laptop, working phone and internet availability for the lessons. Then for the web3 program, you sign up, take test after test, do interview after interview, read some content, and get tested. If you were successful, you are welcome to the program.
What we teach in the web2 courses is HTML, CSS JavaScript, and then the web3 curriculum is where we teach solidity, Ethereum language, etc. Both programs are absolutely free.
Web3Bridge has helped many people not only to become crypto consumers but also to create crypto products. According to Ayodeji, most of them have become crypto evangelists, spreading the gospel of blockchain far and wide.
Crypto Regulation in Nigeria
One of the most controversial topics in the crypto verse is whether governments should regulate cryptocurrency or not. The bone of contention is that any form of regulation contradicts the essence of blockchain which is decentralization.
However, Ayodeji Awosika believes that due to recent nasty trends in the space, crypto regulation is necessary.
“Because of bad actors, governments will want to regulate all industries, especially when it comes to money, so I’m of the school of thought that government should allow us to use crypto so we can to be free to express ourselves however we want. it’s our business and we can lose money. But if you look at the recent ways the founders of the project are handling people’s money, people’s sweat. I think that it is wise to say that regulation is worth waiting for so I believe that there is no completely perfect system regulation will come but regulation should not hold back the growth of the ecosystem. So that will be my submission.
Ayodeji Awosika hopes to see the government allow companies that build fintech to introduce crypto, but with full KYC. He believes that Nigeria and Africa have played a pivotal role in the crypto space and will continue to do so.
“We may not have built very amazing products or a million product users but we have contributed a lot to the crypto space especially with our purchases almost everyone in Nigeria has a wallet and an investment in crypto, no matter how small. So I will say that Nigeria and Africa will continue to play more roles because our developers are doing incredibly well.
The future of Web3bridge and Ayodeji Awosika looks interesting. The academy will continue to produce amazing developers.
“…we are currently working on two products, and we think the products will be amazing products. Web3Bridge will focus at this stage to give birth to more developers and more products.