DU Nimbus wins the Best Prototype Award in IBCOL 2020

For the first time, Bangladesh participated in the International Blockchain Olympiad (IBCOL) 2020, held online from July 3 to July 5. 60 teams from 15 different countries participated in IBCOL 2020 and among the top six awards, two teams from Bangladesh won two.

DU Nimbus, a team of four members from Dhaka University bagged the Best Prototype Award, for their project, Nimbus, a national blockchain-driven private cloud-based platform for Bangladesh, adopted in land administration.

Tahlil Abser, Md Atiquer Rahman, Ishtiaque Zahid and Mohammad Sohrawardy of DU Nimbus participated in the International competition. Tahlil and Atiquer, from IIT, DU and Ishtiaque from CSE, DU, formed a team initially for the National round and came in third. Later, Mohammad Sohrawardy, from IBA, DU joined the team.

"I participated in this competition because I was going through a tough time, since the shutdown," shares Mohammad Sohrawardy. "I made new friends here and got the opportunity to create something that has the potential to change people's lives."

"From the beginning of this competition, we tried to find a solution that will eradicate a major problem," shares Atiquer. "So, we decided to work on a project that will digitalise the land administration system of our country."

The land administration system in Bangladesh is quite inefficient. As it works manually, it takes up a lot of time. Currently, to register one land deed, there are 19 different physical steps to be performed, which usually takes around three months. The security and corruption issues of the current system is also a problem that needs to be solved.

The team proposes a system to digitalise the land administration system using blockchain technology. A blockchain-based platform would be able to store a ledger of records of land ownership information. The usage of blockchain ensures transparency and security, as trust is a major issue for land ownership agreements.

Nimbus is also a sustainable business model that will generate economic value for the government and will provide hassle-free services. It is also designed to strongly align with Goal 16 of UNDP's Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

"We hope to collaborate with the government. By using our prototype, we plan to develop a minimum viable product (MVP) that will work for Bangladesh," shares Mohammad Sohrawardy, an analyst of Deals Strategy & Operations, PricewaterhouseCoopers Bangladesh.

"We are hoping the government will use our ideas and will implement blockchain in the land title registration and transfer process, as it will help millions of people in Bangladesh," adds Ishtiaque, who was encouraged to work with blockchain by his teammates.

"Our young people probably have a feeling that our quality of work can never match with other countries, which is not true," shares Tahlil. "If you put your mind to it and work hard you are bound to succeed."

"Winning an award should not be the only objective to participate in such competitions. We should also learn and make new friends in the process," adds Atiquer.

"It's also important to be a good human being as honesty, kindness and humility will surely contribute to your success in one way or another," advises Tahlil for young students who are passionate to work in this field in the future.