Web3 Developer Kevin Riedl: Teaching Solidity and Smart Contracts to 11-Year-Olds

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0:00 today we have Kevin Vito from Austria someone who started coding at the age of 13 I was literally just reading your profile Kevin and it’s so cool and amazing how you started off from you know web 2 now you’re diving into a space called web3 which again some of us are still unaware of contrastfully but you are someone who has made a name for himself I recently saw your post on LinkedIn and I think that’s what got me super curious to talk to you how are you

0:26 teaching web3 and building smart contracts and nfts to 11 year olds I think that’s where I really was just like amazed I was like okay wait I need to talk to this man how is he doing this how did you get started and now how are you helping other people get started so that’s all I want to know feel free to share more about you know your journey and uh yeah I’m gonna give it back to you wow um first of all thank you for

0:48 that uh kind of great introduction I really appreciate it to be here today um thank you for having me um yeah let’s let’s start with why I’m teaching kids basically it’s not my project it’s from coding for kids that’s an Austrian initiative that actually organizes coding sessions for free for kids between 10 and 15 years old and yeah usually it’s uh they have a beginners course and an advanced course beginners is around scratch I did that

1:20 the last two years or three years I’m not sure and uh they also since last year I believe have these Advanced courses and since that I have my own blockchain company I decided hey actually it would be an interesting experiment to try to teach small contracts to Children right because I haven’t seen that before I I’m sure it’s out there someone did it right but um it’s yeah experienced developers are scared of smart contracts sometimes so I

1:52 thought that’s gonna be fun hopefully how’s it going so far how many like is this like an ongoing course that anybody can access around the world or is it just for Austrian kids in the local language and for particular schools how does it work yeah it’s actually just a local initiative it’s really in a physical room uh 12 13 kids something around there yeah basically it was just one week right it’s always just one week

2:16 course which made it extra challenging because I yeah you just can’t start uh developing smart contracts right away you need to have some basic knowledge around wallets what is blockchain at all right because otherwise nothing what we would do that week would make sense though on that note uh how do you explain blockchain or metaverse or nfts or smart contracts 2 and 11 a lot of us will benefit from this so feel free to you know

2:47 the common number here yeah yeah um I asked that myself as well in China well I believe when I’ve fought back to my basically sessions when I listened to a teacher the moments when I actually learned something and really listened to the teacher was when he was talking about experiences when he was talking about like like really doing amazing comparisons when you when he got emotional and all these kind of things I thought or basically then tried to be as

3:19 enthusiastic as possible meaning that I really got into the class and just started talking about why does this crazy space exist at all right what is it all about and I even talked about um I would say money printing because I think it was something many in there could relate to right things got more expensive and so on and uh basically we really first day it was I would 75 or 60 Fury which usually sounds very boring yeah but um from what I observed was

3:57 they really enjoyed it they asked questions without them and and we really loved uh I think yeah a lot and yeah basically I just tried to wrap everything that I had to say I want blockchain with a personal story right and I I even talked about as camps right I said a friend approached me one a few months ago uh lost 0. X bet Bitcoin for whatever reason and things like that right and that’s when everyone actually starts to listen to it yep yep I think

4:30 those stories are actually very memorable you know because even until today like everybody talks about the pizza guy who earned some Bitcoin back in the day those those stories really stay with you uh people might still not understand Bitcoin or know what it is but everybody sort of knows that story um but again coming back like stepping a little back from the story that about the course that you’re doing which is amazing honestly I really hope one day

4:52 it’s accessible to everyone all the kids around the world and it becomes a part of normal traditional curriculum because I think it’s a space that everybody needs to get involved in much earlier on

章节 02

5:01 in life and it’s a really good uh you know field as well for kids to grow into in their childhood but I would really love to know how did you get started uh so what is your background and how did you get involved in web3 you are currently hosting a podcast of your own also a co-host of two other podcasts decode and one more and you have your own blockchain development company as well where you now help other people as

5:25 well as companies to get involved in the blockchain space so I would love to know how did you get started from a traditional background and now straight into this new world of metaverse and also pulling other people in which I really like yeah um thank you for that um that’s a great question though I basically as you said um I don’t want to bore anyone with my web 2 Johnny and channel but I just started out developing as usual with

5:49 creating websites at age of 13 right because that one of the easiest things to do at that age in comparison in comparison sorry I didn’t want to trigger anyone here but um yeah basically I was always super curious about bleeding edge Technologies so I basically wasn’t focused at all I tried everything I got my hands onto Quantum Computing on a super superficial lover a super super high level and I’m sure blockchain was also part of it uh

6:23 creating or developing compilers and things like that so I just was curious and tried out a lot of things and at some point um I basically got approached by someone on LinkedIn and he yeah we just met up he asked me to basically join his blockchain startup at that time it was I think 2017 or something like that and um yeah it was a decentralized identity startup right it which is now popping up again with all that Soul band talk

6:52 and uh I said no okay um yeah because I didn’t really as an iPhone context I had a startup at the same time and also had some experience regarding all that sort of thing so I felt like there isn’t that much there already like a lot of uh it didn’t feel like that’s going somewhere right so I said no and finally I would say half a year later uh a former friend of mine approached me and also said hey have you you need to join blockchain start off

7:22 right I have someone here and as you can imagine already it was the same guy and yeah at that time I just thought okay let’s let’s give it a shot um interestingly that is what got me started right but interestingly I just was there for I think six eight months something like that and yeah then my original assumption basically strengthened or right so I moved away from that but since then I decided to actually focus on blockchain

7:55 yeah you really got got me I would say yeah really nice but how did you start off learning about blockchain uh like did you have let’s say I’m scheduled every day like for example I’ve seen people you know like and that’s something that I’m trying as well like put out 30 minutes every day just to learn about this new space because again everybody has these like schedules and work and like you for example have your own startup so it’s really hard to

8:21 prioritize right so how did you go about privatizing doing what you were doing already and then also learning how to get involved in this new space that’s a super interesting question I’m still dealing with that um it changed for me over time I did always depends on the context right I basically yes sometimes yeah um I just started some projects right I thought that would be cool without even having the background to do

8:45 so I just started and tried to uh go one step at a time towards that end product right um which for sure only works if you’re a developer most of the time and otherwise uh you always have to be super serious yeah and actually find the startup right but um that was one approach I did a lot especially in the other when actually just started out if basically all Technologies and over time for sure reading book as you said half an hour

9:13 which is finally the exact same period I had as well or um yeah at some point it also just got part of my work right when I basically needed something I had to look it up and that suddenly happened every day all right so I didn’t have to actually put up 30 minutes every day um but still reading books and everything and hands-on experience like really doing something in the space talking with awesome people like you for example and

9:43 discussing things all you want to a few awesome and also would love to to know like for example you were always a developer so you learned how to code and that’s been your passion for a very very long time um did you have any other skill set that you had to learn to get more into the blockchain space or was it a

章节 03

10:00 continuation of what you already knew um yeah it’s a blockchain developer you have to be extra careful you really have to start testing more if you did not beforehand right because many developers and companies itself aren’t really into tests right they just develop does it work yes that’s doesn’t it fix it all right on blockchain you can’t most of the time right you have to make sure that it works right away to a large

10:29 extent otherwise um you and your customers or company partners aren’t happy right and even less the people using the contract and so basically test on development um really focusing on security efficiency performance-based double programming which also isn’t the main focus of web 2 devs right because you have the resources a storage is cheap which isn’t the case for blockchain right and um all these kind of things right it’s

11:06 it’s different I would say um but in China were also requirements engineering project management right since you actually need to know what the customer wants and what has to be changeable maybe what kind of parameters and so on you really have to know what should be the end product because I said you can’t change much afterwards yeah that’s an issue now that you have your own company as well right where let’s say you have enough knowledge on how

11:34 this new whole development works you have enough projects under your belt that you’ve already worked on you know what it you know what it basically is right now when you have your own startup where you are helping other companies to get involved in blockchain uh have you faced a certain type of challenge when you’re bringing traditional companies into blockchain um first of all I wouldn’t say that anyone knows enough um yeah challenges

12:01 uh regarding web 2 yeah I think it’s the understanding of the cultural shift itself right um that’s what I think even for web free developers is sometimes hard I think in Channel with everyone when just starting out it’s a little bit hard to understand right people are thinking differently they have different priorities I’m also within the web free space right there’s the Bitcoin Community there’s ethereum community and then there are layer tools

12:32 right it’s polygon are Wallops and everything and everyone nft communities everyone really thinks different and has some tiny nuances of each other I think understanding that as a company can be challenging and also the fact that um what I also discovered is you basically it’s super hard to find Talent very Talent right um either they have a company right or uh they already are employed somewhere or they are super super expensive right

13:08 because they already made it somehow with their crypto Investments and um yeah right then it’s hard to pay them so most of the time you have to convince them that educating your existing employees to become web free developers marketers whatever is the actual way to go right now at least and yeah that it’s probably going to be cheaper that way yeah that’s true but in terms of talent Uh Kevin so this might be a platform where there

13:39 will be a lot of people um let’s say mostly from you know the South Asian um you know part of the world uh maybe watching this later on so if there’s anything that you want to talk like you want to say to that Talent existing over there uh we have a really big developer Community uh people are looking for jobs you know looking for remote jobs web 3 jobs um what would you like to say to them one thing that I hear from clients all

14:05 the time is communication right right and trust those two things all right um I’m not sure as a if you’re serious about your project and one thing I don’t think a company would ever um engage or really um most of the time with Anonymous developers right that’s the first thing so basically build uh Trust around your personal brand maybe be on LinkedIn have a treat a Twitter profile be active engage with people that creates trust

14:45 around you as a person and more importantly communication because what I hear all the time is people don’t understand many developers right either have a super strong accent

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15:01 yep which I think I have to some extent as well I’m working on that or um they over complicate uh their speech right it’s hard for them the first one because I think it really comes down to you know how you talk like for example in the marketing world where I’m from we I have seen that so many people sometimes just talk in a language which is just full of jargons and sometimes people wouldn’t understand that I think similar complications lie

15:37 on the web development side as well uh you know where sometimes people are talking in terms where it just gets too much to even understand uh and like you mentioned like in any company there are different departments but they need to work together uh so in order to communicate those goals and communicate the results or whatever ideas you have you need to be able to talk to each other in the language that and they understand so

15:58 it’s a really good point that you mentioned thank you for saying that yeah yeah 100 uh just imagine uh the customer client whoever tells you something they want right and either you don’t understand it or they don’t understand what you uh suggest them and both is a huge issue and leads to yeah much more expenses on the clan side which isn’t desirable and that’s a problem right there’s a saying for that as well right if you have to

16:30 cover up your augmentation with a complex shotgun as you said it um then most of the time it’s because the lack of deep knowledge right the simpler the speech is that more you actually understand something usually right not always but it’s a good indicator for that that is really really cool that you mentioned that so whenever I’m speaking to you know people in the web 3 uh there are certain terms that come up you know so I

17:00 recently spoke to uh another member of the community as well and she’s super involved in uh you know building and representing the women in the space um she’s from France she’s an artist and we were just talking about the basic again you know terminology with you I would really want to understand because in your profile and in your website as well I see uh terms like D5 traffic was the first time that I’ve seen it uh in

17:26 my life so I would really want to understand like if you can maybe explain those but in you know simpler language um yeah sure um traffic I I’m I have seen it differently on different places as well some write it with an on D right threat Phi and somewhere but in general it’s just regular Finance like okay okay sorry like everything you see from day to day Bank banking systems everything right it’s just it’s traditional Finance it’s just an

18:04 abbreviation yeah but it’s a cool abbreviation though right and the D5 would be decentralized Finance but if you can also you know uh simplify that term yeah in China while decentralized Finance is nothing else on a high level than you don’t have to trust an institution right there is no intermediary there is no bank or something like that that actually for example has your money or explicitly offers you certain rates

18:38 where you can buy if you’re on bitcoin for example for your dollars something like that it’s developed with so-called smart contracts which is code on a blockchain right so basically these rules because my contracts are nothing else than programmable rules that you have to follow if you engage with that blockchain code you can interact with the finance sector in a more trustless way all right you don’t have to trust anyone nice except the code yep

19:17 important to mention uh but yeah Kevin one or two maybe last questions uh from my side would be um your goals have obviously shifted from a 13 year old who started coding and then you you know followed the traditional footsteps as well let’s say you graduated started working on your projects and then you dive straight into a completely new world of web3 so I would really want to understand how have your goals shifted from you know your

19:44 teens 20s sorry how old are you now 25 oh my God what did you think really wow okay cool yeah yeah oh my God

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20:00 okay yeah then I would love to like what are your goals in your 20s and what do you want to achieve as a person um yep that’s an awesome question basically because they really shifted a lot and oftentimes um which for the better and worse at the same time yep I would say for a long long time I didn’t really had some specific goal but water had the hunger to learn for a I think really long time I think until the age of 19 or

20:33 something like that 18 I only had that right I only wanted to learn to try out to grow right there wasn’t anything like I want to earn a lot of money I I didn’t even was aware of too much of all that right and even when founding my own first startup it was like um I want to grow that to learn with that and at some point of time because the first startup I founded was a social Tech startup I really wanted to make an impact right I

21:09 wanted to uh change the world which is already a big mistake because you should always start with yourself right but I started with trying to change because again you break it down yes that’s good it’s good it’s good exactly yeah yeah in general the goal at that time was um to help others uh helping each other right to give incentives that people actually do something good right be monetary or some kind of um yeah they would say that goal that

21:44 division was a super strong probably the strongest I ever had in my whole life which sounds crazy for a 25 year old no it’s good yeah it basically was so strong that uh it was a really emotional one for me I really really really believed that and every time yeah I I really think I was like blinded by that in some kind of sense as well um which was one of the reasons why it really was a social startup and I had a hard time to

22:21 actually commercialize it in some kind of sense because if we were too commercialized right if we tried it hard or we were too social for many things investors and everything and that led to a lot of problems right um there’s one quote that you mentioned which is your favorite quote and now that I’m you know getting to know the actual Kevin I would really want to understand what what does this actually mean to you when you say that your

22:52 favorite code is live just has to be meaningful enough to justify its suffering by Jordan Peterson what does that mean yeah um that that’s great um so in general I’m I just want to say I like many things John Peterson says but I know that many people don’t like him because some uh respect other some things he’s saying I want to distance myself from all that political stuff out there but in general um the saying itself had actually a

23:25 really huge impact on me at that time I heard it the first not the first time basically because um I know everyone goes to many things right everyone has problems everyone has issues uh that victim trap is uh really bad you should never be in that form my perception perspective for myself I had some things to deal with like I got how to say it in English I got mopped instead of English got mopped in school I got um excluded in many kind of things

24:00 um I got a daughter at a very early age like 18 years old which was great it’s great now right but was super hard on me at that time especially because I got mobbed at that time as well so it was a lot of things coming up basically I had no perspective on life got into a huge depression and everything uh and really was I would say on the edge one day I actually was close to actually die with a car accident I let how to put it we were on the

24:36 mountain it was an open car and we rolled down right we were a little bit too fast I even had to come up I was not a driver for contacts I had the camera in my hand even filmed that and um yeah in the curve right we fell down and we survived

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25:00 it right there was like a small tree or something like that which saved us and that was the first time for many years I actually wanted to live because I didn’t want to die and that was the moment when I actually discovered uh I overcame my depression at that time um there was a process before that for sure and um that actually was the Discord basically meant a lot to me in that regard right you always will undergo a lot of suffering

25:39 there will always be many things right that aren’t pleasing some kind of sense all right it’s normal people die um illness things don’t work out as you want right everyone has that and um in general life can be so awesome all right um You just have to understand that it isn’t always that way you just have to keep perspective that that suffering that you might go through right now is temporary right you can get out of that and you really

26:19 make something great for yourself and for others right after you did that and that’s awesome thank you so much for sharing that Kevin honestly I was not expecting um this but I’m so glad that you shared that because again you know it puts like more uh of a human aspect and human perspective to this whole thing that we just talked about before uh because experiences and labels and web free web 2 and we sometimes forget the human

26:50 aspect right and I’m really glad that you brought that uh to this and thank you so much again for sharing that thank you for asking right or in some kind of sense maybe overshared but yeah no it’s not good it’s all good I’m actually really again you know there is never over sharing it’s always about what you feel right what you feel in the moment and then you just say it there is Never No Regrets nothing like that it’s all

27:12 good no worse but yeah one last question from my side would be since you are a 25 year old who has gone through some major life changes and experiences professionally and personally um what do you think are like the main things that people should invest their time money and energy in as a 20 in someone in their 20s let’s say try things and your time is best invested in something that you actually are passionate of right if you don’t

27:46 know what it is try it right try certain things it doesn’t need to be web free and you had many people claim that’s the solution for everything right now it isn’t right um it’s a huge industry it will explode 100 but if you don’t like it don’t do it I just because everyone is rushing in uh it doesn’t mean you should as well right but if you like it if you are passionate about any of these kind of topics then sure spend your time maybe your money

28:21 and yeah whatever other resources you have on that and try it out and if you don’t like it anymore at some per a point of time don’t be too proud to step away from it again try something else that’s something I learned um for myself and I think that’s really powerful actually to not be scared what other people think to actually pursue what makes you fulfilled right happiness is a temporary aspect but actually being fulfilled liking what

29:01 you do in general like our relation purpose and yeah everything else money uh success in life I think or I hope uh it comes into place like automatically right wow now I really love that honestly uh one of the reasons why I started only linked to money but I think for me it really matters that whatever it is that you invest whether it’s money time or your energy or resources like you mentioned you need to be very mindful

29:35 about it and that’s exactly when the whole uh like the theme of what we’ve talked about as well so thank you so so much for you know giving your time and for sharing um your experiences honestly I am 110 sure that someone out there will definitely try one thing or another only because um if they’re listening to you so thank you so much I say thank you and thank you everyone

章节 07

30:01 for listening to this really a pleasure talking with you thank you so much