The week began with the fundamentals. Many students were using Remix for the first time, and it was fascinating to watch them discover that storing data on-chain has a cost, and that transactions take time to settle. They quickly got hooked, writing increasingly complex Solidity contracts and building full apps. Wallets and blockchain fundamentals held no more secrets for them.
On Day two came the pivot. After a session on system modeling and architecture, Pierre and I presented Noumena technologies. The goal was to show them a fundamentally different way to build. The students got hands-on with the Noumena Protocol Language (NPL), our Noumena Blockchain Connector, and the Noumena Runtime. Using a prepared template, these aspiring engineers built a complete system: a data simulation in Node-RED, a backend service in NPL for processing and storage, and a blockchain connector to commit NPL events on-chain.
The energy in the room was palpable. The students were challenged to conceptualize a CO2-reporting or trading platform, and their creativity was sky-high. On Wednesday, they gathered in teams to nail their core concept, create a business model around tokenised CO2 or CO2 certificates. Students got creative, They moved from modelling simple economic models to complex, end-to-end supply chain solutions.
All of this ideation quickly got translated into defined sequence diagrams, wireframes and code prototypes. For the biggest part of the week, slide painting rivalled with implementation. NPL serving both as quick prototyping language to see the solution taking shape, and robust language ready to support an MVP. IoTDevice protocols connected to SensorData structs; SmartContract protocols, interacting with their Wallet counterpart. Stretching the scope of the use-case in all direction, NPL bent without breaking to support each and every idea.
One of the most interesting parts was their advanced use of smart contract, combining existing ERCs with custom functionalities. From ERC-20 carbon credits to auction mechanics, complexity and ingenuity were sky high. Deploying contract on the fly was made possible by the NOUMENA blockchain connector. Responding to NPL notifications for deployment, function calls and wallet creation, this proprietary component was easy to setup and configure.
The week culminated in the final pitches on Friday afternoon. The teams presented projects on voluntary carbon markets, state-based carbon taxes, and emission reduction incentives. The most convincing project came from the "NoName" team, who swayed the jury with a sound business plan, a concrete go-to-market strategy, and an elegant use of blockchain and Noumena technologies to build a digital measurement, reporting, and verification (dMRV) platform. Congratulations to the NoNames!
Thank you again to the whole team who joined us and to Professor Tim Weingärtner for hosting us at HSLU. It was a powerful reminder of how a foundational shift in tooling can empower the next generation of developers.