Pinoy teenager making waves in blockchain innovations, AI

In December 2022, Rien Lewis Pecson made national headlines when he was awarded the “Blockchain Leader of the Future” during Philippine Blockchain Week. Now less than six months later, the young developer is yet again showing his talent for technology with the development of a new platform.

Pecson has created a decentralized, blockchain-based, AI-driven, know-your-customer (KYC) platform. While this may sound complex, the goal of the platform is simple: to protect people’s identity. Proper identification is a sweeping problem in the Philippines. Filipinos have their identities stolen, others commit crimes like libel under the guise of fake identities, and falsified identities are even used in politics, as ghost voters.

Pecson’s new solution aims to help both communities, enterprises, and institutions verify a person’s identity. In short, it can prove that you are who you say you are. What’s more impressive about this solution is that it will be trial ready by multiple government agencies and private companies by quarter three of this year.

Pecson hopes that the KYC platform will protect data integrity not just in the Philippines but in other countries as well.

“Now that the Philippines has rapidly digitized, the next step is security. We must do everything in our power to improve verification and identification, now that so much of our lives are spent online. This solution aims to improve security, so that we can confidently participate, collaborate, and transact in the digital economy,” said Pecson.

While these may sound like ambitious plans for teenagers, Pecson is no stranger to national or global rollouts. This latest product is actually just the culmination of a long series of blockchain-based products, each of which drew national or global attention.

In November 2021, Pecson launched iVote.ph, a blockchain-based voting platform for non-fungible tokens on congressional, presidential, and vice presidential candidates. For this work, he was featured on CNN Philippines.

In May 2022, Pecson created a decentralized blockchain internet core. This innovation, known as BLOXWeb, would allow anyone to surf the internet anonymously and thus safely, which is important in an era when dissidents are tracked down.

In August 2022, Pecson also received numerous certifications from the Blockchain Council, becoming the youngest person in the world to do so. Blockchain Council is one of the most prestigious certifying bodies in the web3 space.

Despite these achievements, Pecson is grounded, perhaps due to how he achieved his success: The young technologist is remarkably self-taught, who learned programming while being home schooled during the pandemic.

“I’m thankful for all of this attention because I can invite more young people to pursue blockchain, web3, and other cutting-edge industries. Together, we can transform the Philippines into a hotbed for technology, so that it can become the country we all dream it can be,” said Pecson.