Good morning readers, I hope you had a great weekend.

Let us keep today’s newsletter brief, I do not want to add a burden to your Monday mornings. Crypto markets are performing better than in many past weeks so there is that to be chirpy about at least.

That and the fact that National Payments Corporation of India is looking to hire AI and Blockchain engineers in full-time, part-time or consulting roles should cheer us up.

NPCI is a not-for-profit organisation established by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Indian Banks Association to create and operate robust retail payments and settlement infrastructure in India. NPCI's services portfolio includes BharatQR, BHIM, IMPS, UPI, and RuPay among others.

NPCI has been silently hiring and building a team of blockchain experts for a while now. In December 2021, NPCI opened to hire a mid-senior level Blockchain specialist in Hyderabad, a role that seems to have been taken up by Sudeep Chaudhary, who is now the head - India Blockchain.

In December 2021, the Ministry of Engineering and Information Technology (MeitY) released a paper “National Strategy on Blockchain”. This document illustrates what the India Blockchain stack will be like in the future and how different gov and non-gov bodies will benefit from blockchain or distributed ledger technology.

India is taking a lead on Blockchain (not crypto) side. Official records show India already has four blockchains live

• Certificate Chain

• Document Chain

• Property Chain

• Logistics Chain

Each chain currently live with one-two participant digitising their records on the Government blockchains.

Moreover, there are 6 proof of concepts being worked on by the government

• Assam - Land Records

• Manipur - Higher Secondary MarksCard

• Blood Bank

• Remote Voting POC for ECI

• GST Chain

• Public Distribution System

NPCI predominantly focuses on payment systems, so the above chains are not really their domain. RBI has been planning to roll out its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) for some time now. Since NPCI specialises in retail transactions and settlements, it could play a key role in CBDC development and deployment.

Nevertheless, if you are an aspiring blockchain or AI expert, perhaps, this is the time to apply. As per the notice above, send your CVs to devesh.pillai@npci.org.in

This week, we will actually go deeper into learning what is happening in the Indian Blockchain space and how are different government bodies involved. If you’re reading this and not subscribed, this might be a good time to do so.

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If you’re in the mood to do some more reading, here you go:

• India's Reserve Bank Declares List of Unauthorised Forex Trading Platforms.

• Ethereum Merge is here, what exactly is it?

• Scammer Story: How one innocent P2P trader got roped into a ~12 Lakh INR scam.

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