Yoooo I'm Rexan, a 17-year-old high schooler & entrepreneur from Hong Kong who can build blockchain, iOS, and full-stack web apps.
• Created text-behind-image, a free design tool with 100K users and #1 on Product Hunt
• Created my startup videofast.gg - #2 Product of the Day on Product Hunt, 1.6k users
• Won international hackathons, eg. Apple Swift Student Challenge, ETHGlobal Online + more
• 7k followers on X/Twitter
• Ambassador @ Thirdweb
• Senior @ Hong Kong International School
• Huge football fan (🇾🇪 #GGMU)
Currently building
Text Behind Image
Create text-behind-image designs easily
Creating stunning text-behind-image designs are difficult and there's not many easy-to-use tools online that helps you do that. So I built my own free tool, in 3 hours with AI tools such as cursor.sh, that helps you create these stunning text-behind-image designs easily on your images. Since launching, the tool has gotten 100K users, 3 million views on X/Twitter, #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt, and notable shoutouts from people like Ryan Hoover, the founder of Product Hunt.
VideoFast (videofast.gg)
A super easy to use online video editor
I've started building VideoFast since the beginning of 2024, while working on schoolwork at the same time. From iterating and constantly improving the design and the usability of the video editor, it has evolved into the easiest video editor that you will ever use. Currently, VideoFast has got the #2 Product of the Day on Product Hunt and has over 500 regular users using the editor.
Awards
Gold medalist award
The HKBCOL is a blockchain solution design competition where teams from all secondary schools from Hong Kong compete to pitch and present their blockchain solution to industry leading judges. I was awarded the gold medal (first place) for my project Proof of Workout Protocol and selected to represent Hong Kong at the International Blockchain Olympiad in the Netherlands.
ETHGlobal Online
Top 10 Finalistis (Winning team) + Mantle Best UX Award
ETHOnline is a three week long online hackathon with over $200,000 USD in prizes as well as a series of curated summits, celebrating some of the most significant happenings & learnings from the past 12 months in web3. The hackathon is focused on building Ethereum based applications with different bounties' tools and technologies. I built Koinu, an npm library that allows developers to include a cross chain experience within their dapps. This project was selected as a finalist project, along with 9 other finalist projects, out of 500 projects. Being the only under-18 to win the competition, and competiting against the best and most hardcore developers in the Web3 space, out of 515 projects, I learnt a lot more about Web3 and blockchain development during the course of the hackathon and it encouraged me to build blockchain applications more : the fact that I could compete, as a 15 year old, at the time, against the top developers of the Web3 space, and win, I am looking forward to build more applications for everyday users of Web3
Winner of the IYKYK Linea Edition
Consensys, one of the biggest blockchain companies, hosted NAVH: Not Another Virtual Hackathon beginning July 6th, 2023, for technical and non-technical builders to bring their skills to the table. Builders from anywhere in the world can join to compete for over $115,500 in bounties, using Cosensys products to build something. I built Proof of Workout Protocol : a dApp on Linea (a blockchain developed by leading blockchain company Cosensys) designed to motivate and reward physical fitness through a gamified system of quests and token-based incentive.
1st Place
Developer DAO, the biggest Web3 Developer Organisation, and Mina Protocol, a zero knowledge based blockchain with a market cap of $800 million USD, ran a week-long, remote hackathon with ~ $10,000 in prizes to be won in USDC, Mina Token and CODE. The hackathon is focused on building zero-knowledge applications on Mina Protocol with SnarkyJS. I built a privacy-focused decentralized zkApp that aims to enable anonymous and secure protests where participants can join and support various causes while preserving their privacy. This hackathon was the most hardcore hackathon I've participated in : joining the hackathon, knowing very little about zero-knowledge (zk) technology, let alone building zk technology. Throughout the process, I had to dive deep and learn all these new concepts while building my zkApp. In the end, my project won first place in the hackathon, out of 40 other projects, and this victory provoked me to go further deeper into this tough concept of zero knowledge technology.
ETHGlobal Waterloo
Best Use of Metamask SDK
ETHGlobal Waterloo is a 24hr long In person hackathon at Waterloo, CA, with over $200,000 USD in prizes as well as a series of curated summits, celebrating some of the most significant happenings & learnings from the past 12 months in web3. The hackathon is focused on building Ethereum based applications with different bounties' tools and technologies. The entire hackathon was an amazing learning process to me, especially for learning more about blockchain development - throughout the entire hackathon, I had many chances to talk face to face with top leaders and developers in the Web3 space - all these people, all the other teams, together in one big room in the town of Waterloo, building and sharing a passion together. An even bigger impact personally was being able to travel all the way from where I live, Hong Kong, all the way to Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and hack along with two University of Waterloo students, herby gaining exposure to university life and working as a development team. We built a Video-sharing platform powered by ERC-6551 tokenbound-accounts, empowering the content creator economy through advertisers' staking in smart contracts.
WWDC23 Scholar
The Swift Student Challenge at WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) is an annual competition organized by Apple to celebrate the ingenuity and expertise of student developers using Swift. Apple picks around 300 applications out of a pool of more than 10,000+ applicants to win, and I was one of the 300 applicants to win the challenge. I built an iOS app/game that challenges users to find an image of a random word generated by the app in their photo album, then used machine learning models to verify that the image being selected matches the random word.
Notable Shoutouts
Ryan Hoover, founder of Product Hunt:
Steven Tey, former developer advocate at Vercel:
Education
Hong Kong International School
High school, currently a senior
Christian Alliance International School