I’m writing this from my own bed at home, and my legs still think we’re running. This morning we were in Singapore, racing a departure clock to see a statue. Tonight the trip is officially over.
The certificate that says Builder Recognition Award, worth USD 500, is at Rizky’s place, not mine. It’s not the prize we came for. But the days behind it are the best story I’ve collected in years, so before the details blur, I’m writing them down.
This was my first time leaving Indonesia. It was also the first time Mayarin, opens in a new tab, the payment project Rizky, opens in a new tab and I have been building as a two-person team, stood in front of a jury. Both firsts happened at Nanyang Technological University, opens in a new tab, at the NTU CCTF × SNZ InnovateX 2026 finals.
It started with a flight we never boarded.
The Flight We Missed
The plan was simple: fly out Thursday morning, land relaxed, sleep properly, walk into day one fresh.
Rizky’s passport had other plans. It was only ready at noon. We left for Soekarno-Hatta around 3 PM, and you can guess the rest. The flight was gone, and so was the money we’d paid for it.
So my first night of my first trip abroad was spent not abroad at all, but in the capsule pods at Soekarno-Hatta. Rows and rows of them, low and tight, sized for an average body and not a centimeter more. I took photos of everything that night, because even then I knew it would be the opening of whatever I wrote later.
Friday morning we finally flew, and landed at Changi around 11 AM.
Lost Between Changi and NTU
Changi is where I learned that arriving in a country and functioning in it are two different skills.
We had a SimplyGo card, the magic card for Singapore’s MRT and buses. What we didn’t have was enough balance on it. It carried S$5. The MRT from Changi toward Pioneer ate S$2.50, and we tapped onto bus 179 to NTU with the rest.
Then we tapped out at the wrong stop, nowhere near the ARC building we needed. Two guys with luggage and a nearly empty transit card, standing somewhere on a campus road in a country we’d been in for three hours. A 7-Eleven saved us. We topped up the card there, and I have never respected a convenience store more.
You might wonder why we didn’t just drop our bags at a hotel first. Simple: we didn’t have one. Every fair-priced room we found online was gone, and everything left was brutally expensive. That’s the quiet tax of flying in from a country with a weak currency. Numbers that are lunch money to some people are decisions for us.
So we dragged our luggage straight to registration.
We got in around 2 PM, registered as on-site finalists, and spent the afternoon refining Mayarin until about 5 PM. Then came the day’s one piece of good news: Rizky had found a hotel and booked two nights. We went there, took the shower of a lifetime, ate a cheap 7-Eleven dinner, and slept.
Total chaos, start to finish. But that Thursday and Friday are the part of the trip I’ll retell the most. I always learn from mistakes, and these two days were a masterclass.
What We Were Carrying
A quick rewind, because the thing in our laptops is why we were invited at all.
Mayarin is a clearing layer for merchant crypto payments. A coffee shop in Jakarta prices a drink at IDR 36,000, a customer pays with whatever crypto asset they actually hold, and the merchant receives the stablecoin they chose, with the chain and a double-entry ledger agreeing on every step. Merchants accept crypto without becoming crypto companies.
Rizky and I built all of it as a team of two: the contracts, the clearing engine, the dashboard, the SDK, the docs, and a pitch deck built on a rule we’re proud of (no claim goes on a slide without a status and a source).
He handles R&D and core work. I’m a core contributor alongside my day job. The finals gave shortlisted teams three days on campus to polish and present. That’s what we flew in for.
A Room Called B2
Saturday was the grind day, and it had a rhythm I already miss. Wake up, breakfast near Pioneer station, bus 179 to campus, build until late afternoon.
First, the campus itself. NTU is massive. Something like 200 hectares, building after building, to the point where “going to campus” means a bus ride inside the campus. My mind kept comparing it with AMIK, where I studied, and the comparison isn’t even fair.
We worked in Room B2 in the ARC. That room alone was a 180-degree flip from every classroom I’ve sat in. No linear rows facing a whiteboard. Round tables with six chairs each, scattered across a huge space, monitors all around the walls. A room built for people to build together.
The Hive was nearby, the building everyone photographs. We weren’t permitted inside, so I can’t tell you if it deserves the love. I’m the kind of person who only praises what I’ve experienced. The ARC’s design, though, I experienced for two days, and I love it.
The student teams around us were amazing. There was no single conversation that stuck, and honestly that’s the detail I liked most: nobody was networking at each other. Fourteen teams in one room, everyone just building.
One person deserves his own paragraph. Dr. Ray Neiheiser, opens in a new tab ran the event’s Discord, announced everything we needed to know, and personally helped us from the moment we landed, lost, in Singapore. Some people make an event work. He made it welcoming.
From 9 AM to 4 PM we shipped: a full storefront redesign for the demo, API rate limits, wallet withdrawal history, checkout fixes. Then bus, 7-Eleven dinner, sleep. If that sounds repetitive, it was, and it was perfect.
Seven Minutes on Sunday
Demo day started with logistics, not code. We had to check out of the hotel, find somewhere safe to store our luggage, and only then head to campus. The morning slot was for final polish, and the git log remembers ours: we rewired the demo around the Parahyangan storefront and flipped the deck to a light theme at 13:25, which is a very calm thing to commit less than an hour before presenting.
Fourteen teams, seven minutes each, and we drew slot six. That gap was a gift. We watched five teams take questions and mapped what the judges cared about before our turn came.
The panel was four people: two from NTU, two from the industry side, SNZ among them.
Rizky opened with the first slides. Then I took over for the part we’d rehearsed all week: a live payment on stage. A real checkout, priced at IDR 36,000, paid in testnet ETH from a phone wallet, settled in USDC to the merchant, proven on Basescan. There’s no photo of our own seven minutes, and I’ve made my peace with that. Both of us were needed on stage, and every camera we own was busy being a demo device.
Seven minutes is shorter on stage than in rehearsal. The transaction on the Parahyangan store confirmed, the settlement landed, and in the same breath the MC called time. The proof made it. The victory lap didn’t.
Q&A went two ways at once. The judge from SNZ Holding was visibly interested in Mayarin, but a language barrier sat between us, and some of that interest got lost in translation in the most literal sense. The technical questions, like how our price lock works, we handled without trouble.
We walked off glad. Whatever the result, we’d spoken in front of a room of great people, and our product had worked live with the clock running.
Our Name Came First
The results were split into two tracks, Payment and AI, each with first, second, third, Best Student, and a Builder Recognition Award. They were announced from the bottom up.
Which means the first team name read out was ours.
Builder Recognition Award, USD 500. Rizky and I looked at each other with the same question: is this for real? Not disbelief that we got something. Disbelief at the order, because hearing your name first means hearing you didn’t place top three, all in the same second.
I’ll be honest, because this note is nothing if not honest: I think we deserved better. The deck was excellent. The presentation had no problems beyond the seven-minute wall. The product isn’t a slideware idea. It’s running on testnet with settlement you can verify on chain, and the award’s own name recognizes exactly that. We were the builders in the room.
But it is what it is. The teams above us earned their spots, and a jury owes you nothing except their attention, which we fully got. I’m grateful, and a little stung, and both of those are true at once.
The sting didn’t survive the evening, though. Outside at the Innovation Port door we traded cheque photos with PayMaster, the team from Malaysia that took the Best Student award, and it’s hard to stay sour next to people that happy.
Before the night ended we also asked Prof. Wen Yonggang, opens in a new tab of NTU for a photo. When will two guys from Jakarta get that chance again?
What I’m Taking Home
One more honest thing, maybe the most important one in this note.
This trip was about 95% covered by Rizky. I’m at a financial low right now, and there was no version of this trip where I could pay my share. He knew that and booked the flights anyway. I love being honest about this, and I respect his decision more than I can fit in a paragraph. The certificate has no names printed on it. The boarding passes do, and those were an act of friendship.
Our last night in Singapore was in another capsule (his booking too, and an upgrade from the first one), which brings this full circle. My first night of the trip was in a capsule at Soekarno-Hatta because we missed a flight. My last night abroad was in a capsule in Singapore because we finished something. Same-shaped room, completely different sleep.
The final morning was a race in three legs: check out, get to the Merlion (which the two of us had been calling the Famous Lion Water all weekend, and I refuse to stop now), then beat the clock back to Changi for the 11 AM flight. The lion got its photo, mid-spout, sweat not pictured, and we made the plane with nothing to spare.
Landing at Soekarno-Hatta felt nothing like leaving it. No capsules this time. I went straight to the Damri counter, took the bus to Pakupatan Terminal, the one near my house, and let the last leg of the trip be the shortest one. When Universitas Bina Bangsa slid past the bus window, I knew home was minutes away.
As for the USD 500, we haven’t actually talked about splitting it yet, and I’m in no hurry to start that conversation. Remember who paid for this trip. What I carried home myself is one simple conclusion: I’m thankful I got to experience all of it. The getting lost, the boxes we slept in, the seven minutes on stage. All of it.
Mayarin is coming home too, with a controlled merchant pilot as the next step. The jury’s verdict was one data point. The transaction confirming on stage was another. I know which one I’m building on.