Duolingo’s Luis von Ahn Wants to Delete the Blockchain

Luis von Ahn could have retired to a beach somewhere years ago. Best known as the CEO of the learning app Duolingo, von Ahn in the early 2000s invented the captcha, those infuriating online tests that force people to prove they’re not robots. But after selling his creation to Google in 2009, von Ahn didn’t waste any time launching his next venture: a company borne of his experience growing up in Guatemala, one that’s now among the most prominent education platforms in the world.

Von Ahn’s mom, a doctor, spent all of her extra income to send him to private school, exposing von Ahn to learning opportunities that most local kids never saw. That, in turn, shaped his view of education in stark terms. Not as a great equalizer for society but as a force that often reinforces inequality unless someone intervenes. It is, as he ...