æternity Ventures Starfleet programme reveals blockchain startups shortlist

Sofia, Bulgaria. 13th March 2019 – æternity Ventures, the investment arm of decentralised smart contracts platform æternity, has today announced their startup selection for the next round of Starfleet Accelerator. Following the success of the first accelerator programme in June 2018, where over $1 million was invested in nine blockchain teams, this year they have invited 14 innovative teams from all over the world to join them during Genesis Week. 

Commencing 11th March, Genesis Week, taking place in Sofia, Bulgaria, will see the 14 teams undergo mentoring in areas such as business models, token economics, æternity apps architecture, blockchain infrastructure and tooling, pitching to investors, and media relations from recognised experts.

Particularly encouraging is that applications from blockchain startups from Africa have doubled since the first programme, a testament to the hard work of the æternity Africa Hub raising awareness via hackathons, meetups and collaborations. This time the African continent will be represented by team CapAgri from Kenya, who are aiming to provide advances to small holder farmers based on future payments on agricultural produce – a mobile solution targeting African agricultural markets.

Starfleet have welcomed their first successful applicant from South America – Instatrust, the Venezuelan startup who plans to launch a multi purpose P2P exchange. It protects parties involved in a trade from fraud through a smart contract.

Germany is establishing itself as a hub of blockchain innovation with four finalists stemming from the European country – these include HeyTax, who aims to ease taxes on cryptocurrencies by creating a solid legal framework for all cryptocurrencies; Abend – an open community governed ticketing platform. They provide platform for organisers around the world to start a ticket sale with different kind of tokens. Blockchain Fashion Project – a community of fashion designers, professionals and customers curating a tokenized product selection to validate, improve and sell products. Last but not least, Inupesa – a hosted wallet service for people without internet access in developing countries. 

The Balkans have also been represented with innovative blockchain ideas from Croatia – Cryptotask, as decentralised task-oriented platform for the freelancing market, Cyprus based Excal Technologies who has designed a blockchain e-commerce platform that unites small retailers with the unemployed youth and Serbian based Crypto Legends, a blockchain-based card game where you can own your own heroes independently from developers.

Other projects invited to Starfleet include Nyctale, a French-based startup with data science tools to monitor distributed ledger technologies, analysing crypto-assets and token usage; Aenomaly a UK startup aiming to improve the quality of search results for the education sector and for general internet users; Say from Iran that enables donors to improve the lives of children across the world with micro-donations from their phones. Blintech from Spain who has developed a game aiming to teach the language of æternity and finally, 214 Alpha from USA who has built an all-inclusive identity/commerce/governance framework for customers to keep their money and affairs in order utilising a multi-functional, pre-integrated mobile app. 

The teams who successfully complete Genesis Week will then be invited to proceed to the Acceleration Stage — a four-week programme of mentorships and further training. The culmination of the programme takes place on 11th April 2019 at Starfleet Demo Day, where the teams will have the opportunity to present their projects to an audience of investors, thought leaders, media, and the global community of æternity and secure funding of up to $100,000 in AE tokens. 

Nikola Stojanow, æternity’s CBDO and æternity Ventures’ CEO, says: “The Starfleet Accelerator Programme demonstrates that, contrary to some of the bearish headlines about investments in the blockchain space, funding is available for the most promising and hard working startup projects. We have received applications from around the world and have 14 startups from USA, Europe, Africa and South America competing for funding that will help us collectively establish aeternity as the leading global smart contract platform where blockchain startups flourish.”