Meet the 10 Startups of ConsenSys’ Tachyon 2019: Ethereum Accelerator
From biotech to saving private keys, Tachyon Accelerator presents an exciting second cohort in 2019. Learn more about the 10 for-profit, open source, and social impact startups.
Tachyon is a 10-week accelerator program by ConsenSys Ventures that takes early-stage blockchain projects from idea to viable MVP. The second iteration of the Tachyon Accelerator kickstarted on April 1st, 2019, at the Bundestag in Berlin, Germany.
10 companies from around the world focused on building new solutions and platforms ranging from data privacy and identity, advanced encryption, healthcare, AI & IoT solutions, decentralized finance, micro-insurance, and other sectors, were selected from applicants from around the world. They will now have the chance to bring their blockchain-based projects to production with the help of the industry’s leading experts.
Alexander Kulitz (FDP) MP discusses the importance of accelerator programs like #Tachyon19 to support entrepreneurship in Germany.
“The best support a government can give to innovative entrepreneurs and start-ups is to avoid unnecessary and unneeded regulations. It is not up to the politicians to decide if a product or an entrepreneurial idea should be successful or not. The decision has to be made by the demand of the people on free economic markets.”
- Alexander Kulitz, (FDP) MP.
We’ve made a giant leap from an endless barrage of “blockchain startups” to for-profit companies utilizing distributed ledger technology. The stark difference between the age of token fever and today is a more sophisticated understanding of the constraints of current decentralized software, and a knowledge of how to build within these constraints. Many founders of this year’s Tachyon startup cohort have been working on solutions to common issues within their industries and came to use Ethereum as a purely technical component to issues they were trying to solve. These companies have chosen to let blockchain happen in the background while focusing on the big picture: building appropriate solutions to real-world problems.
Here are the 10 projects kicking off the 2019 ConsenSys Tachyon Accelerator program…
Genomes.io — London, UK
As DNA and ancestry kits gain popularity, it is time to examine what happens to that data. As it currently stands, users pay a small fee, submit their saliva to privately held companies who then provide direct-to-consumer genetic testing. On the back end, these private companies sell aggregate consumer data to pharmaceutical companies for medical research purposes.
Who keeps the value? Centralized companies retain the value of the data.
The founder of the Genomes project had already been working on a genome sequencing database project, offering secure and private DNA sequencing. When looking to create a trusted platform between data owners and research organizations, the company chose Ethereum blockchain technology. Genomes.io creates a DNA data bank that allows users to query and share segments of their genome using a repeat consent model. Utilizing blockchain and encryption technologies, Genomes creates a storage and sharing solution that brings together individuals (data owners) and research organizations (data buyers) to power a more equitable move towards personalized medicine. Data owners can then head to the marketplace to sell their data to researchers, and realize the full value of their data.
Blok-Z — Ankara, Turkey
Blok-Z offers a blockchain-based solution to the energy market by bringing together producers, suppliers, and consumers to trade on a peer-to-peer (P2P) platform. Addressing four of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, (7, 11, 12, 13), Blok-Z aims to connect people without access to electricity to distributed energy resources and allow local peer-to-peer energy trading over short distances.
Peer-to-peer energy trading provides multiple benefits for consumers. P2P energy produces greater energy efficiency as well as cost-savings for consumers. It also incentivizes battery storage and because consumers who are able to sell their excess energy. With greater adoption of localized energy from P2P energy providers, the grid avoids extreme energy demands that result in peak pricing models.
IBISA — Luxembourg, Luxembourg
(Inclusive Blockchain Insurance using Space Assets)
There are 500 million small scale farmers in the world that supply food for 2 billion people. Even with their vital importance and core functionality for society, agricultural insurance is difficult to access for small-scale farmers. In the event of natural disaster, small scale farmers are left unprotected. IBISA is a risk-sharing service — an alternative to micro-insurance — targeting small farmers worldwide. IBISA is based on a peer-to-peer architecture supported by blockchain technology and satellite technology to reduce costs typically incurred by traditional insurer-centric paradigms.
Through satellite technology, IBISA is able to build a risk model from the wealth of data and assess incidents before a file is claimed. This real-time data-first approach leads to faster payouts and a more attractive compensation model for farmers who contributed to the scheme via regular micropayments.
Glimpse — Bristol, United Kingdom
Your data was stolen a lot in 2018. Without our attention to the designs of metadata storage, data will continue to be stolen in the future, as it continues to be the most valuable asset.
Protecting user data while finding new models for businesses to ethically and legally obtain user data is unquestionably a challenge worth solving.
After working in the UK military for Signet, the three Glimpse co-founders deeply understood the extent to which our data and communications are not our own.
Glimpse is a protocol for self-sovereign identity set on separating the ‘who you are’ and the ‘what you do’ parts of identity. The Glimpse protocol provides a trusted intermediary between consumers and businesses, ensuring data never leaves the user’s handset. Its first use case is in online advertising.
Sensor.link — Brussels, Belgium
The increasing reliance on artificial intelligence and machine learning for everyday personal and business tasks presents new challenges. The data used by these algorithms must be secure and reliable; otherwise, the decisions made from artificial intelligence becomes useless. Often times various software and data providers are used to create a machine learning algorithm or AI solution. When a problem arises, there needs to be a solution to provide evidence of what went wrong and which entities are responsible.
Sensor.link is developing a blockchain-based software architecture that will allow companies working in smart sensing technologies to provide guaranteed auditability to their end users. Their solution leverages blockchain to anonymously store proofs of authenticity of sensor data and easily retrievable machine learning binaries in case of litigation (at low cost).
LawCoin — Philadelphia, United States
Like nearly all other industries, capital lies beneath the foundations of American law. The U.S. legal industry is immense, with the total annual estimated value of settlements and verdicts ranging from $200 billion to greater than $600 billion — this latter figure exceeds the GDP of Sweden, by comparison.
The founders of LawCoin stumbled upon Ethereum as a technical solution for a long-time problem that they’ve been trying to solve: trusted crowdsource funding for litigation. LawCoin is the premiere blockchain crowdfunding platform that helps litigants raise money for legal action and social justice causes.
LawCoin is a litigation finance investment platform for investing and trading in shares of lawsuits. LawCoin issues security tokens representing equity interests in litigation. The tokens are regulatory compliant and tradable on LawCoin and ERC-20 platforms. LawCoin provides needed liquidity for the rapidly growing litigation finance market.
Cypherock — New Delhi, India
Your recovery phrases deserve the same security as your private keys. Cypherock creates security storage solutions for blockchain based digital assets and private keys. The company is working on a patent-pending product which safeguards your crypto assets. Cypherock sets up a personal distributed network of hardware devices (chip-embedded cards) among your very own trusted network of people. The various cards contain the split recovery phrase for the private key. Crypto wallet users need not to write their recovery phrases on a piece of paper. Cypher rock provides a physical-digital solution for the safe custody of crypto assets so that you never lose your coins.
Ether.cards — Singapore
The key to mass adoption of cryptocurrency is through an easy onboarding experience with non-technical users in mind. Ether.Cards make cryptocurrencies physical. Corporate companies can distribute customized printed cards to users without any additional onboarding complexity. The Ether.Cards team is working to include chip-embedded cards with increased privacy and programmability in the near future. Ether.Cards has its eye’s set onto the much larger markets of non-fungible tokens (NFT’s), and gaming by near-field communication (NFC) based integration through white-labeled mobile applications.
Sooho — Seoul, South Korea
Sooho is a smart contract and transaction security firm based out of South Korea. The team is working on a prototype that will allow an automated/API-based smart contract audit and patching platform. The platform will enable continuous secure development of an anti-fraud and AML compliance module that analyzes suspicious transaction activity. The module’s focused analysis can monitor malicious wallets or audit smart contracts and recommend patches to fix problems. By continuously searching for issues, the module is able to identify flaws in a codebase earlier which can save money and time.
LinkDrop Protocol — St. Petersburg, Russia
Linkdrop Protocol is the first technology that enables users or dapps to send digital assets to receivers through URLs without knowing their address in advance. The user feedback shows that onboarding non-crypto users via web2 inspired invite/referral links is a valuable use case for the entire dapp ecosystem.
A tachyon is a theoretical particle that travels faster than light. It’s a fitting name for this program, as the sophomore cohort candidates accelerate to solve real-world issues at speeds much faster than the speed of most startups’ developmental cycle.
Applicants can apply to the next Tachyon program at http://tachyoncv.vc/.
About ConsenSys Ventures
Lead by Kavita Gupta, ConsenSys Ventures is the external investment arm of ConsenSys that invests in pre-seed and seed stage Ethereum projects across the Web 3.0 stack.
Sector and geography agnostic, ConsenSys Ventures is building a circular economy where companies feed into one another while supporting the broader Ethereum ecosystem. ConsenSys Ventures aims to tie the existing Web 2.0 to the emerging Web 3.0 stack. For more information, please visit:
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