Cambridge, Oxford and London Future of Blockchain Launch Week — November 2018
Last week, we at StakeZero Ventures were delighted to launch the Future of Blockchain competition in Cambridge (Weds 21st Nov), Oxford (Thurs 22nd Nov) and London (Fri 23rd Nov) with great success.
As a reminder, the Future of Blockchain is a 3 month competition taking place at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial, LSE, UCL or KCL to build something amazing involving blockchain. It can either be their own idea or an answer to a solution set by one of eight Challenge Partners, who are leading blockchain companies. What’s more, there are over £70k in cash prizes that could be won (read more about the concept here).
The eight Challenge Partners that joined us on the launch trip were Gnosis (Mareen Gläske, Alexander Hermann), Kyber Network(Anton Buenavista), Liquidity Network (Patricia Bentley, Thibault Meunier), MakerDAO (Jessica Salomon), NuCypher (Michael Egorov), Santiment (Valentin Mihov, Maria Pennanen, Ivan Ivanov, Nemanja Cerovac), ThunderCore (Gengmo Qi), Zilliqa (Saiba Kataruka, Amrit Kumar)
The event structure was simple: in each university city the Challenge Partners gave a presentation about their company and their challenge. After the presentations, the companies each had a booth to talk to university members directly over some food and drink.
Cambridge
On Wednesday 21st November at Cambridge, we were hosted by the Cambridge Blockchain Society at the Judge Business School. We were also co-hosted by the Cambridge University Technology and Enterprise Club, Hackbridge, Cambridge University Entrepreneurship Society and the Cambridge Blockchain Hub.
Oxford
On Thursday 22nd November at Oxford, we were hosted by the Oxford Blockchain Society at the Maths Institute (Andrew Wiles Building). We were also co-hosted by the Oxford Entrepreneurship Society, Oxford Women in Computer Science Society and the Oxford Fintech and Smart Law Society.
London — Imperial, LSE, UCL, KCL
On Friday 23rd November in London, we were hosted at the biggest auditorium of the famous Bush House on the Strand by KCL Blockchain Society. We were co-hosted by LSE Entrepreneurship Society, Imperial Computing Society, Imperial Entrepreneurship Society and UCL Entrepreneurship Society.
At each event, we were impressed by the calibre and enthusiasm of attendees — both in their turnout and the sophistication of their questions to Challenge Partners.
What’s next for the competition?
Applications are now open to enter the competition via this link. Applications closed on Sunday 9th December.
Participants will be told whether they are successful by Sunday 16th December.
Participants then have till Sunday 10th March to build their project, aided by workshops taking place in each of Cambridge, Oxford and London between January and March.
The best projects will be chosen for a demo day on Monday 25th March in front of a panel of leadings VCs.
Concluding Remarks
The week was an intense but rewarding one - we felt honoured and grateful that our Challenge Partners travelled from Asia, North America and Europe to join us at the launch events. We are also very grateful to the societies and universities which hosted and helped us along the way.
We now look forward to some fantastic entries to the competition.
For any questions, email us at anthony@stakezero.com
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