ONTOCHAIN Open Call 1: Apply for up to €123k of funding for your idea or project!
The EU-funded project ONTOCHAIN has reserved €4.2 Million euros of funding to develop a new ecosystem for trusted, traceable, and transparent ontological knowledge management. With iExec, OntOchain will fund innovative projects and applications that could play a role in this ecosystem.
For open call #1, up to 18 project proposals will be selected to receive the first funding award. The goal of these proposals is to provide functional and technical specifications illustrating how your project can bring value to the ONTOCHAIN framework.
Selected projects will receive up to €123k (for Open Call #1), with free access to infrastructure, coaching and technical support.
Over the course of the 7-month program (of open call #1), participants will receive up to €123k (equity-free funding), with technical support for the iExec platform.
How does it work?
In the first phase of the program the 18 selected projects will start by conceptualizing a research project for one of the following topics:
- Applications
- Semantic interoperability
- On-chain data management
- Off-chain knowledge management
- Ecosystem economy
- Ecosystem scalability and integration
Funding is provided for each phase of Call #1. Six of the 18 projects will proceed to the second phase, receiving further funding to elaborate on their proposal made in Phase 1. Phase 2 will prepare design specifications to be implemented. In addition, the best projects will be awarded for the publication of their outcomes.
Learn more about the open call and each phase of the process below:
Apply before 15 January 2021(17:00) CET via the F6S platform.
ONTOCHAIN funding — the timeline:
The trusted knowledge ecosystem will be built by a large, open body of European stakeholders, supported by the OntoChain consortium partners. The project will follow agile software development methods and invite eligible members of European countries to contribute to specific tasks via three successive open calls (further divided into two to three phases):
- Call #1: Research stakeholders from different vertical sectors will be invited to produce research proposals with functional and technical specifications for the framework. Call #1 is broken down into phases (more information on the open call 1 timeline can be found here).
- Call #2: Foundations on year two experts and enthusiasts will be invited to build components of the OntoChain framework, guided by real use-cases and results produced during the first year.
- Call #3: Application & Experimentation building on results from the first two calls, practitioners will be invited to implement real-world technical solutions and business applications contributing to a sustainable and democratic ecosystem.
Free infrastructure and support for iExec and other technical stacks:
In contributing to the scope of OntoChain, applicants will be encouraged to use and extend existing software solutions from various OntoChain partners, including those from iExec. During the process, iExec will offer its decentralized platform and products to the NGI community and will provide support for improving them and integrating them in the OntoChain ecosystem. This includes the iExec decentralized cloud marketplace (a perfect example of a platform where providers are rewarded fairly for their contributions); the iExec Data Wallet and trusted computing solutions, which can be used to monetize datasets while maintaining ownership; and the Proof-of-Contribution (PoCo) consensus protocol that keeps full data provenance and traceability of how data is used in a competitive network.
Other examples of what can be done with the iExec technical stack include Decentralized & Trusted Oracles, Trusted executions (TEE) and Confidential Computing, Privacy-preserving applications, GPU applications, Tokenization & monetization of assets (NFTs), Support for ENS (Ethereum Name Service) and much more!
“Today, digital life is an extension of our physical world and demands the same critical, moral and ethical thinking. By bringing ONTOCHAIN to you and building it with you we expect to contribute to a more distributed and transparent internet that respects and promotes the fundamental values of diversity, equality, privacy and participation.”
— Caroline Barelle, ONTOCHAIN Coordinator.
About ONTOCHAIN
ONTOCHAIN and the €6 M fund marries the Semantic Web with Blockchain to deliver a new software ecosystem for trusted, traceable and transparent ontological knowledge management. ONTOCHAIN, is developed under the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet initiative. It is a software ecosystem aiming to deliver novel interoperable on-chain and off-chain data, ontology, knowledge and information management methods. The project is operated by 7 partners with complementary expertise that form the core of a vibrant ecosystem: European Dynamics (Luxembourg), University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), IntelliSemantic (Italy), iExec Blockchain Tech (France), Athens University of Economics and Business (Greece), German Hellenic Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Greece) and F6S (Ireland).
About iExec:
iExec has developed the first decentralized marketplace for cloud computing resources. Blockchain is used to organize a market network where users can monetize their computing power, applications, and datasets. By providing on-demand access to cloud computing resources, iExec supports compute-intensive applications in fields such as AI, big data, healthcare, rendering, or FinTech. Anyone can be rewarded in RLC tokens for contributing resources to the network.
One of the main strengths of iExec lies in trusted off-chain computing. In partnership with Intel, iExec has released the first-ever ‘trusted compute’ solution for blockchain (TEE using Intel SGX). iExec is working with various organizations and consortiums with the goal of providing scalable, secure and easy access to the services, datasets, and computing resources.
— Acknowledgment:
ONTOCHAIN has received funding from the European Union’s H2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement no. 957338
https://ontochain.ngi.eu/apply
Apply before 15 January 2021(17:00) CET via the F6S platform.
💡 Want to learn more about iExec? Check out iExec Academy!
iExec Academy aggregates all content related to the project. You’ll find articles, tech documentation, videos, interactive demos, and much more! Whether you are a beginner or an expert, a developer or crypto-enthusiast, you’ll find what you are looking for on iExec Academy!
