Meet the Startups in OWC’s Batch II: Accelerating Web 3.0 Adoption

At NEAR, we are continuously excited at the prospect of championing and uplifting promising founders (it’s the reason we created OWC!). As a protocol-agnostic collective, user-centric and metric-driven experimentation are at the core of what we do. By bringing together the right resources, VCs, and seasoned advisors, we help founders de-risk, focus, and accelerate.

Since Batch 1, our nine startups 1inch Exchange, Arterra, Snowball Money, Leaf Global Fintech, BoxScore, Snark Art, Upshot, Brink Exchange, and OP Games have become an integral part of the web 3.0 ecosystem.

1inchExchange is now the 2nd most used application in DeFi (source: ETH Gas Station). 1inch has now exchanged over $9 billion (USD) in crypto-assets and completed over 700k (USD) in total swaps. In December 2020, 1inch distributed over 90 million governance tokens to their users, liquidity providers, and community, which further decentralizes the application.

SnowSwap is an automated market maker and decentralized exchange for yield-bearing liquidity provider token swaps. As of February 4, 2021, SnowSwap’s total value locked exceeded $1.5 million (USD). Among the novel financial instruments introduced by SnowSwap is the eth2SNOW pool designed to incentivize Eth2 adoption. The eth2SNOW pool allows users to enter, exit, and swap between popular eth2 staking services with low slippage.

Leaf Global Fintech relaunched its Leaf Wallet in September 2020. Since then, the company has helped over 1,410 refugees in Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda gain access to digital financial services. As of December 2020, Leaf has successfully completed over 5,600 transactions worth $32,595 (USD).

We’re excited to announce Batch 2, now focused on three innovation areas, to meet the stages and target markets of our builders.

The Decentralized Revolution Continues — Batch II

Meet our Open Web Builders

Open web teams are builders focused on mission-critical infrastructure for the open web such as privacy, accessibility, data management, and identity.

Nym is building the next generation of privacy infrastructure for Web3. Fear of big tech, privacy, and data intrusion is driving consumers to adopt a privacy cautious attitude. The Nym mixnet is fully decentralized, with no trusted third parties such as a VPN. NYM supports a high volume of service and low latency through network incentives.

Verida is developing the future of decentralized data. Verida enables developers to build web & mobile apps where users own their data. Their library provides a decentralized single sign-on, data sharing, and profile management that fully integrates with the Verida Vault.

Ver/id/a = Verified, Identity, Data

Sarcophagus is a general-purpose decentralized dead man’s switch built on ethereum and Arweave. It is triggered if the human operator becomes incapacitated due to death, loss of consciousness, or being physically removed from control. Use cases include but are not limited to wills and trusts, password recovery, credential passdown, political activism, key material backup, and emergency communication.

Meet our Open Finance Builders

Open finance teams are pioneers emerging from stealth mode and challenging traditional finance. The future of fintech is interoperable, user-centric, transparent, and accessible to everyone.

Kamix helps the African diaspora send remittances to family for free. Currently operating in Cameroon, they will soon launch in Nigeria.

Heo Finance is the 1st stablecoin-powered crowdfunding platform that pays out rewards to donors. Each donation results in daily farming of tokens that allows donors to receive 2X to 10X of their donation in return.

Meet our DApp Builders

DApps are the next generation of apps; promising the convenience we’ve come to expect from traditional applications with new key features that create trustless environments, lower barriers to services, and develop open markets with liquidity.

Vezt is the 1st mobile app where music fans can share royalty rights for songs & recordings. You can buy royalty rights for artists such as Maluma, Panic! At The Disco, and Blond Don.

PESA is creating a decentralized carrier that transforms voice, cellular, and wifi networks into tradable resources. Currently, Pesa has a partnership with 37 airlines for in-flight internet and serves more than 68 million hotspots.

Hash Rush, is an online sci-fi/fantasy RTS “Play-to-Earn” blockchain-enabled game. VZ studio will transition to a platform-as-a-service in the future, allowing game developers a suite of tools to create in-game economies using blockchain.

Mintgate is turning any online content into exclusive rewards. Mintgate’s token economy incentivizes early followers to use their network and resources to support a community or a creator, and then redistributes the added-value back to the backers.

Paras lets you create, trade, and collect digital art cards on NEAR Protocol. Since its release in December 2020, Paras has managed to release 472 minted cards with a trading volume of 16000 NEAR.

Partner & Mentor Spotlight

A heartfelt thank you to our mentors, guest speakers, and advisors who are an essential part of our culture. By freely sharing their wisdom & guidance, they impact the ecosystem and create real, lasting relationships and results for our founders.

Maria Shen, Jesse Walden, Kartik Talwar, Tara Tan, Jonathan Kol, Jake Brukhman, Ivan Bogatty, Evan Feng, Tom Serres, James Zhang, Joyce Yang, Jocy Lin, Damir Bandalo, Pantera Capital, GreenField One, Brex, CoinFund, Bollinger Investment Group, AdColony

Congratulations to our finalists. Stay tuned for more updates from the teams!

Every Tuesday, we invite builders, investors, and entrepreneurs to share experiences, knowledge, and opinions on our podcast and YouTube.

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