These Are The Winners Of The 2016 Blockchain Startup Contest

80 blockchain-focused startups from 29 different countries took part in the Graz-based Blockchain Startup Contest, with representatives from the top 20 entries invited to present their projects at a demo day held on Monday, November 28th. An international jury of five blockchain experts then awarded two winners and three runner-ups. The winners were chosen on the basis of the criteria timing, team, concept and business model, with social impact being an additional important assessment point.

Jury members: Shermin Voshmgir (BlockchainHub Berlin), Aaron van Wirdum (Bitcoin Magazine), Ralph Pichler (Ethereum Vienna), Johannes Grill (Bitcoin Austria) and Bernhard Weber (University of Graz).

The following teams received their rewards from the sponsors which were transferred in either Bitcoin or Ether to their crypto currency accounts live on stage:

Winners – 5.000 € each, transferred in Ether:

• Etherisc from London are working on a decentralized insurance solution based on Blockchain technology. The first operational application was a fully automated flight delay insurance that directly accesses passenger data and automatically pays compensation in case of a delay. The award was handed over by Mag. Kerber from Steiermärkische Sparkasse and Mag. Niederländer from Erste Group Bank AG.
• Status from Singapur, an Ethereum browser for mobile phones combining messaging, payments and DApp. The transaction was conducted by Mag. Thomas Wiedner from Energie Steiermark.

Runner-ups – 1.670 € each, transferred in Bitcoin:

• Bernstein from Munich, making it possible to anonymously document the development history of intellectual properties in terms of both content and time. This allows, for example, to prove the development history of an invention in case of a patent application. This award was transferred by Mag. Grossek from eCounting.
• Minebox from Austria, a decentralized and safe cloud solution in which others’ memory capacities can be used for own backups and own capacities can be offered to others. The accounting is automatically done in the background. This award was handed over by Ms. Langerwisch from eCounting.
• Helperbit from Italy, who are creating a decentralized donation and insurance platform that automatically pays donations and insurance claims based on data from earthquakes or other disasters. This award was transferred by Dr. Kappe from Kapa Ventures.

„We were eager to support this contest, because it is clear for us, that Blockchain technology has a huge potential for the peer-2-peer energy trade. Being an innovative and strong company we want to make sure that we evaluate the chances and possibilities of the blockchain technology in the interest of our company and our customers”, says DI Christian Purrer, Speaker of the Board at Energie Steiermark.

„As a bank, when we approach the blockchain issue, we do so from the vantage point of finding concrete responses to our clients’ needs and raising customer satisfaction with regard to the speed and availability of digital services,” says Petia Niederländer, Head of Retail and Corporate Operations at Erste Group and one of the banking group’s blockchain experts. “As one of the sponsors of the Blockchain Startup Contest, Erste Group is particularly pleased to the fact that all of the many interesting submissions for this competition have a similarly strong focus on the customer.”

Beside Energie Steiermark, Erste Group and Steiermärkische Sparkasse the contest was sponsored by Kapa Ventures and eCounting. Further, there was generous support from the City of Graz and every party had high interest in this general purpose technology competition’s inaugural edition.

Thomas Zeinzinger, the founder of BlockchainHub Graz and one of the organizers of the Blockchain Startup Contest, also appreciated the Austrian participation in the competition: “We were, of course, very excited to receive submissions from all over the world. But we are also particularly proud to see some very interesting ideas from the Austrian participants in the competition. The level of real world applications was very high and we will continue our work to raise the bar for useful Blockchain applications even further.”

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