On the 12th of April, BlockStart project has joined forces with Blockchain Lithuania and BCCS Cluster to organize a hybrid event for BlockStart community globally and the blockchain community in Lithuania: “Meet & Greet – Trends in Blockchain Adoption”.
The goal was to discuss the current state and future trends of blockchain adoption, discover how blockchain can help to solve some of the most pressing issues the world is facing today, including sustainability and disaster relief, and get to know the main highlights of BlockStart’s programme and the impact-related projects of 2 of its startup finalists. The event took place at ROCKIT, co-working space in Lithuania for Fintech and Sustainable Innovation startups
First of all, it is important to highlight the performance of the presenter Dominykas Milašius, who took on the role of moderator during the different presentations throughout the afternoon.
Moving on to the presentations themselves, the first guest spoke to the audience directly from “sunny Portugal”. Antony Welfare is the European CBDC lead and Global Partnerships at Ripple. Bringing to the audience the thematic report “Blockchain Adoption: Status Quo and Future Trends”, Antony addressed the issue of CBDC: its benefits and barriers and how it works, as well as its insertion in the world of blockchain and the advantages of adopting this type of technology.
Emphasising “Sustainable Development Goals and Disaster Relief Problems in the 21st Century – Can blockchain Help to Solve Them”, Andrius Bečys, CEO & Co-founder at GoalHUB.net, spoke about his company’s role on trying to address this issue giving use to AI and blockchain technologies.
It was then time for BlockStart to shine. By the voice of João Fernandes, Project Manager & Investment Analyst at Bright Pixel, it was shown the great success that BlockStart achieved and how it impacted so many startups and SMEs. With more than €785k in funding throughout 3 acceleration programmes, BlockStart supported 60 startups and 67 end-user SMEs.
Right after BlockStart’s presentation, it was time for startups to come to the stage. First, we met FileChain, by the voice of its Founder & CEO, Sylvain Vitteco. FileChain provides fully decentralized permissioned blockchain solutions for NFT marketplaces, Web 3.0, industry 4.0, and even CBDC platforms.
In order to emphasize BlockStart’s impact, Comunitaria and Datarella presented the soluttions developed throughtout our acceleration programme. Miguel Prados is the CEO of Comunitaria, which promotes local commerce by creating a shared self-consumption network where local businesses purchase solar energy produced by nearby neighbours. These neighbours receive payment for their electricity production in the form of a digital currency that they use to buy from the local businesses to which they have sold the electricity. Next, Martin Schäffner, Blockchain Architect at Datarella, told us all about their path before and after BlockStart. Datarella is an established provider of blockchain solutions and develops blockchain-based innovations for and with their clients and partners, with a strong emphasis on the supply chain and ICT sector. Its Track & Trust solution allows the tracking of goods globally and provides immutability, trust, and reliability through the use of a blockchain ledger.
Last, but not the least, Vitalijus Lykovas presented Metabloxz, a scalable and flexible metaverse platform, which is also a true bridge between the physical and digital worlds. By using blockchain & tokenization technology and integrating traditional businesses and services, the physical World items are linked to Metabloxz metaverse world seamlessly.
To close the event, there was space for 3 brave blockchain enthusiasts to present their ideas and solutions, just before a so welcomed time for networking.
An important motto of the event was also to encourage participants to support Ukraine through blockchain and crypto, namely:
- Directly to Ukraine government: https://donate.thedigital.gov.ua/
- Lithuanian organization “Blue/Yellow”: https://blue-yellow.lt
- Organization “Come Back Alive“: https://www.comebackalive.in.ua/donate
- Blockchain activists charity project “Unchain”: https://unchain.fund/
- “Razom” charity foundation https://razomforukraine.org/
