Over 100 applicants have been whittled down to a shortlist of 12 contestants chosen by industry experts, an official announcement from GTEC explains.
“The fourth industrial revolution will be built upon a Machine-to-Machine economy with autonomous vehicles, 3D printer, robots, drones and IoT,” Carsten Stöcker, Innovation Programme Manager, Blockchain Competence Team, RWE Innovation Hub told Bitcoin.com in emailed comments.
“We believe that blockchains will be the ‘lubricant’ for asset-sharing and secure transactions among
1) People
2) Organizations and
3) (Autonomous) Machines, including DAOs,
in the M2M age.”
The finalists will pitch themselves to judges at the event, after which the overall winner will be decided.
GTEC is a Berlin-based consortium of major German companies gathering to support the emerging blockchain infrastructure and associated innovation.
The awards are being sponsored by two GTEC participants: energy provider RWE and technology incubator Globumbus. First prize will be in the form of €20,000, with €15,000 and €10,000 for second and third prizes, respectively.
A special community prize of €5,000 will also be awarded, the winner chosen by attendees voting in real time on the blockchain.
In addition to the awards themselves, the ceremony in Berlin will feature keynote speeches from the sponsors, as well as from Trent McConaghy, whose startup ascribe provides blockchain proof-of-ownership to artists and creators of digital content.
“I see a recognizable shift towards non fintech solutions. I like most of the approaches even if many of them are (very) early stage. But some of them are also very mature,” Globumbus founder Jens Hewald told Bitcoin.com about the entrants. “I can also see and like some solutions are using the spirit of DACs/DAOs.”
Paths to Propagation
One startup shortlisted for the award is ECHO, a multifunctional social networking and payments app. Its creator Christoph Hering spoke to Bitcoin.com ahead of the final.
“We are very excited to be selected share our vision with ECHO at the GTEC award ceremony,” he said. “It is a great opportunity for us to unite all Blockchain communities with the ECHO Blockchain wallet 2.0.”
He added that the outlook for blockchain innovation startups could vary depending on developers’ long-term relationships with their target markets.
“I see a lot of great Blockchain companies attending the GTEC and I am happy that ECHO is among them. The selected entrants all serve their unique market niche but I am worried if most of the entrants can ever leave the developer mindset.”
Hering continued:
“If Blockchain startups want to reach the mass market they need to focus on regular marketing, stripping all most of the cool tech buzzwords that most consumers don´t care about.”
