Participants and attendees of LongHash Hatch Program Demo Day (11/12)
On Wednesday, December 11, at the Singapore National Gallery, global blockchain incubator and investor LongHash hosted a demo day to showcase the five startups graduating from the third batch of its 12-week LongHash Hatch incubation programme.
The startups are:
Button Wallet
Team: Nick Kozlov (CTO & Co-Founder), Kirill Kuznecov (VP Engineering & Co-Founder), Alex Safonov (CEO & Co-Founder)
Button Wallet is a messenger-based wallet that aims to build a one-stop-shop for personal finance management. It enables customers to buy, store, and send crypto in Telegram and Discord, with more messenger apps coming soon. It claimed to have acquired more than 150,000 users in less than a year. The startup has raised pre-seed funding from MIT Play Labs and Silicon Valley-based VC firms and angel investors.
Brightree
Team: Teo Hong Wee (Co-Founder), Kevin Peng (Co-Founder & Managing Director), Tong Kok Hua (Co-Founder & Techincal Director)
Brightree aims to prevent bunker oil pilferage by digitising and automating data collection from refuelling. Combining IoT and blockchain, the company said that its solutions are already installed on more than 40 refuelling ships in Asia. It was also selected by Shell for their Idea Refinery programme.
Depos Technologies
Team: Andrey Perepelitsyin (Blockchain engineer), Oleg Bakatanov (CEO), Maksim Mironov (R&D Lead)
Depos builds a platform that aims to enable businesses to monetise their user base by creating stablecoins. Currently its stablecoin platform is live on EOS mainnet; it also has issued stablecoins backed by Deutsche Bank bonds.
Mintable
Team: Zach Burks (Co-Founder), Jesse Johnson (Co-Founder)
Mintable wants to help content creators monetise digital files, track ownership of their content, and engage fans with bundled rewards or features for fees as low as one per cent. On its live beta platform, the startup said that more than 700 creators have created 2,300 items.
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SoundArio
Team: Wang Zhong (CEO), Michael Lojudice (GM of USA), Peter Donaldson (CMO)
SoundArio is a music streaming platform that aims to fairly distribute the value from creating and sharing music. The startup said that 100 per cent of all revenue from subscriptions go to both creators and transmitters with creators getting more than half of the revenue, based on airtime. It records playtime on blockchain and distributes value using smart contracts and cryptocurrency. It claims to have more than 200 creators on their platform and secured deals with seven record label in US, Europe, and Asia.
In running its programme, LongHash teams up with Enterprise Singapore, Fenbushi Capital, Hashkey Capital, and Ziliqa. The programme offers participating startups access to networking and mentorship as well as early-stage funding.
Since Hatch programme’s inception in January, the company stated that its graduating startups have secured or are closing a total of US$11 million in follow-on funding.
The state of blockchain today
The demo day event also featured keynote speeches by the programme’s partners.
In his speech, Remington Ong of Fenbushi Capital highlighted the progress of blockchain adoption in the global market today. Despite exciting development such as China’s plan to launch its own cryptocurrency, the partner stated that blockchain adoption is “still its early days.”
“There were lots of high expectation in 2017 and now the reality is that we are still in the early days [of blockchain adoption] … But it is also important to note that we have built a critical mass of stakeholders for continuing to push for the technology forward,” he said.
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“One would say that the blockchain hype has died down this year, but I would argue that instead, the hype has already transformed into a new form. This is the year major governments around the world and executives from Fortune 500 companies are starting to take blockchain seriously, and this is due to two catalysts: Facebook’s Libra and China’s DCEP,” Ong continued.
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