The EU-funded Venture Builder, whose first 2 cohorts are already making strides towards transforming decentralised data governance in Europe, will invest up to €150K equity-free in the projects selected through its third and last Open Call.
Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, 22nd December 2020
LEDGER, the pan-European acceleration program for human-centric solutions, has kicked off its third open call today. This third and final edition, an advanced version in comparison to the previous two open calls, is aimed at already registered entities such as SMEs, Research Organizations, NGOs or Foundations, who are building innovative projects with a blockchain and other DLT supported solutions for data governance at their core.
The final 9 selected teams will access a Venture Builder programme of 6 months receiving DLT software support and training, technological and business mentoring and other enabling benefits in addition to up to €150.000 equity-free funding.
Applications will be accepted from 22nd of December 2020 at 12:00 CET until 22nd of February 2021 at 18:00 CET.
Granted by the European Commission (EC) under the Next Generation Internet initiative, the programme aims at making data a common good, owned by citizens, where the wealth created by data-driven platforms is equally distributed. This approach will lead towards both, a more open, robust and interoperable Internet and more supportive social innovation.
“Our venture builder will provide mentorship, guidance and direct grants of up to 150.000 euros to each of the selected projects building decentralised solutions, where citizens retain control over their data”, declared Xabier Chao, CIO at FundingBox (the company leading the consortium), at the start of the acceleration project, whose first cohort of 15 projects has already successfully concluded the programme and whose second cohort of 9 projects is already well underway.
LEDGER’s first 16 projects in July 2019 at the Welcome Bootcamp in Amsterdam
We are looking for entities that want to shift data management, leveraging on decentralised technologies (such as blockchain, distributed ledger technology (DLT) and/or peer-to-peer), AI or IoT, to address privacy-by-design, reliability, trustworthiness and openness to build human-centric solutions.
Selected projects will develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) where privacy-by-design, openness and data governance are at the core of their value proposition.
LEDGER is a consortium led by FundingBox (Poland, Spain and Denmark) in partnership with Dyne (Netherlands) and Blumorpho (France and Germany). The project is part of the EC’s Next Generation Internet initiative:
“The Next Generation Internet initiative will reverse the Internet paradigm and recognise the value of humanity in technology”, said Roberto Viola, Director-General of the European Commission’s DG Connect during the Digital Assembly 2018 in Sofia (Bulgaria).
Related links:
https://ledger-3rd-open-call.fundingbox.com/
https://fundingbox.com/c/ledger
https://twitter.com/LedgerEu
Contact points for LEDGER:
Thomas Wilczek: thomas@fundingbox.com
Andrea D’Intino: andrea@dyne.org
Thomas Shamuyarira: shamuyarira@blumorpho.com
