After two intense and successful years our Blockpool acceleration programme has ended – for now – but stay tuned, we will continue! The main goal of Blockpool, was to set up and run an acceleration programme for 25 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to develop and test blockchain-based innovations in 7 different sectors and through this experience, EUROCROWD has established a great ecosystem and built capacity around this transformative and new technology.

Blockchain-based technologies enable people and organisations who may not know or trust each other to collectively agree on and permanently record information without a third-party authority. This allows creating trust in data in ways that were not possible before. Therefore, we are convinced that blockchain has the potential to revolutionise how we share information and carry out transactions online, and thus will have a relevant impact on our industry.

A strategic objective of Blackpool was to establish and shape new ecosystems around this new technology. Together with our partners, namely FRANKFURT SCHOOL OF FINANCE & MANAGEMENT GEMEINNUTZIGE GMBH (Germany), EUROPEAN REGIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR CO-OPERATION (Greece), University of Nicosia (Cyprus), INSOMNIA (Spain), FRAUNHOFER IMW (Germany) and N-ABLE (France) we encouraged 109 SMEs from 27 different countries to submit their ideas for commercialization of blockchain-based innovations in 8 different sectors. We then developed with the selected 25 SMEs their minimum viable product (MVP) during a 10-months acceleration programme. We collected more than 400 blockchain expert profiles across Europe and worked together with more than 50 experts closely to support evaluations, mentoring and the bootcamps we celebrated. And we provided an overview of the analysis of current European Blockchain regulation in collaboration with Dentons.

As a result, Blockpool demonstrated the effectiveness of its acceleration model which combines all necessary bricks to accelerate blockchain deployment for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs); and the critical role of cluster and expert organisations in building an ecosystem.

Yet, we discovered an array of challenges that need to be addressed in the years to come - this concerns the fragmentation of the blockchain technology investment ecosystem caused by information asymmetries and lack of tech knowledge in both business and financing spheres.

What's next?

This is why we will continue investing efforts and building synergies around this topic. By building on the success of Blockpool we are continuing to mobilize leaders of the DLT and Blockchain community. We aim to further establish the ecosystem created and upscale our Blockpool accelerator.

Our activities in the next months will therefore support bringing together investment, business and tech communities. We will engage in further developing the ecosystem for driving technology development and the needed investments.

The Blockpool results in a nutshell:

• Get inspiration and learn more about blockchain-based use cases in different sectors by exploring the Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) of the participating SMEs.

• Do you want to get an overview of the state-of-the art of current European Blockchain regulation? Then download the regulatory study provided by Dentons Europe.

• Learn more about “HOW DO SMES IN EUROPE DEPLOY BLOCKCHAIN AND DISTRIBUTED LEDGER TECHNOLOGIES?” and get early insight and assessment around this new technology to guide SMEs and investors.

• Enroll in a free online training about Distributed Ledger Technologies and Blockchain through the Webinars developed within the Blockpool.eu project.

• You need a blockchain expert, developer, SME etc? Download the list of more than 400 European experts in the field.

Acknowledgment:

The Blockpool project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement 828888.