Project description
Boosting SME uptake of blockchain technology
Blockchain technology can offer businesses significant benefits including greater transparency, enhanced security, improved traceability, and increased efficiency and speed of transactions. However, most businesses still lack awareness about the benefits of this technology. Building on the growing success of distributed ledger technology (DLT), the EU-funded BlockStart project aims to help SMEs strengthen their competitive positions through the use of this technology. It will inspire the use of blockchain technologies by demonstrating 15 DLT solutions that will be implemented by 60 SMEs, and will encourage intermediaries to develop expertise through training sessions on DLT support services. What’s more, it will help draw lessons for policy makers.
Objective
BlockStart aims to increase adoption of Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) among SMEs, build DLT capacity into Europe’s ecosystem builders and remove obstacles to DLT adoption at the highest level.
BlockStart will match SMEs with high DLT potential (as determined by the BlockStart DLT Assessment Tool) with pioneering DLT developers capable of developing the right solutions for their specific needs. BlockStart mentors these DLT developers through the Engage->Prototype->Pilot acceleration programme with the final objective of testing a DLT solution in real conditions together through pioneering SMEs.
BlockStart achieves this by working together with intermediaries close to the SMEs (e.g.: industry associations, clusters, networks) and building their capacity to run their own DLT support services. Furthermore, BlockStart produces know-how on sector-specific DLT maturity, intermediary capacity and policy recommendations to be used as the basis for workshops and roundtables to discuss sector-wide improvements to the framework conditions for DLT adoption across Europe.
BlockStart is constituted by BRPX, a DLT Company Builder that has bet on these technologies to be the future, CIVT, innovation intermediaries who are building DLT know-how across Europe and F6S, one of the largest platforms in Europe for engaging SMEs and startups into new and exciting opportunities.
By combining these capabilities, BlockStart will demonstrate the potential of DLTs by developing 15 DLT solutions ready to be piloted to 60 SMEs, train over 30 intermediaries on DLT innovation support services, who in turn will reach over 600 SMEs during the duration of the project - and finally bring together 100 participants to a policy conference - setting the stage to continue the work achieved by the project.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
CSA - Coordination and support actionCoordinator
4470-177 Maia
Portugal