Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator Reveals Projects for 2020 Cohort

The Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator announced the selection of 17 startups for its third cohort, scheduled to take place in the spring of 2020. The accelerator is a joint venture between organizations on the California-based UC Berkeley campus.

The venture, made up of the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, Berkeley Engineering, the Berkeley Haas School of Business, and Blockchain at Berkeley, announced the selections in an official statement on March 11. Projects were chosen from a list of 140 startups that applied for a coveted spot in the cohort.

A wide range of industries represented in Berkeley’s Spring 2020 cohort

Chosen projects will focus on industries such as gaming, fintech, IoT, sports, energy, and healthcare. The Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator stated the following about each teams’ role in the cohort:

“During their time in the Xcelerator, the teams will engage with Berkeley’s network of mentors, researchers, faculty, venture capital firms, and student talent that is unparalleled in the blockchain space.”

Projects announced by the Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator include:

   Alcala: A decentralized financial consortium that seeks to create a cross-chain open infrastructure for the Polkadot ecosystem.   ARterra: A fan engagement platform built on the NEAR protocol, which provides services to sports franchises, eSports, teams, and streamers.   Blockstar: A startup that builds a marketplace for exclusive brands to offer connecting them with video games, VR experiences, social networks, and messaging apps, where virtual goods can be bought, rented and used.   Blok-z: A white-label solution in charge of verifying the production, trading and tracking of electricity on a single platform with an end-to-end certification of electricity origin.   Calypso: A reverse auction site that allows borrowers to create personalized loan proposals.   Cowri: A network that allows the efficient and fast exchange of stablecoins, to solve the future infrastructure interoperability problem.   Finoa: A EU-licensed custody and asset-servicing solutions based in Germany for institutions and corporations.   GVOS.io: An edge cloud using distributed storage to create, store, distribute, and monetize HD maps for autonomous driving.   Linkdrop: A Web3 marketing platform used by crypto projects and wallets which enables users to claim digital assets without a wallet.   Liquid Mortgage: A digital asset platform that creates loan-level digital assets, enabling the transfer of borrower funds to investors.   Nodle.io: A project that connects and secures the Internet of Things (IoT) with over 5M DAU smartphones.   Nugbase: An Ethereum-based farming massively multiplayer online game.   OPGames: Offers a suite of tools that helps game developers add e-sports-like tournaments to their single-player games and earn crypto payouts.   Sixtant: A Mexico-based high-frequency trading system that provides market making and liquidity services in crypto.   Snark Health: A platform that creates cohesion among patients, doctors, and donors for health care services.   Snowball Money: A smart crypto investment automation platform.   Stake Technologies: A scalable infrastructure for Web3.0 via a brand-new Plasma Network which enables smart contracts.

Teams selected in previous cohorts

In the previous cohort, which took place in Fall 2019, the Berkeley Xcelerator chose 13 teams: BCdiploma, Bounty0X, CINCEL, COIN, Eluvio, KryptoGO, Leaf Global Fintech, MtHash, Nickel, Pinata, Puma Browser, RIPchain, and Sheeld Market.

During the Spring 2019 cohort, the Berkeley Xcelerator hosted 12 projects: AnChain.ai, Bitmark, DataAgora, Dyson Network, FourthState Labs, Insolar.io, PlayTable, Source, SWFT Pay, TruSource, Vinc, and zkSystems.