BLOCKROCKET’s German Blockchain Award — one of the first NFT awards in Germany
Tags: Blockchain, Germany, Nft, Startup, Nft Collectibles

About the event

The German Blockchain Award 2020 was designed by BLOCKROCKET to honor the best blockchain-related early-stage startups in the financial, crypto, and industrial space in Germany.

On December 15, 20 early-stage blockchain startups competed in two different categories (idea stage + seed stage) in front of 200+ leading executives, founders, and investors from the blockchain ecosystem in Germany.

The winners of the award

After two exciting rounds, the 3 winners for each category were picked by the audience as well as 5 leading VCs and angel investors from the blockchain space in Germany.

Winners (Idea Stage)

1st — Georg Müller and B.A.M Ticketing

2nd — Rafael Schultz and Doxychain

3rd — Holger Geissler and ipOcean

Winners (Seed Stage)

1st — Cristina Lorenzo and eCustoms

2nd — Henning Wagner and FINEXITY

3rd — Moritz Putzhammer and Trality

As we award leading tech companies, we figured it would be more appropriate to design an award that is based on a digital solution as well. Therefore, we are happy to announce that we partnered with the Belgian startup Arkane Network for the event.

Arkane Network will help us to create our awards via individual NFT token before we transact them to the winners of the event (via Arkane’s marketplace).

What is a non-fungible token (NFT)?

An NFT is a unique digital art or crypto-collectible which can be used in games and traded on the blockchain. Assets like Bitcoin or Ethereum are fungible, meaning that all Bitcoins or Ethereum are the same and completely interchangeable. On the contrary, NFTs can represent various, unique assets — e.g. digital art, digital land, digital cards, etc. that are distinguishable from each other.

Below you can see an example of two NFTs (pieces of art) from a crypto-artist. NFTs can be easily stored on the Ethereum blockchain (ERC721).

About Arkane Network

Arkane is a blockchain technology provider that provides software as a service to keep blockchain simple for businesses. With Arkane businesses can safely onboard mainstream users to their game, dapp, product, or service.

More info on www.arkane.network

The current challenge for companies that understand the value of blockchain is that they don’t have the time nor patience to build directly on blockchain due to the extreme learning curve.

Arkane provides 4 different services

Wallet Provider to onboard new users to a blockchain-based product

NFT-management services to create digital items in the form of NFTs

NFT-marketplace service with a business storefront to buy, sell, auction digital items

A plugin for the 3D modeling engine Unity to create NFTs directly from their platform

Another problem Arkane solves is, by being a blockchain agnostic service provider, is that apps don’t have to be limited by 1 chain anymore. We support the Ethereum blockchain but also other blockchain networks that can help companies that are currently unable to scale due to the boundaries of a single chain characteristic. Arkane’s gold blockchain partners are Binance Smart Chain and Matic Network.

Who are suitable customers?

As a tech provider, you could claim that Arkane is industry independent. However, Arkane focuses on the gaming industry. The business model in gaming has shifted from purchasing a game to a free2play model where players are purchasing digital items within the game. While companies like Fortnite, Nintendo, Counterstrike are success stories, the truth is most game developers are failing with this monetization strategy. Suitable customers are game studios that monetize their digital items and companies that monetize digital assets

How does it work?

Arkane’s clients usually build a game, a dapp, a trading platform with blockchain technology and need to onboard users. Arkane provides them a widget allowing users to sign on and register through Facebook, Twitter, or google sign-on where Arkane automatically creates a user-friendly blockchain wallet. Arkane is in that case the custody provider keeping blockchain simple and the (new) user safe. Next to being a wallet provider, Arkane has a marketplace service to buy and sell digital items. This Shopify-like service is a storefront for businesses to have their own exclusive marketplace to buy, sell, and auction a blockchain-based digital item.

More info on www.arkane.network

How do you see the development of NFT tokens as a whole?

The digital record of transactions in non-fungible tokens and tokens on the blockchain is enabling new possibilities. With an NFT being a provable unique digital item combined with the ability to program a “smart” contract to automatically encode transaction fees, it’s now possible to create in-app economies based on supply and demand around the user.

Imagine freelance photographers putting their photos for sale and defining the quantities available and the value for each item. Where it’s easy to prove whether a photo has been purchased (correctly licensed) is copyrighted and protected with the ability to show that someone truly owns that digital item. Or artists creating digital content and putting it for sale/auction on a marketplace. Here is an article describing how one piece of digital art was auctioned for $3.5 million USD. Even though we see this form of art collection currently going through its own hype cycle, we firmly believe in the value of NFTs and blockchain technology.

Instead of just banking on a digital item having value as a digital collectible, we see NFTs and blockchain as taking the concept of digital licensing and copyright and applying it to a single item. The ability to purchase the license of a branded content, use it for your intended purpose, and then resell it when you don’t need it any longer.

About BLOCKROCKET

BLOCKROCKET is an early-stage investor and digital accelerator program for blockchain startups in Germany that offers an exclusive ecosystem to help startups, corporates, and investors to leverage the potential of blockchain technology. Want to find out more about our program? Then please visit our website or reach out directly to us: www.blockrocket.io