Blockchain Adoption Will Become Incentivized In Singapore

January 18, 2019

With an aim to proliferate the blockchain ecosystem of the country, the Singapore government plans to offer financial incentives to enterprises.

As stated in an article published by The Business Times, seed funding would be granted to blockchain players in the media and ICT sector by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), an office under the control of Singapore’s Ministry of Communications and Information. The fund is created with the purpose of encouraging such businesses to develop platforms linking blockchain-interested groups in the blockchain space such as solution providers, exchanges, communities, together with several other groups.

However, there is some determined criteria which the platform developed must meet in order to receive the seed funding offered by the IMDA. The requirement includes the ability to create a connection with global blockchain communities.

Adoption beyond Blockchain

In regards to the IMDA, blockchain adoption in the financial industry has commonly been restricted and the number of considerable successful cases in banking and insurance field are usually limited. As a result, the application of this decentralized technology in other industries has been hampered resulting from a lack of interoperability from the IMDA’s perspective.

The IMDA stated that:

This has resulted in the industry showing signs of siloed, specialized blockchain solutions rather than interoperable network blockchains, which would deliver the most benefit to users.

There are numerous other initiatives aimed at proliferating the Singapore blockchain ecosystem that have been introduced within the country after it set up its target to become a smart nation. Earlier in the year, a competition entitled Blockchain Challenge was held by the IMDA, focusing on promoting the awareness and adoption of the technology; encouraging enterprises to explore business model innovation using distributed ledger technology beyond financial application.

All companies taking part in Blockchain Challenge are required to find out either Proofs-of-concept or Minimum Viable Products dealing with nation-facing issues.

Joint Fund

A fund was jointly set up to support tech enterprises in blockchain sector by the government of China and Singapore three months ago. Specifically, the initiative – China-Singapore ICM Joint Innovation Development Fund targets at ICT and Media industry.

Moreover, a step forward by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) in granting special treatment to fintech firms including blockchain enterprises during patent awarding process could be considered as one of the significant examples of other pro-blockchain initiatives. Particularly, the pending period would be shortened into only six months instead of two years as before, according to an announcement mentioned in a CCN report in April.

Daren Tang – CEO of IPOS demonstrated such advancement will serve as a prominent factor to incentivizing Singaporean fintech companies in international competition.

By significantly reducing the time needed for grant of a fintech patent, our innovative enterprises will be able to compete effectively through their intellectual property and use these intellectual assets to scale up and enter the world’s market.

 

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