Supporting Blockchain Startups in Scaling their Business, Zilliqa’s Homegrown Accelerator, ZILHive Announces 2020-2021 Cohort

Zilliqa provides tailored programmes to 8 promising startups, aiming to accelerate blockchain adoption and OpFi development across the region.

Zilliqa, the leading high-performance and high-security blockchain platform, announced its 2020-2021 cohort of selected companies participating in the ZILHive Accelerator programme, a 6-month blockchain startup accelerator designed to support early and late-stage startups that are using or looking to use the Zilliqa protocol to build blockchain solutions.

From digital asset exchanges to stablecoins, this year’s batch of 8 companies have been selected to promote blockchain development within Open Finance (OpFi).

ZILHive was designed with the aim of driving innovation and furthering the growth of a stronger OpFi ecosystem across the globe.

Centred around the broader theme of democratising finance, this year’s projects will receive training in business modelling, design thinking, legal, marketing, and fundraising, with late-stage startups gaining access to Zilliqa’s broad network of industry partners and mentors to build applications that better address business needs.

The promising startups who have been previously welcomed into the ZILHive ecosystem have worked tirelessly to create business use cases on Zilliqa, and many have scaled up and are thriving today.

Han Wen Chua, Senior Vice President of Ecosystem Development at Zilliqa, said: “The need for digital finance has accelerated with the ongoing pandemic, coupled with ASEAN’s large underbanked population, the time is now for FinTech to take on a greater role in adopting a more open financial ecosystem. With the success of our first cohort of ZILHive startups, we are pleased to announce our next batch of promising projects as we propel the use of blockchain in OpFi.”

Running from 31 August 2020 to February 2021, the ZILHive Accelerator programme is committed to encouraging and supporting the growth of talented developers, with this year’s batch including:

• Propine: A Singapore-based startup that provides compliant end-to-end tokenisation and custody solutions;

• Notabene: A Y-Combinator backed firm that enables financial companies to be compliant with the Financial Action Task Force’s “Travel Rule” for any crypto transactions;

• Rupiah Token: Indonesia’s most widely-adopted Indonesian rupiah-backed stablecoin that looks to drive a more inclusive and open financial system within the country;

• MugglePay: A China-based startup that looks to enable far more cost-efficient cross-border transactions by providing a software development kit (SDK) to merchants that accept crypto payments at a fraction of existing fees;

• Moonlight: A US-based decentralised self-sovereign identity solution;

• CommX: A Singapore and Australia based startup that tokenises art into tradable digital assets;

• Moonlet: A Romania-based digital asset wallet that enables users to securely store their crypto assets, spend their tokens, and manage their returns from staking;

• Lumiere: A Singapore and Hong Kong-based film tokenisation platform that strives to boost liquidity, accessibility, and mitigate risk in the film investment space;

Committed to accelerating the adoption and awareness of blockchain within FinTech across ASEAN, Zilliqa has launched the ZILHive Open Finance consortium.

The consortium will consist of Zilliqa Research, Xfers, Elliptic, Switcheo Network, XanPool, and Magic, together with the eight startups participating in the ZILHive Accelerator as the firms work together to foster a more collaborative blockchain ecosystem and engender greater value within the OpFi space.

Ivan Poon, CEO at Switcheo Network, said:  “As the OpFi ecosystem continues to mature around the world, it’s crucial that we nurture the next wave of talent and as a mentor for the ZILHive Accelerator programme, I’m thrilled to see what these promising entrants can bring to the table.

To that end, the launch of ZILHive Open Finance consortium is a testament to the power of collaboration in enacting meaningful change—as one of the consortium’s earliest members, we look forward to joining some of the industry’s leading firms in order to pioneer a tech-enabled vision for financial inclusion across the globe”.

Throughout the past few years, ZIlliqa’s commitment to growing OpFi has also seen several strategic partnerships in a bid to enable a more inclusive financial ecosystem across the region.

Beginning with StraitsX, a Southeast Asian stablecoin initiative that kicked off with the launch of XSGD, a Singapore dollar-backed stablecoin in collaboration with fintech payments provider Xfers, Zilliqa has since partnered with Switcheo Exchange to launch ZilSwap in order to drive ASEAN stablecoins liquidity across the Zilliqa network.

About Zilliqa

Zilliqa is a high-performance, high-security blockchain platform for enterprises and next-generation applications. Developed through academic research and helmed by a team of experienced scientists, engineers, venture creators and leaders in the financial services, Zilliqa addresses limitations in scalability and security, enabling real-world usability across a variety of industries, including finance, digital advertising, and gaming. In 2019, Zilliqa became the first public blockchain platform to be built on sharded architecture, with smart contracts written in the platform’s secure-by-design programming language, Scilla. For more information, visit: zilliqa.com.

About ZILHive

ZILHive is Zilliqa’s ecosystem growth arm which supports entrepreneurs and developers as they build their solutions on Zilliqa’s high-performance, high-security blockchain and smart contract platform. ZILHive comprises three pillars: Education, which focuses on upskilling professionals and students through customised blockchain courses developed in partnership with educational institutions; Grants, a funding programme which offers strategic, personalised guidance to early-stage start-ups; and Accelerator, an initiative that provides technical tutorship and mentorship to drive growth across the Zilliqa network. Enabled by this three-pronged ecosystem effort, ZILHive is driven by a mission to build a holistic global community of developer and entrepreneurial talent. To date, ZILHive has supported over 70 projects from over 20 countries.  For more information, visit: zilhive.org.

Follow Asia Blockchain Review on:

• Telegram: https://t.me/asiablockchainreview
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/asiablockchainreview
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/abr_blockchain
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asia-blockchain-review/
• Website: https://www.asiablockchainreview.com/
• Email: [email protected]
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMQ5CVu0c9-pMlwB8LUvkiA