Day 1 of the Blockchain Week 2017

This is the first time I attend an event of this kind and I must say I was positively impressed by the number of start-ups presenting their product or idea. The atmosphere was good, with people being engaged and discussing and showing interest in the evolution of blockchain technologies.
SatoshiPay, Stratis, Microsoft and Fintricity are just a few of the known names present there today, alongside others such as Jaak (media rights and contracts), Giveth (charity - connecting donors and recipients), ChainThat (insurance services), Cashaa (money transfer with a twist), CrossVerify (biometrics identification over the blockchain).

After visiting the stalls and engaging in to a rather interesting conversation with the rep from Cashaa, I went on to listen to Mark Simpson from RBS, who made a presentation around developers making the most of blockchain opportunity. The discussion went on to realities of scalability, key challenges (security, integration with existing banking systems, bad press, etc.) and opportunities (or rather questions) for the future.

Microsoft was next in line to make a demonstration on notarisation and certification on the blockchain. Michael Platt, Senior Developer at Microsoft, showed us live how a document can be authenticated using Stampery (blockchain-based data certification company with offices in Madrid and San Francisco).

On the other side of London, the conference was a success according to Biswa Das and Nathan Sharp (TBB). They had the opportunity to discuss current progress of their start-up with Sasha Ivanov (Waves Platform), Christoph Hering (BlockPay) and Bobby Lee (BTCC). Following photos are credit to Biswa Das.

There are two initiatives that I really liked: DonorCoin and Hackathon winner Gov Blocks, with their proof of concept developed for Papua New Guinea e-Citizen Services using permission blockchain technology. I will expand on that in an upcoming post.

Day 2 tomorrow and I’ll come back with an update.