The European Commission opened the international call for applications for the Blockchain Horizon Award, an award that encourages the development of social projects based on blockchain technology.
The call to participate is for startups, independent entrepreneurs, developers, researchers or anyone who shows interest in the potential of the platform. In total, 5 awards of 1 million EUR each will be given to the most innovative solutions that have a social impact, according to the European Commission.
“The challenge is to develop scalable, efficient and high-impact decentralized solutions to the challenges of social innovation. To this end, we seek to take advantage of blockchain technology,” the institution stated.
According to the European Commission, the potential to generate social change through the decentralization of processes, related to the challenges of local or global sustainability, has not yet been realized.
Decentralized solutions in the social area are based on innovations in different fields. The organization cites examples such as projects that are implemented to achieve fairer trade, better monetization of work, greater visibility of public spending, and greater transparency of administrative processes.
The projects based on blockchain technology to be presented at Blockchain Horizon Award must be pioneering decentralized solutions
The plans to be displayed must be pioneering decentralized solutions that serve to meet the challenges of local and global sustainability. According to the institution, the proposals must demonstrate feasibility, information exchange, resources that respect privacy, high levels of transparency and more equitable distribution.
One of the essential requirements is that, while participants are free to commercially exploit applications or services based on the blockchain technology, their source code must be published under an open source license.
The final mission of this contest is to stimulate the application of blockchain technology in fields that go beyond the financial world, which translates into multidisciplinary approaches that seek to have a positive impact on modern society. The European Commission, headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, in the Berlaymont building, announced that the deadline for entering the Blockchain Horizon Award is April 2019.
