Media Release
NTN Innovation Booster – Blockchain Nation Switzerland
Wednesday, 21 October 2021
#SBHACK21
Winners will be announced on Sunday, 31 October at 2pm CET onwards.
Zurich, 21 October 2021 – The warmup phase of the Swiss Blockchain Hackathon is in full swing, and over 270 hackers and 70 experts have already started working on the diverse challenges provided by the corporate partners.
The challenges are as diverse as both our participants and the companies supplying them, ranging from Fake News detection, private DeFi platforms, Smart Factory Logistics and Smart Assembly Solutions, decentralizing the cheese value chain, Gaming, safely transferring identity data, building permits, a local economy reward, crypto wallets and stable coins for a bank, switching energy suppliers, an NFT marketplace, emission certificates, digital art ownership transfers, and more! The full description of the challenges can be found here: https://sbhack.trustsquare.ch/
The hackers are supported throughout the whole phase of the hackathon from technology, business and IP experts from academia, protocols, challenge partners and external partners, ensuring the submitted projects meet the need of the blockchain protocols and of the challenge owners, so that they can in a next step be turned from PoC to viable projects.
The Swiss Blockchain Hackathon takes place from 15 to 31 October 2021 and is held as part of the NTN Innovation Booster – Blockchain Nation Switzerland program. The multi-year funding program was initiated by Innosuisse, the Swiss Innovation Agency. Together with the consortium partner Trust Square, the hackathon will be organized simultaneously at various locations in Switzerland and remote.
The organizers have chosen a hybrid format for the hackathon and have put the quality of the challenges and developers first. Around 400 developers and innovators from Switzerland and abroad are expected both on and offline to work on various tasks and compete for hotly contested prizes.
The leading blockchain protocols Algorand, Casper Association, NEAR, Streamr and Velas, the licensed SEBA Bank with core competence in digital assets and Bitcoin Suisse, the Swiss market leader in crypto-finance services, support the second edition of the largest Swiss Blockchain Hackathon. Blockchain protocols provide developers with access to their platforms and corporate partners define industry-specific Vertical Challenges. This way, the suitable applications can be constructed on the right platform. Over CHF 350,000 in cash and non-cash prizes as well as paid-out tokens await as a reward. In addition, the corporate acceleration phase of the NTN Innovation Booster will start afterward, in which the most promising ideas will be included.
This year's Swiss Blockchain Hackathon aims to transfer the enthusiasm for decentralized technologies and the outstanding knowledge within the Swiss blockchain community to tangible applications and business models for various industries. On the one hand, this will promote a sustainable technology ecosystem and, on the other, further strengthen Switzerland's position as a leading location for research and development in blockchain.
The winners of #SBHACK21 will be announced live on Discord on Sunday, 31 October at 2pm CET.
15-31 October 2021
Zurich: Trust Square, Rennweg 57, CH-8001 Zurich (please note the change in venue!)
Lugano: SUPSI – Polo universitario Lugano – Campus Est, Via la Santa 1,
CH-6962 Lugano
Geneva: Université de Genève – Battelle, bâtiment A, Route de Drize 7,
CH-1227 Carouge
Registration is open until 28 October 2021, midnight CET, on sbhack21.devpost.com
Trust Square AG, Blockchain Nation Switzerland powered by Innosuisse
SEBA Bank
Bitcoin Suisse
Algorand, Casper Association, NEAR, Streamr, Velas and AWS
Bossard, City of Lugano, Dexgame, Julius Bär, Lumas, NZZ, Richemont, Ticino Canton, Swiss Federal Office of Energy, Swiss Post, Casper Association, Seba Bank, Nomoko, ZHAW & FairRecycling
Blockstar
SUPSI, USI, ZHAW, UZH Blockchain Center, HSLU, UNIGE
sbhack.trustsquare.ch / blockchainnation.ch
Trust Square AG
Caterina Beffa
+41 79 346 38 50
caterina.beffa@kext.com
Swiss Blockchain Federation
Alexandra Hofer
+41 78 895 72 11
alexandra.hofer@blockchainfederation.ch
Located in the heart of Switzerland's commercial center at Paradeplatz and Rennweg, Trust Square provides a space for innovative ideas to flourish. With disruptive technologies as the common denominator, Trust Square connects entrepreneurs, early- stage ventures, businesses, investors, and academics and allows them to pursue their visions in an open, versatile and diverse environment.
Since 2018, Trust Square has hosted more than 300 events, from panels and talks with industry experts to think tanks, hackathons, and tech conferences. Our Swiss Blockchain Hackathon 2019 in collaboration with AWS attracted more than 200 hackers.
Trust Square has provided office space to more than 80 blockchain companies, among them Cardano, B3i, Neo, Sygnum, flov technologies, Procivis, Verum Capital, Blockchain Valley Ventures, Bittrex and Consensys. The hub works closely with ETH Zurich, the universities of Zurich, Basel, Lucerne and St. Gallen, the Rapperswil University of Applied Sciences and Arts, the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center, and Zurich's location development agency: www.trustsquare.ch
Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) represents a revolutionary and disruptive approach for business, science and society and offers numerous application possibilities. Switzerland recognised this potential early on and has established itself as one of the world's most attractive locations for the blockchain industry under the name Crypto Vallyals. In 2021, Switzerland introduced new legislation that is among the most innovation-friendly DLT regulations in the world.
The NTN Innovation Booster - Blockchain Nation Switzerland builds on this spirit of optimism and euphoria. Since the so-called Crypto Valley has gradually spread beyond its original epicentre of Zug to the whole of Switzerland and even beyond, this programme combines existing initiatives with organizations and individuals who want to become active in the field of blockchain technology. True to its nationwide activities over the past years, the Swiss Blockchain Federation is now entering a new dimension by actively promoting innovation.
Innosuisse is the Swiss Innovation Agency. Innosuisse's mission is to promote science-based innovation in the interest of business and society. The NTN Innovation Booster funding instrument brings together interested teams from universities, businesses, and community around an innovation topic at a national level. It stimulates the testing of concrete innovation ideas. For the period 2021-2024, Innosuisse is supporting twelve NTN Innovation Boosters with a focus on a broad range of different topics.