With the abundance of tech talents, Taiwan has become a hot spot for blockchain startups. As the awareness and demand for blockchain development rose, corporations and institutions start to work with blockchain startups to innovate.
Blockchain technology is applied in different industries, including finance, medicine, logistics, entertainment, and Internet of Things.
Blockchain startups in Taiwan are ambitious, ready to revolutionize the industries and expand globally. Here a pick of 6 interesting blockchain startups from Taiwan that you should know.
OwlTings
Starting as an e-commerce platform, OwlTings began to extend its reach into blockchain last year. OwlTings launched 2 blockchain products, OwlChain, the world’s first blockchain food tracking system, and OwlNest, blockchain travel and tourism management service.
There are more than 400 companies in Taiwan partnering with OwlNest. It is expected that 30,000 more will onboard next year. Agoda, Booking.com, and Expedia are all OwlNest’s partners.
OwlTing has been strategically invested by the Japanese financial group SBI. OwlTing has offices in Japan, the United States, and ASEAN now. It will expand to Sweden, Thailand, and Indonesia this year. The most important milestone next year for OwlTing is to be listed on the US NASDAQ.
Funders Token
FundersToken is a blockchain software company that aims to use smart software to help users distribute their own cryptocurrencies and to develop blockchain applications easily. In order to strengthen the resilience of blockchain applications, in addition to publishing its own cryptocurrency, FundersToken has developed a tool called Voucher (encrypted voucher). Voucher allows companies to use the virtual currency they distribute more flexibly, rather than being limited to a single product.
FundersToken was invited to the Industry Summit in Switzerland because of its excellent technology. When asked about how FundersToken plans to develop foreign markets and visibility, the team expressed that its fundamental focus is on service and product development.
BiiLabs
BiiLabs positions itself as the “Red Hat” in the blockchain era, providing subscription and consulting services for corporate customers’ IOTA open source programs. BiiLabs is actively involved in the operation of the IOTA Foundation.
There are three main products of BiiLabs that help IoT companies transfer data from the cloud to blockchain. The first is Tangle, a clearing and settlement services provider; the second is TangleID, a digital watermark which can be used for medical records, achievement records, police reports, etc. The third is customized service, a one-stop solution (turnkey) for point-to-point transactions for the IoT.
BiiLabs partnered with Taipei City Government to make Taipei a smart city. The first program “Digital Citizen Card” actually uses TangleID as a decentralized management system. When everyone has a digital identity, the next step is to create assets. “Homeownership” product allows individuals to self-manage assets such as household registration, cases, etc., and decide for themselves whether to let the government or hospital use it. Once the products are launched, they will be the decentralized ledger experiment field with a large number of users.
BitMark
BitMark aims to provide effective ways to register ownership of digital assets left by individuals in the online world. Bitmark founder and CEO Sean Moss-Pultz once asked his father, who is an attorney, how his ownership of digital assets could be transferred or transferred to other people. Unable to get an answer from his father, Moss-Pultz decided to use blockchain to set up a digital asset registration system. Currently Bitmark partners with healthcare providers, IoT domain manufacturers and creators. UC Berkeley is one of the research institutes that collaborated with Bitmark on diabetes research.
Bitmark joined Hyperledger, the world’s largest blockchain consortium, as the first member from Taiwan. Through this alliance, it will be able to gain more technical exchanges in the blockchain field and accelerate its development. At the end of 2016, Bitmark also raised investment from Xinyuan Capital, U.S. China Economic Cooperation Group, and Alibaba Group, with a seed funding of approximately US$1.7 million.
AMIS
AMIS is arguably the first commercial blockchain platform in Taiwan. It adopts Ethereum smart contracts to solve financial technology, payments, and other cross-domain information flow issues. Vitalik Buterin, the inventor of Ethereum, has also served as technical advisor to AMIS.
AMIS has formed alliances with six major local banks to expand the application of blockchain in Taiwan. The first public project was “Fubon Wallet” app for Fubon Financial. With Fubon Wallet app, employees of Fubon Financial can make cashless taxi trips for business purposes.
Contentos
Contentos combines Ethereum blockchain with IPFS (Interplanetary File System) technology to protect content creators and advertisers with smart contracts. Contentos provides content public chains, DApp services, and connections between different content platforms, using smart contract technology to distribute resources fairly. It hopes to establish a fair content community for video, graphics, games, and application service tools.
In addition, Contentos runs on dual-currency economies with its official cryptocurrency token COS (ContentOS token) and a stable coin, CONC (CONtentos Cash). COS has a fixed quantity, so the price may fluctuate. It is created as a long-term incentive for content creators. The stable coin CONC is used for content and product service purchases. Its price is constant at CONC=0.01 US dollars so that the implementation of this application will not be affected by the high risk of price fluctuations. Contentos expects to be listed on domestic and foreign exchanges (currently unlimited currency transactions or legal currency transactions) by Q3 this year. Contentos also stated that it does not currently consider doing an ICO.
Contentos announced that it has formed a strategic partnership with Chinese application developers Cheetah Mobile‘s LiveMe Live, Cheez Video, and PhotoGrid images, hoping to lure Cheetah Mobile’s 600 million monthly active users.
Featured image via Pixabay
