180 Applicants. 60 shortlisted. 12 teams finally selected. 6-8 will receive financial support of up to €60,000 by summer 2022. Welcome to the first cohort of the BFG Superstars by Blockchain Founders Group that launched in February 2022. It’s been an exciting journey so far and we want to tell you about what we have accomplished and the next steps in developing the token economy with our blockchain startups.
Let’s rewind and give a brief overview of the program. BFG Superstars is a start-up incubator program launched by the Blockchain Founders Group - a venture capital and company builder firm with a strong footprint in Central Europe. The BFG Superstars’ thesis is to support blockchain talents and high-potential crypto ideas as we believe it is the most important technology for the next decade. Since BFG’s inception, we’ve accelerated over 25 startups and have supported 5+ companies in-house. After initial success in company building, we decided it was time to share our expertise with a larger community. Thus, we launched our very own blockchain startup incubator program in order to support, build, and grow the most promising blockchain startups.
In a nutshell, a startup incubator is an initiative designed specifically to help founders succeed in their startup journey and help them grow their business. We started the program because we strongly feel that there is an abundance of business opportunities and unmet needs when it comes to areas such as DeFi, NFTs, Metaverse, IoT, CO2 compensation, distributed data economies, DAOs and blockchain development in general. However, we wanted to do things differently, and separate our program from ordinary VCs and incubators. Thus, instead of inviting applicants who already had an idea or founded a company with some sort of MVP, we decided to level the playing field by removing such requirements and only focusing on the individual/team's competency and drive. Our ethos was simple: look for the most talented people and then help them build from scratch. By foregoing the necessity of requiring applicants to already have some sort of startup to showcase, we attracted a greater pool of talent.
“While many talented and smart people capable of running a startup exist, oftentimes they lack experience, a proper network, thorough advisory, best practice know-how and close mentorship, or the courage to apply with an idea already at hand.”
(Max Zheng, Head of BFG Superstars)
That is where the BFG Superstars comes in where we ultimately decided to not make the existence of an idea a requirement for applicants. And here we are now, 12 weeks into the process, with 11 teams creating some life-changing blockchain solutions.
Here are our current teams:
NRVerse
NRverse is tokenizing energy attribute certificates (EAC) and makes them available for those who want to reduce the climate impact of internet (metaverse) activities. NRverse consists of three tools: First, the Bridge, a traceable and trustable tool to provide EACs from power plants around the world. Second, the Tokenizer that creates NFTs out of the EACs for each user to match their energy consumption with renewable energy. Third, the Calculator which tallies the energy consumption of different uses from minting NFTs, crypto wallets or virtual reality applications.
Visit their website & LinkedIn. Get in touch with Co-Founder Loïc Tilman.
Sustaim
Sustaim is building a platform that allows companies to buy carbon offsets from reforestation, nature preservation, carbon capture and similar projects. By foregoing the expensive certification process, Sustaim opens up the market for 80% of projects that weren't available previously, thereby promising real impact against climate change. Sustaim is utilizing blockchain technology to make an efficient market possible that allows the purchase, trading and offsetting of carbon tokens in minutes.
Visit their website & LinkedIn. Get in touch with Co-Founder Peter Lange.
Signa X
Signa X is empowering GameFi and Metaverse communities across the world through its unique digital asset creation and leasing platform. They provide high-volume digital assets, tailored to projects in the Metaverse and GameFi Worlds.
Visit their website & LinkedIn. Get in touch with Co-Founder Aakarsh Naidu.
Chunkify
Chunkify aims to increase accessibility to virtual real estate in the metaverse by using fractionalization to help with affordability. Their long term strategy includes a quite unique revenue sharing model where virtual real estate owners can monetize their lands without selling it.
Visit their LinkedIn. Get in touch with Co-Founder Adam Van Uden.
Troop
Troop is a platform where communities can own a portfolio and make investment decisions together. Troop does this by tokenizing a basket of cryptocurrencies and DeFi strategies into a single token. This token is a DAO, where investors can vote on the changes of the community portfolio. The votes that lead to a profitable decision get rewarded. Visit their website & LinkedIn. Get in touch with Co-Founder Nico Gallardo.
Enefty
With the Enefty platform, businesses, creators and fans can create NFT collections, and sell them to their communities in various ways such as crowdfunding, card packs or raffles. This allows business and creators to interact with communities in unique ways.
Visit their website & LinkedIn. Get in touch with Co-Founder Giorgi Jashiashvili.
WeDataNation
WeDataNation is a data-aggregation platform that enables individuals and companies to monetize their data while preserving full privacy, allowing internet users to reclaim ownership of their data.
Visit their website & LinkedIn. Get in touch with Co-Founder Henry Wulf Concilio.
CoinRisk
CoinRisk offers a self-serving audit & analytics platform for Web3 projects. Their MVP focuses on projects written in Solidity and the criteria covered can be divided into 4 verticals: Technology, Tokenomics, Operations & Finance. All together, these already comprise more than 80 criterias, and CoinRisk is just getting started!
Visit their website & LinkedIn. Get in touch with Co-Founder Adrien Resch.
EkoLance
EkoLance provides a training platform for web2 developers to become blockchain developers with hands-on skills and practical web3 experience. EkoLance is targeting female developers from developing countries. After graduating from the platform, they will be onboarded on the EkoLance Freelancer platform, to be employed by companies looking for web3 developers. EkoLance charges a monthly fee for employers to access the freelance platform, and a one-time placement fee when companies hire a developer.
Visit their website & LinkedIn. Get in touch with Co-Founder Maria Eneva-Olms.
Me Protocol
Me Protocol creates the technical foundation for an instant, frictionless and limitless multi-vendor loyalty program, where customers have access to multiple use cases for their tokens across multiple brands.
Visit their website & LinkedIn. Get in touch with Co-Founder Robert Wesley.
In September 2022, we will launch the S2 cohort and incubate the next batch of crypto startups. If you are interested in participating in our next cohort, then check out the official page here.