Xcelerator 2022 Cohort Summary & Alum Updates
Non-dilutive, mission-driven, #1 —
The Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator is an internationally recognized, non-dilutive source of support for startups in the global blockchain ecosystem and now leads our 3rd pillar on community/entrepreneurship for Berkeley’s campus-wide initiative on web3 and digital assets — Berkeley RDI.
Also, UC Berkeley has ranked the #1 university for blockchain in the US for the second year in a row!
Check out the Xcelerator Homepage for more information on our 5 cohorts of 85 past teams!
2022 Xcelerator Cohort Summary
That’s a wrap! Cohort 5 ends with our most successful Demo Day!
Having accepted 20 exceptional teams in February of 2022, we saw them evolve over the course of our 7 month accelerator program, culminating in our most successful Demo Day in Xcelerator history, with excellent pitches by the teams to our largest audience to date both online and in-person in Pauley Ballroom on the Berkeley campus.
Our application process started in December of 2021, and through the hard work of our VC partners and members of Blockchain at Berkeley, we were able to select 20 of the most promising early stage blockchain startups in the industry. We prioritized diversity in every aspect, with as always, an emphasis on sustainability, social impact, and responsible innovation, aligning with UC Berkeley’s and Berkeley RDI’s missions.
After a tremendously successful and well attended kick-off week in mid-April with a legal panel by Perkins Coie, lunch at Ripple offices, happy hour hosted by Republic Crypto, and meetings with VCs and past Xcelerator teams, we began a journey of programming, mentorship, and network introductions to help our teams thrive, even in the midst of turmoil in the crypto ecosystem.
We provided a speaker series that included prominent VCs, thought leaders and entrepreneurs in the industry, and even BBX alums.
We also provided tangible resources, such as $25,000 in AWS credits, introductions to relevant and experienced mentors, and of course, introductions to VCs to help with funding, and support and mentorship from our Fellowship program with Blockchain at Berkeley.
Our teams didn’t miss a beat. They took full advantage, with several teams raising follow on funding during the course of the program, securing parachains on Kusama and Polkadot, growing their teams, and even pivoting their startups to tackle previously unforeseen opportunities in the market.
Demo Day 2022 —
All of this led to Demo Day on Nov 1, 2022, which was part of the CESC.io conference with over 3,000 registrations and hosted by our umbrella initiative - the Berkeley Center for Responsible, Decentralized Intelligence (RDI). Our teams were tasked with pitching the core concepts of their projects in under 5 minutes. The demo day was attened in-person by over 300 industry experts, VCs, blockchain devs, students, professors, and other Blockchain enthusiasts. Many hundreds more watched the live stream on our YouTube channel.
You can watch the full demo day presentations on our YouTube channel here.
If you have any questions or feedback about the Xcelerator program, we’d love to hear from you. You’re welcome to send us an email at xcelerator@berkeley.edu.
The future —
If you’re interested in applying for Cohort 6 for 2023, just stay tuned to our Medium channel and Twitter, as we will be announcing the application opening in the coming weeks.
Finally, BBX is an independent, sponsorship funded program, and we rely on this sponsorship to continue to groom the most promising teams year over year. If your organization is interested in sponsoring the Xcelerator, and you’d like to learn more about the inherent benefits of being a sponsor, please take a moment to fill out this brief survey, and we will follow up with you.
Xcelerator Team Updates
Eluvio announced the launch of the WarnerBros Movieverse with the “The Lord of the Rings” NFTs
Eluvio announced the launch of the WarnerBros Movieverse with the “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” Web3 Movie Experience- watch the video here. The multimedia living movie experience NFTs are available in 2 editions — check them out here!
Bit.Country & Metaverse World Cup!
Bit.Country launched TWO campaigns recently, Kaosland Cup Selfie Challenge and the Kaosland Cup Airdrop 2022.
Bit.Country is celebrating World Cup football by giving away up to 500,000 $NEER. Up to 500,000 $NEER will be airdropped collectively to eligible winners.
Bit.Country has also teamed up with MetaDojo to build two custom metaverse football stadiums and deployed them into an event sandpit on Pioneer.Bit.Country.
Fairmint was #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt!
Fairmint, the software company that empowers founders to give equity to their communities, was Product of the Day on Product Hunt! Check out their page on Product Hunt and read some of their tips on how to get to #1 on their blog.
The OAK Network updates oak.js SDK and dev docker to enable developers to test OAK, reconcile crowdloan rewards data, and more!
The Network updated the oak.js Javascript SDK(Github repo) to include the latest Dynamic Dispatch demo and tests. OAK created a dev Docker image with sudo and dev-queue features enabled for developers to easily test OAK blockchain.
OAK Network reconciled the OAK crowdloan contribution data from Bifrost and Parallel websites and published it on the Check Reward page. Turing Network auto-compound XCM integration with MangataX DEX entered the testing stage!
This will be the first XCM functional call use case in the Kusama ecosystem. Note that OAK publishes Decentralization & Automation: Imperative Tools For the New Financial System. Read more…
DataGateway was selected for impactful publicly solicited project by Digital Agency in Japan
DataGateway Pte. Ltd. (Head Office: Singapore, CEO: Kazuya Saginawa) has been selected for the “Use Case Demonstration Project for Realization of Trusted Web” publicly solicited by the Digital Agency in Japan. DataGateway features a combination of Decentralized Identifiers (Decentralized Identifiers / Verifiable Credentials), Secret Calculation, and Zero Knowledge Proof in the computation of the GHG Protocol Scope 3. This demonstration project aims to improve the efficiency of carbon emissions calculation throughout the supply chain and to provide a system that can simultaneously protect confidential information and ensure the authenticity of the data. Furthermore, the system will enable not only efficient and fair visualization of carbon emissions but also visualization of the contribution of branch offices, factories, and individuals, and will encourage individual participation in decarbonization activities. In addition, given that the calculation of carbon emissions across the supply chain is a global issue, from the outset, DataGateway will challenge designing a system that can withstand global standards and become a standard that can be disseminated from Japan to the world.
Plug & Play Accelerator Startup Award Winner
Dtravel was the startup award winner in the Batch 14 cohort of the Plug & Play travel technology accelerator. Dtravel also presented in front of hundreds of travel technology professionals at the 2022 Phocuswright Conference. The panel was titled “Blockchain — Game Changer or Bust? How Web3 is Disrupting Travel”. Dtravel rolled out v2 of its “portfolio pages” offering property hosts enhanced customizations such as fee splits, custom domain names, new branding features and more.
Dtravel is making progress onboarding large industry partners to its Protocol project — creating a single source of truth for accommodation booking data on the blockchain.
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