January 30, 2019
BerChain: Welcome To Berlin’s Blockchain Ecosystem
With over 100 blockchain companies based in Berlin, the city boasts a highly skilled and interdisciplinary network, combined with multilingual, international digital natives. The city itself has an alternative and anti-establishment, gritty against-the-system attitude. It seems fitting that the boom in tech decentralization has trickled down and transformed the city into a hub for fintech enterprise. BerChain gathered the blockchain ecosystem at Factory Berlin to showcase how its 10 founders can bring together special interest areas and form a stronger community of expertise.
Community Building
Since the industry is still maturing and starting to permeate into use cases, the grassroots origins and assets are one of the most prominent features of young startups: investor, network forging, target user cases, and recruitment are all possible within a single token community.
BerChain’s mission is to connect and promote the growing Berlin blockchain ecosystem from internal to the external, and around all perimeters. Whether it be consultancy, providing a specialized space to work, access to different seed, VC, and fund investors, or an accelerator or incubator to help the next startup succeed and grow. Achieving mass adoption and global implementation of bitcoin, altcoins, and tokens are proving to be valuable assets to governments, legal, and political spectrums, not to mention the growing fintech scene and its increasing share of digital portfolios.
Government And Political Applications
One of the speakers at the event was Ms. Sabine Smentek, the Permanent Secretary, Berlin Senate Department for the Interior and Sport, who encouraged cultural change in the areas of intellectual property law in Berlin. She pointed out the realities between public and private sector integrations and warned about the tendency of technology to ignore the rule of law. Smentek continued to promote the use of mining and engineering big data to use in practical applications: online booking and massive updates of German public and legal institutions. Although more cautious, Smentek looks forward to learning from local experts, like BerChain, to be instrumental in digitalizing the Germany economy.
Present was also Raymond Knops, State Secretary for the Interior and Kingdom Relations of the Netherlands, who was the first to start digital administration assets. He echoed the need to make sure that governments are cautious in their adoption of new technology so that no one is left behind. Knops argued that new tech should afford people a digital autonomy and personal ownership. Promoting the transparency of blockchain technologies should also help constituents trust government more — especially since services would be personalized and individually owned. This includes making sure that research on ethics and value continue to be an intrinsic element to public administration.
Decentralized Solutions
Whether it is to get a new registration certificate at the local Burgerämt or wait for the dreaded visa process at the Ausländerbehörde, every single transaction that you make takes at least a dozen steps. Decentralization combines the trust and motivational systems and incentivizes them via blockchain automation. “Technical solutions, like AI, can be offered to collapse trust back to the individual. It is a complete disruption of the market,” said Bruce Pon of BigChainDB and Ocean Protocol. The faster, cheaper, and trusty models are back, but the automatic processes also mean a shift in job market value. This change stems from automation, but it also reflects the direct availability of products, which encourages a system of direct trade, and more intimate economies.
While this specific startup scene remains quite volatile, the ever-changing and rotating team players still need a resource to pivot projects and a community. BerChain represents the Berlin blockchain community and its efforts to encourage innovation, education, and effect cultural change.
The high density of flagship projects in Berlin, along with its natural resource of young talent, affordable costs of living, and its propensity to always stay on the edge make it a likely backdrop for where blockchain can grow up and challenge traditional markets.
