Top 7 Blockchain Startups to Follow in 2018

Bitcoin has been around since 2009, but most of the world learned about it in 2017 when it had its most significant price increase yet. Last year most people only cared about investing it in for gains, but the real crypto enthusiasts knew that it stood for much more than a currency.

As the year progressed, more and more companies became interested in its underlying technology, the blockchain. Companies in all sectors including finance, healthcare, real estate and even some governments have been looking at how they can harness the power of blockchain to improve their operations.

New ventures have also not been left behind. We all know that in business you either go hard or go home. These companies on this list saw the potential that blockchain held and decided it was an opportunity for them to be unique.

Let’s check them out.

1. Simply Vital Health

The health sector has received a lot of backlash in recent times over its management. Simply Vital health heard the cry of the people and came up with blockchain products that will revolutionize the future of healthcare.

They have two products connecting care and health nexus.

Connecting care helps health care providers with data management. It uses care coordination and financial forecasting to help healthcare providers know what happens to patients when they leave the healthcare centre. Since blockchain is immutable, this service acts as a permanent audit trail.

The health nexus is for everyone. It is for the patients, the doctors, the suppliers and everyone else who is a healthcare stakeholder. It will act as an immutable data store and the means by which all these parties can share information with each other. An excellent example of its usefulness is patient history.

Your new doctor will no longer have to call all your previous doctors for condition and medication history. As long as they have access to the blockchain, all that information will be available saving everyone time and money.

2. Agrello

Agrello works on the Ethereum blockchain to merge legally binding documents and artificial intelligence. They do this using smart contracts.

Smart contracts are contracts that self-execute after meeting specified conditions. They help, get rid of third parties which save time and money.

Agrello is based in Estonia and is committed to helping people all over the world to create legally binding contracts that are immutable. The best part is due to Ethereum’s scalability; even if you have to IT skills, you can create a contract.

The startup also has an agency team that advises the parties to contracts on the terms and obligations of the contracts.

They have also partnered with Veriff to help with identity issues. Veriff also ensures that all Agrello users have KYC compliant IDs.

 

3. Audit chain

The financial sector has been one of those that have been most interested in the blockchain technology, and Audit chain is out to give the audit and accounting industry and facelift. It is a part of the Decentralized Continuous Audit and Reporting Protocol Ecosystem (DCARPE)

This platform helps to show all the documents such as balance sheets, cash flow statements, income statements and so on in real time.

This reduces the amount of time that auditors use every end year to review the accounts. They can now do it continually throughout the year. Apart from saving the industry money, it is also bound to increase transparency and compliance.

4. Blockchain Taxi

The transport sector has seen its fair share of mishaps with planes falling and disappearing, to flight delays and double bookings.

Blockchain taxi aims to use all the historical data to make traveling safer. They have also partnered with Passenger drone which is the first company to complete a manned drone flight.

Ultimately, this starts up hopes to use immutable data that it stores on the blockchain to help companies that want to implement Artificial Intelligence in building drone flights to make them safe.

5. Shopin

For a few years now Amazon has taken the world by storm. It has made country boundaries irrelevant by allowing people from all over the globe to have access to products on the other side of the world.

Shopin hopes to continue this but using the blockchain technology this time. They will create a universal profile for each shopper and share each profiles trading history with all the retailers on the blockchain.

Since the data is immutable, retailers can easily find their target customers which eases marketing.

6. ixo foundation

In recent years, we have seen an increase in pollution and world disasters. Going green is now the new cool and businesses improve their reputations by going green. But what if people could be rewarded for their efforts? Wouldn’t they be more environmentally conscious and friendly?

Well, ixo foundation aims to encourage all types of charitable acts by creating a reward system. All you need to do is login in and record all the good you do. Say you decided to plant a tree, or donate to an orphanage, volunteer in an organization or help out the homeless, you can input all this data.

Of course, all this information will need verification, and there is an impact private investigator for that. Once they decide the data is accurate, it is stored in the global impact ledger.

But how do you benefit?

Well, you get credits for all good acts and the more the credits, the more you improve your reputation. You may even redeem the credits for funding for a good cause in the Decentralized Impact Exchange.

7. Bloom

Microlending has been a big deal in the last few years, but it has one set back. Due to credit risk concerns, the only measure of eligibility is credit scores which have locked out so many people.

Bloom intends to change the credit perception by introducing a new benchmark for eligibility. Rather than your past speaking for you, they can also look at other factors such as utility bills and other payments to gauge your creditworthiness. They call this the bloom score.

Additionally, people in your circles can also vouch for you.

If you are worried about the safety of your data, you can relax. Bloom has a KYC procedure that ensures fraud and forgeries do not happen and all that data you would like to keep private remains secure.

Final thoughts

When it first came out, nobody believed it would go anywhere, but now everyone is scrambling to be part of the blockchain revolution.

These startups are a living example of the endless possibilities that this technology holds and you watch them as 2018 progresses.