Zurich, 01 November 2021 – The second Swiss Blockchain Hackathon led by a consortium made up of the Swiss Blockchain Federation, Trust Square, CVVC, CV Labs, SUPSI, and HSLU, and held as part of the NTN Innovation Booster – Blockchain Nation Switzerland program took place this weekend at Trust Square's Rennweg hub in Zurich, at SUPSI in Lugano, at the University of Geneva and online.
347 hackers in 69 teams worked on the diverse challenges provided by Bossard, the City of Lugano, Dexgame Julius Bär, NZZ, Richemont, Canton of Ticino, Swiss Federal Office of Energy, Swiss Post, Casper, SEBA Bank, Nomoko, ZHAW & FairRecycling, and Lumas Gallery. The challenges ranged from Fake News detection, private decentralized finance platforms, smart factory logistics and smart assembly solutions, decentralizing the cheese value chain, gaming, safely transferring identity data, building permits, a local economy reward, crypto wallets and stable coins for a bank, switching energy suppliers, a non fungible token (NFT) marketplace, emission certificates, digital art ownership transfers, and more. The hackers were supported throughout the whole phase of the hackathon from technology, business and IP experts from academia, protocols, challenge partners and external partners, ensuring the submitted projects meet the need of the blockchain protocols and the challenge owners so that they can in a next step be turned from proof of concept to viable projects.
Heinz Tännler, President of the Swiss Blockchain Federation and Zug's Finance Minister, opened the #SBHACK21 with the words: "You are all here for one reason: You are fascinated by blockchain. Whenever such a disruptive technology and opportunity comes around, we cannot help but wonder where this journey takes us. Therefore, I admire you for your curiosity." Carmen Walker Späh, Government Councillor of the Canton Zurich, Christian Vitta, Government Councillor of the Canton Ticino, and Ralf Kubli from Casper and Niklas Nikolajsen, Founder of Bitcoin Suisse, went on and encouraged the participants to look beyond and to find good solutions to the challenges and thus to further strengthen Switzerland's leadership when it comes to innovation, especially in the emerging technologies field.
For the first time this year, the Swiss Blockchain Hackathon was held simultaneously in four locations. A livestream brought all involved parties together throughout the weekend, with broadcasts from Zurich, Lugano, Geneva, and online sites uniting Switzerland's innovative power.
We are convinced that with this year's Swiss Blockchain Hackathon we achieved the important goal of furthering the corporate curiosity in blockchain technology and of bringing together the brightest minds to, in the shortest time, come up with viable blockchain solutions for a digital future. We sure transferred the enthusiasm for decentralized technologies and tapped into the outstanding knowledge within the Swiss blockchain community to generate tangible applications and business models for various industries. This will further promote a sustainable technology ecosystem and strengthen Switzerland's position as a leading location for research and development in blockchain technology
The winners of #SBHACK21 were announced live on Discord on Sunday, 31 October at 2 pm CET.
The winner overview can be found here.
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Date: 15-31 October 2021
Locations: Zurich: Trust Square, Rennweg 57, CH-8001 Zurich
Lugano: SUPSI – Polo universitario Lugano – Campus Est, Via la Santa 1, CH-6962 Lugano
Geneva: Université de Genève – Battelle, bâtiment A, Route de Drize 7, CH-1227 Carouge
Total Nationalities: 31
Hackers: 347
Experts: 71
Judges: 25
Challenges: 17
Trust Square AG, Blockchain Nation Switzerland powered by Innosuisse
SEBA Bank
Bitcoin Suisse
Algorand, Casper Association, NEAR, Streamr, Velas and AWS
Bossard, City of Lugano, Dexgame, Julius Bär, Lumas, NZZ, Richemont, Ticino Canton, Swiss Federal Office of Energy, Swiss Post, Casper Association, Seba Bank, Nomoko, ZHAW & FairRecycling
Blockstar
SUPSI, USI, ZHAW, UZH Blockchain Center, HSLU, UNIGE
sbhack.trustsquare.ch / blockchainnation.ch
Trust Square AG
Caterina Beffa
caterina.beffa@kext.com
Swiss Blockchain Federation
Alexandra Hofer
+41 78 895 72 11
alexandra.hofer@blockchainfederation.ch
Located in the heart of Switzerland's commercial center at Paradeplatz and Rennweg, Trust Square provides a space for innovative ideas to flourish. With disruptive technologies as the common denominator, Trust Square connects entrepreneurs, early- stage ventures, businesses, investors, and academics and allows them to pursue their visions in an open, versatile and diverse environment.
Since 2018, Trust Square has hosted more than 300 events, from panels and talks with industry experts to think tanks, hackathons, and tech conferences. Our Swiss Blockchain Hackathon 2019 in collaboration with AWS attracted more than 200 hackers.
Trust Square has provided office space to more than 80 blockchain companies, among them Cardano, B3i, Neo, Sygnum, flov technologies, Procivis, Verum Capital, Blockchain Valley Ventures, Bittrex and Consensys. The hub works closely with ETH Zurich, the universities of Zurich, Basel, Lucerne and St. Gallen, the Rapperswil University of Applied Sciences and Arts, the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center, and Zurich's location development agency: www.trustsquare.ch
Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) represents a revolutionary and disruptive approach for business, science and society and offers numerous application possibilities. Switzerland recognised this potential early on and has established itself as one of the world's most attractive locations for the blockchain industry under the name Crypto Vallyals. In 2021, Switzerland introduced new legislation that is among the most innovation-friendly DLT regulations in the world.
The NTN Innovation Booster - Blockchain Nation Switzerland builds on this spirit of optimism and euphoria. Since the so-called Crypto Valley has gradually spread beyond its original epicentre of Zug to the whole of Switzerland and even beyond, this programme combines existing initiatives with organizations and individuals who want to become active in the field of blockchain technology. True to its nationwide activities over the past years, the Swiss Blockchain Federation is now entering a new dimension by actively promoting innovation.
Innosuisse is the Swiss Innovation Agency. Innosuisse's mission is to promote science-based innovation in the interest of business and society. The NTN Innovation Booster funding instrument brings together interested teams from universities, businesses, and community around an innovation topic at a national level. It stimulates the testing of concrete innovation ideas. For the period 2021-2024, Innosuisse is supporting twelve NTN Innovation Boosters with a focus on a broad range of different topics.