From Switzerland to the World: the outcomes from the Blockchain Leadership Summit by InnMind

Dear startup founders, blockchain visioneers, digital entrepreneurs, corporate executives, geeks, asset-holders and investors, academicians, honourable state representatives and everyone who follows us!

On November 23-24 InnMind organised it's second large scale event in Basel, Switzerland - the Blockchain Leadership Summit. And we can't stay from sharing with you the feedback and outcomes after the event!

We have had two days of great content, meetings, interviews, knowledge sharing, discussion and start-up contest; over 70 speakers, 20+ main tracks to cover the major questions of blockchain development, adoption and application to industry, business and society.

Our team was honoured to have Councillor Baschi Durr, State Secretary Jörg Gasser, Ambassador Eric Jacob and Prince Michael of Liechtenstein opening the days of the Summit: their presence and involvement reflected the current status of DLT mass adoption - it is now not only the crypto-enthusiasts but states and societies facing the soon and inevitable digital transformation.

Industrial and business leaders like BOSCH, S7 Airlines, IBM, VEB, Port of Rotterdam, Novartis, KPMG, PWC, Baker McKenzie and Hong Kong Cyberport introduced their vision, use-cases and ongoing pilot projects of blockchain incorporation; something we used to think of a distant future was presented as running and operating already during the 2 days of the Blockchain Leadership Summit!

In addition to experts’ discussions and speeches, the Blockchain Leadership Summit enlightened the diverse audiences of enthusiasts, developers and entrepreneurs with several dedicated workshops bringing insights on building smart economy, delivering hot practices from industries, regulatory development, healthcare providers and researchers and asset management - all with one purpose to cast light on the blockchain application beyond common crypto and trading, taking us to the world of decentralized tomorrow!

The amazing merge of the traditional and crypto worlds was highlighted by representatives of NEO, IOHK, IOTA, ConsenSys, DASH, Lisk and Ripple and that time the major protocols operating were focused on the questions of adoption, social and business integration and migrating to the DLT.

The big players of the crypto-trade, OKEX, DEEX, Bitcoin Suisse, Huobi and LCX described the provisions and conditions of crypto-asset management that are soon to become the global trends and shared the most recent updates of B2B and C2C interaction in crypto-finance and trading and spoke about the modern approaches to induce liquidity and attract fiat capitals.

Another valuable aspect of enlightening our audiences was provided by the world’s top and most progressive universities and researchers of EPFL, University of Basel, UCL and Mechanism Labs who elaborated on complex topics of technical analysis and evaluation of DLTs, issues of security, anonymity and trust; what is most important is that such education is now available to everyone; Blockchain education is the path that leads to new career possibilities and mass adoption leads to mutual prosperity.

The philosophical pillars of the blockchain ideology were in detail described in the fields of social impact; financial inclusion, diversity, green economy, media and impact investment and much more that has the great DLT enhanced potential to take our lives and ways of social interaction to a new, fair and transparent levels were presented by CAA, Ubuntu Group, Po.et, Inkrypt, Ucommunity, WIBS, Positive Blockchain Initiative, BTC Media and AdsDax.

On the 1st day, attendees observed: “the battle” between 13 startups, that passed the pre-selection stage of the online competition that started 2 months prior to the event.

Teams of AdsDax, Apla, Betmatch, Bitcoin Miles, BitRussia, CryptOcean, CryptoNDX, Ebakus, Futurepia, HotelFriend, Orion Protocol, Please.com and Raido Financial presented their projects in front of 9 jury members and attendees from blockchain and crypto industry. The winners, CryptoNDX and Futurepia, had a chanсe to pitch their projects on the big stage during the second day of the Summit.

Unlike the common approach to present startups to the audience with a vague promise to expose unicorns, BLS 2018 held a real project competition evaluated by investment experts from Switzerland Innovation, EFO Alliance, Agentic Group, Core-Chain.io, Crypto Valley VC, EBAN, CryptoCoin.Pro, B-Chain, FinForge Fund and ICO Rating, who dedicated their efforts and time to mentor, assess and help start-ups reveal their business models and cases.

InnMind as the host of the Summit presented a demo version of its blockchain toolset to assess startups. This instrument was developed in partnership with HES-SO Valais, Swiss University of Applied Science. The goal of it is to support the development of the innovation ecosystem, create trustworthy and transparent relationships between startups and investors who consider those projects for potential investment. The official release of the instrument is planned for 2019.

All in all, we had more than six dozen experts, twenty hot topics covered, a gala dinner and non-stop networking, several billion dollars’ worth of asset management investment funds… and also a quart of tequila, a quart of brandy, a case of Red Bull, a handful of Ledger Nano S to give away, Polys, a blockchain based voting application and two competition winners.
Not that we needed all that for the event, but once you get locked into a serious Blockchain Leadership Summit, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.