Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator Selects Several Polkadot-related Projects for the 2021 Cohort

The Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator has announced its selection of the 2021 cohort of startups. Over 200 projects applied to take part, and several of the 21 selected teams have projects related to the Polkadot and Substrate ecosystems.

Berkeley’s Blockchain Xcelerator is a joint venture by the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, the Berkeley Haas School of Business and the Blockchain at Berkeley student group. The program is designed to propel top blockchain entrepreneurs and scholars into the ecosystem; teams receive support from Berkeley mentors, researchers, faculty and venture capital firms and students.

The 21 projects selected cover a diverse range of applications, from infrastructure to DeFi to sustainable practices.

Polkadot- and Substrate-related Projects

Automata Network — a decentralized service protocol providing traceless privacy services for Dapps on Polkadot and Ethereum.

Basin Logix — a blockchain-based platform for natural resource management and governance. As part of their work they examine the feasibility of tokenizing water rights with Substrate to help solve the sustainability crisis.

BitCountry — a decentralized virtual world and NFTs built on Substrate. BitCountry is driven by a Polkadot-inspired economic model and is planning to launch on Kusama.

Etherize Entities — is working to bring “hybrid entities” to the Polkadot ecosystem by allowing anyone to wrap a DAO’s addresses and contracts inside of a traditional legal container known as a “Series LLC”, and will be integrated with Edgeware’s user interface, Commonwealth.

HydraDX — a cross-chain liquidity protocol for the Polkadot ecosystem built on Substrate that aims to bring a composable base layer for crypto liquidity.

Kylin Network — a decentralized Oracle network powered by Polkadot, offering multiple Real-time data sources.

Litentry — a cross-chain identity aggregation protocol built on Substrate that plans to launch in the Polkadot ecosystem. Litentry enables linking identity across different networks, facilitating decentralization and transparency.

Manta Network — an interoperable privacy protocol for the DeFi Stack, with a privacy-preserving decentralized exchange as their first use case. Manta Network is built on Substrate and plans to launch in the Polkadot ecosystem.

OnFinality & SubQuery Network — supports blockchain developers within the Polkadot ecosystem by providing infrastructure and API services, allowing blockchain DevOps to be automated.

ParaState — is an Ethereum-compatible (eWasm) smart contract platform built on Substrate that allows smart contracts to be written in popular programming languages. By installing the ParaState Pallet, any Substrate blockchain can become Ethereum-compatible.

PESA (formerly Wificoin) — allows you to turn your mobile phone data and minutes into money and phone numbers into a cross-chain wallet. PESA aims to create an easy and intuitive on/off ramp to the Polkadot ecosystem for local currencies.

Build with Polkadot

Polkadot is a layer-0 protocol that provides a secure environment for cross-chain composability of applications and protocols across multiple shards.

By parallelizing transactions, Polkadot solves major scalability issues that have hampered blockchain development to date. Polkadot also introduces a highly advanced, open governance system that will allow the network to innovate and grow at a much more rapid pace than legacy networks. Applications from decentralized finance and energy to gaming and communications will thrive on Polkadot, challenging the centralized platforms of Web 2.0. Polkadot was cofounded by Gavin Wood, the cofounder and former CTO of Ethereum and creator of the Solidity programming language.

Keep up to date with developments in the Polkadot ecosystem and its canary network Kusama by joining our vibrant community.

Web3 Foundation supports development work driving advancement and adoption of decentralized software protocols. Discover more about the grants programs here.

Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator Selects Several Polkadot-related Projects for the 2021 Cohort was originally published in Polkadot Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.