On the 27th August, professional blockchain accelerator Block Crafters (Co-CEOs Suyong Park, Hoon Song) completed the selection of company participants for its ‘Block Crafters CHALLENGE X 2 Program’ (“Block Crafters CHALLENGE X 2”), a global acceleration program for Korean blockchain technology convergence startups.
Block Crafters launched the program having been selected for two years straight as an organization running ‘K-Global Accelerator Development’, hosted by the Korean Ministry of Science and ICT (Minister: Kiyoung Choi, “MSIT”) and the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (President: Chang Yeong Kim, “NIPA”). The program is organized by Block Crafters, in cooperation with Honest Ventures (CEOs Seungheum Lee, Seungmin Baek) as a participating organization.
This year, 9 startups from the 4th Industrial Revolution convergence field, including blockchain, were selected as participants. In the venture category 7 companies: Comake, Nine Corporation, Big-After, Opus-M, dsrv labs, Gorilla Bomb, Granora; and in the Early Venture category 2 companies: Proptalkchain, IREVIEW.
Block Crafters will provide accelerating to the selected companies for 20 weeks until the end of November. Companies will receive early investment, professional mentoring, commercialization and technology, investor networking, global expansion, facilities, promotion, etc. customized to each company’s needs. Further, to help the selected startups with global expansion, Block Crafters will hold a demo day and investor networking event in November with speakers invited from Korea and abroad in 4th Industrial Revolution-related fields.
In parallel, participating organization Honest Ventures will provide the participants with professional and extensive advice to attract follow-up investment. Honest Ventures is an early startup investor that provides funding, network expansion, competence building and other support to businesses commercializing 4th Industrial Revolution and other cutting-edge technology such as content, bio, semiconductor or ICT – even if they are on their second attempt. Currently, Honest Ventures participates in the ‘Chuncheon SME Growth Support Fund’, ‘Gyeonggi Second Chance Fund’, ‘Honest Smart City Fund’, ‘Innovation Business Park Fund No. 1’, ‘NEXEED Fund No. 1’ and more.
Suyong Park, Block Crafters Co-CEO, said, “Each of the 9 startups participating in Block Crafters CHALLENGE X 2 is achieving meaningful results in their respective area and I hope they will grow into flag bearers for the 4th Industrial Revolution era”, adding “As an industry-leading accelerator, we will continue to prepare various accelerator programs such as Block Crafters CHALLENGE X 2 going forward, and identify pioneering startups in the blockchain technology convergence area”.
Block Crafters, host of Block Crafters CHALLENGE X 2, is a professional blockchain accelerator founded in May 2018. Immediately following its establishment, the company screened over 500 blockchain projects worldwide and is carrying out acceleration and investment connection for selected projects in diverse fields. The projects currently accelerated by Block Crafters have performed exceptionally, attracting over KRW 10bn in follow-up funding and striking over 40 global partnerships. Further, in May the company attracted strategic investment from private investor Yang-Hyun Cheon, Chairman of Cocone, as well as venture capital (VC) firms DT& Investment and TINVESTMENT, marking a new start for the Block Crafters as a digital asset service provider in the field of finance and investment.
In the year following the launch of digital asset service Haru, the company has seen rapid growth and is continuing to expand its service area. Haru’s user numbers have grown almost 1,000% worldwide this year, showcasing the service’s incredible global presence and popularity. In the same period, user deposits have increased by over 450%, underscoring the great trust and reputation the platform has amongst the crypto community. The company’s performance figures are driven by active demand, as users benefit from competitive interest rates on a variety of deposits and lock-ups offered on the platform. To date, over $30,000,000 has been transacted on the platform, with over 200,000 separate payouts to users – showing that Haru has the scope and infrastructure to scale to record-breaking levels.