Netherlands: Odyssey Announces Winners Of 2019 Blockchain And AI Hackathon

Netherlands: Odyssey Announces Winners Of 2019 Blockchain And AI Hackathon

By Diana Ngo - min read
Updated 22 May 2020

Odyssey, a blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) hackathon backed by the Dutch government, has announced the winners of this year’s competition.

60 jury panel members elected 19 winning teams. These worked
on solving challenges related to topics including digital identity, digital citizenship,
inclusive finance and insurance.

The winning teams and solutions of the Odyssey hackathon
2019, divided into 12 verticals, are:

Fossil Free Future:

Frontier Oost: A solution that verifies the energy
production of an individual household based on data gathered from external
sources.

HorsePower: A virtual mobile power plants for local
communities sharing electricity for local line capacity improvement and
normalizing demand and supply.

Nature 2.0:

Habari: A new ecosystem of plants, people and machines to
protect our food.

Kryha: An artificial natural selection in order to make
machines that can build a better planet or even enable life on another planet.

Digital Nation’s Infrastructure:

VX Company: A digital identity solution for buildings which
parties can, with permission, add data sources too.

A Solid Web: A solution to enable users to make more
informed decisions by giving them detailed insights and full control over their
permissions.

ChainMix: A solution for risk minimization and fraud
prevention for modern business transactions.

21st Century Digital Citizenship:

Data5: A solution to identify, analyze, solve, and build
bridges for all open datasets and provide solutions.

Delft Hackathon Team: An identity groundup based on social
structure/hierarchies, so that personal data could be used in other services

Rethink Retirement:

OV Software: A solution focusing on bringing the power of
pensions back to the people.

Tradisys: A job marketplace for social organizations and
responsible citizens that helps people to retire earlier and make the local
community a better place.

International Travel:

idShapers: A digital passenger ID that lets the passenger
control what they share and minimizes GDPR risks for the airline.

Crisis & Disaster Management:

Edgica: A solution to tokenize the safety of hazardous
material transportation by logging and validating the relevant data with an
IOTA ecosystem.

The Future Firefighters: A solution to help emergency
responders to make faster and safer decisions by collecting and analyzing
information from both closed and open data streams.

Inclusive Banking:

SocialTec: A smart economy platform to unleash the untapped
potential of goods and services within the local community.

Feeding the Future:

Team GoodChain: A solution that enables food and beverage
brands to combine good business with social impact to establish personalized
relationships with their customers.

Scaling Wildlife:

BerChain: A social badge for corporate websites backed by
real data showing the social impact of their donation.

Tokenizing Ecosystems:

Circularise : A solution that allows investors to visualize
investments in open source protocols, and which generates smart contracts that
run the protocols, allocate transaction fees, and govern a voting system.

Future of Cargo Insurance:

Poort8: A solution that enables secure and controlled data
sharing within logistics.

This year’s Odyssey hackathon, which took place from April
11 to 15, 2019, was attended by 1,500 people. 100 teams had to create solutions
to address 20 challenges. They were supported by more than 200 experts,
corporate and governmental challenge holders, regulatory partners and
scientists representing the likes of the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom
Relations of the Netherlands, the Dutch central bank, the Netherlands Authority
for the Financial Markets (AFM), the European Union Regional Development Fund,
Deloitte, Vattenfall, and KLM.

Looking back at the event, Rutger van Zuidam, founder and
CEO of DutchChain and Odyssey, commented:

“We have experienced an unwavering spirit of collaboration as well as the ability to completely change people’s perspectives on assumptions they bring with them to the hackathon. People work together, not to prove they are right, but to see how they can do things in a new way, and then come to a different understanding of the problem and potential solutions.”

Odyssey 2019 culminated with a closing event during which the winning teams moved on to the Odyssey Incubation Program. The program, which will run from April until June, will focus on launching the ecosystems of the winning solutions by introducing them to relevant corporate and governmental stakeholders, investors, and ambassadors and influencers, with the goal to turn these prototypes into actual products.

Six of the winning teams were selected for additional mentorship
by Super Accelerators. These will receive additional support and access to
networks of investors and industry experts, designed to help them develop their
solution.