Zilliqa announces 2020-2021 cohort for supporting blockchain startups

By Edil Corneille

Blockchain platform Zilliqa announced its 2020-2021 cohort of selected companies participating in the ZILHive Accelerator programme. It is a 6-month blockchain startup accelerator designed to support early and late-stage startups that are using or looking to use the Zilliqa protocol to build blockchain solutions. From digital asset exchanges to stablecoins, this year’s batch of 8 companies has been selected to promote blockchain development within Open Finance (OpFi).

ZILHive was designed to drive innovation and further the growth of a stronger OpFi ecosystem across the globe. Centred around the broader theme of democratising finance, this year’s projects will receive training in business modelling, design thinking, legal, marketing, and fundraising, with late-stage startups gaining access to Singapore-based Zilliqa’s broad network of industry partners and mentors to build applications that better address business needs. These startups have worked to create business use cases on Zilliqa, and many are said to have scaled up.

Han Wen Chua, Senior Vice President of Ecosystem Development at Zilliqa articulated, “The need for digital finance has accelerated with the ongoing pandemic, coupled with ASEAN’s large underbanked population, the time is now for FinTech to take on a greater role in adopting a more open financial ecosystem. With the success of our first cohort of ZILHive startups, we are pleased to announce our next batch of promising projects as we propel the use of blockchain in OpFi.”

The ZILHive Accelerator programme will run from August 31, 2020, to February 2021. This year’s batch includes Propine, Notabene, Rupiah Token, MugglePay, Moonlight, CommX, Moonlet, and Lumiere.

Committed to accelerating the adoption and awareness of blockchain within FinTech across ASEAN, Zilliqa has launched the ZILHive Open Finance consortium. The consortium will consist of Zilliqa Research, Xfers, Elliptic, Switcheo Network, XanPool, and Magic, together with the eight startups participating in the ZILHive Accelerator as the firms work together to foster a more collaborative blockchain ecosystem and engender greater value within the OpFi space.

Ivan Poon, CEO at Switcheo Network enunciated, “As the OpFi ecosystem continues to mature around the world, it’s crucial that we nurture the next wave of talent and as a mentor for the ZILHive Accelerator programme, I’m thrilled to see what these promising entrants can bring to the table. To that end, the launch of ZILHive Open Finance consortium is a testament to the power of collaboration in enacting meaningful change—as one of the consortium’s earliest members, we look forward to joining some of the industry’s leading firms in order to pioneer a tech-enabled vision for financial inclusion across the globe.”

Zilliqa has stated that throughout the past few years, its commitment to growing OpFi has also seen several strategic partnerships in a bid to enable a more inclusive financial ecosystem across the region. Beginning with StraitsX, a Southeast Asian stablecoin initiative that kicked off with the launch of XSGD, a Singapore dollar-backed stablecoin in collaboration with FinTech payments provider Xfers, Zilliqa has since partnered with Switcheo Exchange to launch ZilSwap in order to drive ASEAN stablecoins liquidity across the Zilliqa network.