Late last year, investors at Boost VC revealed that they had already provided $52 million to startups working in the world of the blockchain. There have been 52 different companies taking their share of those funds and the resources that Boost has reportedly provided.
Reports on Thursday (Feb. 18) said the startup incubator has just upped that number. Boost announced Tribe 7, another group of 20 companies that raises the total number of startups now working with the firm to 138, according to reports.
Only a few of those startups are working in the space of the blockchain, however. Boost VC’s Tribe 5 saw 90 percent of its companies operating in the space; that percentage, however, dropped to only a handful for Tribes 6 and 7.
But reports did highlight the four newest blockchain startups in this round, some with more obvious use cases for the enterprise than others.
One startup, for instance, is Magic. in Bits, an Israel-based venture that applies various security technologies to protect blockchain systems. Applications for its services include things like storage protection and compliance checks — two aspects that will be key if blockchain technology is to be trusted for corporate payments.
Another, Ownership Technology, similarly provides security in the form of intellectual property protection; only, this time, it uses blockchain technology to do the protecting. It’s an anti-counterfeiting tool that uses the ledger technology to prevent unauthorized use of intellectual property, whether it be physical or digital, reports said.
The other two startups operating in the blockchain this round may appear more consumer-oriented at first glance, but their solutions also have the potential for enterprise applications.
Stampery uses the bitcoin blockchain to generate a ledger of files and emails for individuals, in essence, keeping a record of their existence. Reports noted that the company protects against any alterations of those documents and is a legally binding service; reports pointed out, though, that there s no legal precedence (yet) regarding the use of blockchain evidence in a court of law, one possible impact of this service.
The fourth and final blockchain-focused startup in this group is Mailman, a firm that uses incentives to increase the importance of emails; that incentive is a bitcoin reward sent to a receiver when they reply to a message, reports explained.
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