Austrian Savings Bank awards Ethereum projects in startup competition

Crazy Commentary : For the purpose of investigating and researching blockchain, the Austrian First Savings Bank hosted a blockchain entrepreneurship competition and awarded the two winning teams with Ethereum and Bitcoin respectively.

Translation: Flora

Austrian savings bank Erste Bank hosted a blockchain startup competition, with two teams focusing on Ethereum projects taking home the grand prize.

The two winning projects were Etherisc, an automated insurance tool, and Status, a mobile browser that supports both payments and decentralized applications. Each team received a prize of 5,000 euros in ether.

Three other projects stood out from dozens of ideas from 29 countries around the world and received Bitcoin worth 1,670 euros. They are Bernstein (an anonymous file tool), Minebox (decentralized cloud support) and Helperbit (decentralized insurance and donation platform). The bank said on November 30 that they initially selected a total of 20 finalists.

In a statement, Erste Bank said it was sponsoring the competition to assist with its ongoing investigation into blockchain, with a view to eventually developing new customer-facing services.

Petia Niederlander

Petia Niederlander, Head of Retail and Corporate Operations at the bank, commented on the competition:

“As one of the organizers of the blockchain startup competition, Erste Bank is very pleased that all these interesting projects have put the focus on customers.”

Other organizations participating in the competition include Austrian energy company Energie Steiermark, eCounting, Kapa Ventures and BlockchainHub Granz.