Masayoshi Son finally made his move! He announced that he will work with Topcoder to develop a blockchain-based fundraising platform

Comment: SoftBank and Masayoshi Son’s sensitivity to technology and trends may have been unmatched in the past, but they have rarely taken action since the acquisition of Sprint in 2012. As a global Internet giant holding 37% of Alibaba’s shares, SoftBank has never relaxed its pursuit of technological development. Perhaps due to Japan’s unique national complex and its profound layout for future industries, SoftBank has invested heavily in robots and has begun to reap considerable returns. Now we find that SoftBank has begun to test the waters of blockchain technology, starting with the fundraising platform. This may not only solve the huge cost problem of SoftBank itself in philanthropy, but also explore the problems of cross-border capital flows and complex community interactions on the blockchain, which is a smart choice.

In 2000, Masayoshi Son invested $20 million in Jack Ma

Softbank, the world's 62nd largest company and Japan's largest Internet and telecommunications company, recently joined forces with Topcoder to jointly host a decentralized blockchain development competition for entrepreneurs and startups. (http://www.softbank.jp/corp/group/sbm/news/press/2016/20160106_01)

SoftBank hopes to find a basic prototype of an Internet fundraising platform with great transparency. The competition will last for three months, from January 6 to March 31, to design a decentralized and blockchain-based application with immutable records that can be deployed on a cross-industry platform.

SoftBank said that the smart protocol on Bitcoin blockchain technology has become very important for transaction history and network data. Distributed ledger technology and its built-in system will change various applications of Japanese telecom operators and Internet companies.

The SoftBank team will judge the submitted blockchain-based systems based on multiple criteria, including transparency, creativity, simplicity and efficiency. The winner of the competition will be able to work with the SoftBank team to develop a fully functional Internet-based fundraising platform prototype.

SoftBank explained that users of the platform must be able to complete the following tasks:

1. Organizers can create charity projects;

2. Users can choose charity projects and make donations;

3. Users as volunteers can provide their computing power to the donation platform and record the donation data in the blockchain;

4. Charities can decide how to use donations.

Topcode announced:

“Topcoder will compensate teams that are able to implement the payment structure in this challenge. The first payment will be paid to the winning teams in two steps. The first payment will be paid after the review phase is completed. The second payment will be paid after the support phase is completed.”

SoftBank's engineering team will review the system's technical architecture, while Topcoder will be responsible for reviewing aspects such as the platform's plain colors, simple fonts, ease of use, and concise images. SoftBank and Topcoder hope to find a decentralized platform that will have a very good user experience, which will allow existing customers and company shareholders to test it.

Topcoder added:

“As a prototype, clients will demonstrate their services within their company, to partner businesses and charities.”

The platform needed to have a clean, simple mobile (both iPhone and Android) and web-based (HTML5 and CSS3) platform, and participating teams needed to develop a proof of concept that could be deployed and allow anyone to publicly track donations.

This level of transparency will allow organizations and donors to easily observe the allocation and flow of funds in real time without any delay. This decentralized and peer-to-peer system can completely eliminate the need for intermediaries and third-party institutions, which can significantly reduce SoftBank's costs. Currently, the company hopes to obtain an application that can run automatically without the involvement of a central authority.

The Japanese tech giant, which owns 37% of Alibaba Group, 80% of Sprint and 35% of Yahoo Japan, is in a position to test the fundraising platform with its large and diverse customer base across multiple industries. The company hinted that the SoftBank team and possibly Japanese charities will test the system to ensure the platform's efficiency and transparency.