Best Ukrainian Blockchain Startups. Part 1

Ukrainian IT Industry Insights

Before we move on, let’s go through some quick numbers about IT Industry in Ukraine *:

• #1 engineering force in Central and Eastern Europe
• #1 outsourcing destination in the Europe, the Middle East and Africa region
• $2.3 bn value of software outsourcing export
• 30 times growth in IT outsourcing within the past decade
• 4^th largest number of IT professionals in the world

Ukrainian IT industry has even bigger growth perspectives. In the Technology Market Assessment: Ukraine 2016 research, Phillip J. Hatch, global strategy and economic development executive, assumes that Ukraine’s potential to export IT services can grow up to $275bn/year in the nearest future. While being quite an “aggressive” target, the aforementioned numbers show it is reachable.

This paves an excellent ground for the booming of Blockchain developments in Ukraine.

Ukrainian Blockchain Community and Startups **

The hype around the Blockchain technology started to grow since the last year. Ukraine was not an exception. The Ukrainian Blockchain community is the 4th largest in the world, with hundreds of people with strong technological background getting involved into subject matter each month.

Let’s take a look at some of the most interesting Blockchain startup projects from Ukraine.

TREE TAG

A traceability system designed for smartphones aiming to help industry and governments remove illegally logged tropical hardwood from the global supply chain.

Status: Working application

Features:

• Tracking. The application allows to track each felled timber from cutting down to ultimate buyer’s purchasing.
• Protection. Controlled industry helps to avoid illegal forest clearance and destroying.
• Recreation. Tracking trees allows to register broken forest areas to border them from cutting in the years ahead to let them rebound.
• Stable application work. Blockchain usage guarantees the offline work and hackers attacks resistance.

BITALO

A decentralized Bitcoin exchange and escrow service with no influence over user’s resources (an uncommon feature for most Bitcoin exchange services).

Status: Already in production

Features:

• Safe Trading System. HD-Multi-signature wallet with backup transactions helps to protect user’s resources from hackers attacks.
• Safe Communication Channels. Fully encrypted environment ensures secure communication between users without any possibilities for site administration access.
• Arbitration and Dispute Resolution. Different scenarios for all possible transactions and disputes between users.
• Information Support. Providing users with all information about Bitcoin system, including price predictions.

GURTOM FOUNDATION

An accounting platform for volunteers that simplifies goods and services exchange processes.

Status: Already in production

Features:

• Practical Platform. The Blockchain-based system with comfortable admin panel and a personal wallet available via the web and mobile apps.
• Information Assignment. Provides benefactors with information about voluntary organizations’ needs; volunteers are provided with the list of social-oriented companies with competitive prices.
• Comfortable Accounting Services. Creates accounting statements available for volunteers and benefactors.

INFRA

Ukrainian developers have created the uniform protocol for the financial web as a communication regulator between banks and customers.

Status: Written protocol

Features:

• Structured Financial Operations. There is no common ledger. Each customer decides to share his own ledger with banks, the same as the bank may decide to share its ledgers with other banks.
• Security. Users and their ledgers are tied to public keys by the digital signature of a bank to protect personal and bank data.
• Safety Protocol System. Each group of shared ledgers has its own regulating mechanism and validators.

In the second part of our investigation, we will talk about other best Blockchain startups available on the Ukrainian scene. Stay tuned!

• * Source: IT Ukraine from A to Z – 2016, report by Ukraine Digital News and AVentures
• ** All projects described in this article are developed by Distributed Lab.