Blockchain
Pivoting from Adversity to Opportunity — In the Spring 2020 Emerging Tech and Social Impact Challenge Lab
The Spring 2020 semester started innocently enough. There was an epidemic at the other end of the world, but it seemed like it would not really affect us in the Bay Area. The students came up with some early ideas for their startups after going through their problem/solution exercises. The teams of 4-6 students were…
Read MoreBerkeley Startups Use Blockchain to Accelerate COVID-19 Response
Pressure on the private sector is increasing day by day as the demand for technology-based solutions to reduce the spread of the virus rises. A multitude of challenges remain for society in regards to testing and tracking the disease as well as getting people back to work. Time is of the essence. Fortunately, a variety…
Read MoreGuests Rock the Fall 2019 Emerging Tech and Social Impact Challenge Lab!
The last couple of blog posts highlighted student projects from the respective Challenge Labs. Instead of doing it in this post, we have this amazing video showcasing outstanding projects from last semester compiled by Justin Wong. The video highlights student video blogs where they ruminate on their entrepreneurship journey, and it also includes clips of their final start-up…
Read MoreHow are entrepreneurs using blockchain? Here are 13 loglines from 13 innovative startups in the Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator
The Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator is a joint venture by three premier organizations on the UC Berkeley campus: Berkeley Engineering’s Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, the Haas School of Business, and the Blockchain at Berkeley student group. Its purpose is to move new blockchain technologies and ventures forward, through leveraging the unparalleled resources at UC…
Read MoreMeet ‘Puma Browser,’ a browser with built-in micropayments
As a photography enthusiast, Yuriy Dybskiy had been thinking about how to make money as a creator. After working on projects tackling the challenge of creating a sustainable stream of income online, he took to a blockchain-powered idea: a browser with in-built micropayments. Puma Browser is a privacy-focused mobile web browser which provides a new…
Read MoreLeaf Global: Using Blockchain to Enable Virtual Banking Across Borders
The UN estimates that there are over 68 million people around the world who have been forcibly displaced from their homes. Even more live in states of economic, social and political instability. While asylum-seekers wait for their claims to be processed, they reside in detention centers with no entitlement to the freedom of movement, residency,…
Read MoreA Blockchain Halloween in New Orleans
Karin Bauer from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and Lauren Weymouth from Ripple have apparently been brainstorming about how to incorporate blockchain-based courses into programs of other universities, and also how to make this effort more inclusive. Dr. Ali Emdad from Morgan State University was also a partner, and came up with an idea…
Read More‘Coin Assistant’ Startup Makes Crypto Easy to Use
Coin founders Damon Nam and Byron Levels had initially set out to solve a personal problem: their passion for the potential of blockchain was met with an equal frustration for current solutions with high friction, extreme complexity, and poor user experiences. Investigating this problem further, Nam and Levels decided to poll consumers about the core…
Read MoreWhat I’ve Learned as a Research Scholar at UC Berkeley Blockchain Lab
It takes a (Blockchain) Village!
Spring Reflections, Fall Futures, and Student Project Highlights Spring of 2019 was the semester of collaboration and joint ventures for our Blockchain Challenge Lab. We expanded the program to include FinTech, and the new material and domain resulted in a number of novel projects, many of which are highlighted below. We saw increased teamwork across…
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