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Update: Block.one’s VC Gives Grants for COVID-19 Tech

EOS VC COVID-19 Announcement

Today Block.one announced that it is awarding a US$50,000 grant to Genobank.io, a blockchain company developing an open-source app to facilitate anonymous and secure access to COVID-19 testing. Through its EOS VC Grants program and its partnership with FinLab EOS VC, Block.one has similarly funded several innovative companies that have turned their focus to solutions related to the global pandemic. From biotech to recruitment, companies using Block.one’s EOSIO blockchain software are stepping up to meet the new challenges emerging from the crisis. 

“We’ve witnessed the growth of an open source community whose passion and innovation have helped to identify and solve critical business problems in sectors ranging from art to wellness. With the onset of urgent world issues caused by the coronavirus, it is important that we empower and support the ways that blockchain technology is being applied to provide solutions,” said Block.one CEO Brendan Blumer. 

Block.one, through its EOS VC Grants program and its partnership with FinLab EOS VC, has funded these innovative companies with platforms addressing the COVID-19: 

Privacy-preserving DNA/RNA kit provider Genobank.io has partnered with the Telos Foundation to develop an open-source app named Agerona that will allow users to securely source low-cost COVID-19 testing. Results will be stored anonymously in a private repository in a distributed storage network and governed using EOSIO-based blockchain platform Telos where each user will control their own data and have the ability to share, edit and delete their results with researchers using health privacy. The app is expected to be released in May. 

“As an EOS VC Grants recipient, we are grateful to have the backing and support of Block.one’s venture arm EOS VC in aiding our efforts to anonymize DNA/RNA test kits (including coronavirus) while empowering patients and users to decide if they want their anonymized data to be  available to the scientific community and help control the spread of the coronavirus and potentially contribute to a treatment,” said Daniel Uribe, Genobank.io CEO. 

PUML Better Health is a health and wellness platform that allows corporates, brands and sponsors to reward members for completing healthy activity challenges such as daily steps, gym check-ins and fitness classes. While the pandemic and need for social distancing and isolation has emptied gyms, the EOSIO-based healthtech platform has launched its LIVE STREAM service in its app and on its website to help users track workouts at home. Members can now watch live sessions of in-home workouts and stress reducing well-being content and be rewarded in PUML tokens. Currently in beta, the PUML app is available in the Apple app store in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the UK.  

FinLab EOS VC investments Moonlighting and Innoplexus, are also addressing COVID-19 by adapting their platforms. On-demand freelance marketplace Moonlighting has recently announced free access to its searchable database of 200,000 work-from-home job listings and one million part-time opportunities. Having worked to actively convert its platform and service from paid to free, the company’s platform runs on EOSIO and allows job-seekers to create trusted work profiles that can also be accessed by other freelance and gig marketplaces. 

Meanwhile, Innoplexus has recently announced that it will share an open license by opening up its proprietary Ontosight® AI-based platform for drug discovery and development to medical researchers around the globe to aid and contribute to measures focused on the containment of COVID-19. The platform is already in use by researchers from the USA, Germany and India with the company hoping to contribute more to the scientific community’s ongoing research efforts of how the disease functions and spreads. 

“The use of blockchain, big data analytics, new technologies and proactive testing all play a central role in ensuring that the work of many labs and organizations around the globe can come together to respond to COVID-19 with the speed and agility required to help governments flatten not only the curve but the disease,” Gunjan Bhardwaj, CEO of Innoplexus AG. “The integration of EOSIO in our platform ensures that we can rapidly aggregate unpublished data that currently sits in silos around the world to speed actionable insights across the drug development life cycle for the development of tests and treatments for COVID-19. “

For more information about EOS VC, please visit vc.eos.io

About EOS VC Block.one’s EOS VC program offers developers and entrepreneurs the funding they need to create community-driven businesses leveraging EOSIO. It provides support through venture capital partnership funds that primarily aim to achieve sustained utilization of the EOSIO ecosystem by investing in a concentrated and diversified portfolio of blockchain-focused companies building on the EOSIO software. The EOS VC initiative is dedicated to fostering a global network of individuals from a number of disciplines through our engagement events. As part of the mission and vision, EOS VC engages with the blockchain developer community on a regular basis. For further information, please visit Block.one and vc.eos.io

About Block.one Block.one is a global software company specializing in high performance blockchain software. In 2018, it published EOSIO, a free, open-source protocol designed to bring speed, scalability, and ease of use to the secure and transparent fundamentals of distributed databases. Block.one’s venture capital arm, EOS VC, invests in companies, projects, and developers around the world leveraging EOSIO technology.

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