Building on the growing success of distributed ledger technologies, DIGITAL SME steps into the blockchain scene to offer its members new opportunities in the field. This week, together with a consortium of 12 industrial and scientific partners from Europe, DIGITAL SME kicked-off the initiative called Blockchain Innovation Spaces under the acronym Block.IS. This 4.9 million euro EU funded initiative will not only offer technical and business support to SMEs adopting blockchain but will also provide a total of 2.8 million euros to fund innovators in building high-tech enterprises.

The Block.IS consortium will bring together digital SMEs that provide blockchain-based business solutions with corporate users from the agrifood, logistics and finance sectors. Besides assisting SMEs in conceiving their business models for blockchain-based solutions, 90 selected SMEs will receive financial and technical support for the implementation of their innovative ideas and their delivery to the market.

“Technology providers, especially digital SMEs, increasingly focus on blockchain technology due to the greater transparency, security, and traceability it has to offer, as well as increased efficiency and speed. However, businesses operating in other sectors still lack awareness of the benefits that this technology has to offer. Therefore, we are very happy to promote cross-sectoral cooperation and building of new value chains based on blockchain technology”– commented Oliver Grün, President of European DIGITAL SME Alliance.

Besides business acceleration and financial support to SMEs, the work program of Block.IS includes a series of events, hackathons, and business missions to SME clusters across Europe. The online news section of digitalsme.eu on Future Technologies will host information and opportunities from Block.IS