2020 is finally over, and we’re all looking forward to a new beginning in 2021. We’ve been reflecting on the highs and lows of the previous year, and how they affected us all in the blockchain industry and beyond.
First, the elephant in the room — the COVID-19 pandemic.
This virus affected us all in such a devastating manner personally and changed our world professionally. We are yet to see all the effects of COVID-19 on the global economy and how blockchain can help in mitigating the consequences.
AIKON managed to weather the storm, by focusing on our people first and doing everything we could as a team to keep all of us employed, with health insurance during this difficult time. We also applied for and received a Paycheck Protection Loan from the government that helped buy us time in the spring, when we needed it most.
In the summer, we partnered with Algorand — to work on our shared goal of using blockchain to create a more fair and transparent financial system. ORE ID received a major grant from the Algorand Foundation and we’ve been working with them to drive business adoption of their blockchain since then. Since then we’ve helped a host of companies to adopt Algorand.
Meanwhile, our work on Ethereum and EOS continued. We launched multi-sig functionality and a host of new Social Login options. (You can view the list at oreid.io).
We signed major partnerships with Alliance Block and Republic. We helped the Open Rights Foundation find 21 block producers from across the world to run the ORE Network and we had tens of thousands of users make hundreds of thousands of blockchain transactions.
In 2021 — our goals are bigger and more ambitious.
With numerous partnerships in the final stages of realization, AIKON has much to look forward to this year — we expect hundreds of thousands of new users for ORE ID and we’re launching a new product called ORE Vault. Our email list will be the first to get access to this new product — so sign up at AIKON.com to get our updates!
We’re also expecting multiple new grants from Layer 1 Blockchains. And many of the customers from 2020 will be launching their integrations in 2021. Republic and Bountyblok are next in line.
Keep reading our blog in 2021 — we’ll have more good news coming soon!
———
About AIKON
AIKON, a San Francisco-based VC backed firm, was founded in 2017 with the goal of enabling the digital asset economy and empowering users from all over the globe by securing their personal information via blockchain.
AIKON has developed the Open Rights Exchange (ORE) protocols to manage access to digital rights and access, and has been enabling mainstream blockchain adoption with its ORE ID secure identity service. With ORE ID, AIKON aims to foster a new era of secure identities that protects users and their data, powered by the blockchain.