1.3 million Euro open call for internet innovators to develop blockchain-based solutions

The EU-funded project ONTOCHAIN is calling internet innovators to apply for its second open call and co-develop a new software ecosystem for trusted, traceable, and transparent ontological knowledge management.

A total budget of € 1.320.000 is available to support the best proposals. Participants will get grants up to €145k (equity-free funding), free coaching and free access to top infrastructure (iExec and MyIntelliPatent).

“Through ONTOCHAIN Open Call 1, 17 teams of high-level innovators got the opportunity to specify the core design aspects of the ONTOCHAIN ecosystem, which will be implemented by the teams selected in Open Call 2. Reaching this second stage of the ONTOCHAIN project cannot be more exciting, as we will see now the ecosystem growing and taking its concrete shape, for enabling trustworthy content and trustworthy information handling in the Next Generation Internet.

We expect that Open Call 2 selected applicants will take over with the same enthusiasm as all the stakeholders so far involved and make a brilliant contribution to enable a more distributed and transparent internet.“ Caroline Barelle, ONTOCHAIN Coordinator.

How it works?

Applicants have to submit a proposal under one of the following topics:

• Decentralized oracles for ONTOCHAIN
• Market mechanisms for ONTOCHAIN
• ONTOCHAIN interoperability & API Gateways
• ONTOCHAIN Network Design and scalability
• Semantic based marketplaces for ONTOCHAIN
• Data Provenance in ONTOCHAIN

Proposals on different topics are also considered, as long as they serve as a building block of the ONTOCHAIN infrastructure, and contribute to the overall ONTOCHAIN objective:

“Develop scalable blockchain, decentralized reputation systems and semantic web technologies, in order to achieve trustworthy content handling and information exchange as well as trustworthy service exchange in the next generation Internet/social networks for vital sectors of the European economy.”

Up to 12 projects will be selected to join an up to 10-month supporting programme.

How to apply?

Applications are openon F6S until the 15^th of September 2021, at 17:00 CEST:

https://www.f6s.com/ontochain-open-call-2/apply

A special webinar will be held on the 28^th of July, at 11:00am CEST, providing potential applicants more information about the programme and the application process: https://www.f6s.com/ontochain-open-call-2-webinar

For more information about the ONTOCHAIN open call go to

https://ontochain.ngi.eu/apply

About ONTOCHAIN

ONTOCHAIN marries the Semantic Web with Blockchain to deliver a novel software ecosystem for trusted, traceable, and transparent ontological knowledge management. ONTOCHAIN, which is developed under the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet initiative, explores and delivers novel interoperable on-chain and off-chain data, ontology, knowledge and information management methods.

The ONTOCHAIN software ecosystem consists of a novel protocol/Interfaces suite grouped into high-level application protocols, such as data provenance, reputation models, decentralised oracles, market mechanisms, ontology representation and management, privacy aware and secure data exchange, multi-source identity verification, value sharing and incentives and similar, and core protocols that include smart contracts, authorisation, certification, event gateways, identity management and identification, secure and privacy aware decentralised storage, data semantics and semantic linking, ONTOCHAIN optimisation and similar.

The ONTOCHAIN software ecosystem will demonstrate its potential in high impact domains, such as eHealth, eGovernment, eEducation, eCommerce, decentralised infrastructures and similar in order to achieve trustworthy information exchange and trustworthy and transactional content handling.

The project is operated by 7 partners with complementary expertise that form the core of a vibrant ecosystem: European Dynamics (Luxembourg), University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), IntelliSemantic (Italy), iExec Blockchain Tech (France), Athens University of Economics and Business (Greece), German Hellenic Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Greece) and F6S (Ireland).