News

The Netherlands’ blockchain ecosystem currently includes more than 300 companies. The market is becoming more professional, producing more standard solutions. Companies are also applying blockchain technology more widely in their organisations or chains. This is revealed in the third update of ‘Blockchain Ecosystem Netherlands’ which Berenschot publishes today.

The best way to enhance the blockchain ecosystem in the Utrecht region is a roadmap that involves working on concrete blockchain projects. This approach enables involved parties to discover, experiment, apply blockchain and to scale this up. This is the finding from a Berenschot report commissioned by Stichting Economic Board Utrecht (EBU).

Over the past few months, Berenschot, under contract to the Economic Board Utrecht (EBU), has conducted research into promising blockchain propositions in the Green and Healthy domains in the Utrecht region. One component of the research was to map out the blockchain ecosystem for the entire Netherlands.

The ‘Platform Forus’, an initiative set up by the consortium comprising Foundation Forus, the Municipality of Zuidhorn, QHN IT specialists and Berenschot, is one of the two winners of the blockchain competition run by the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) phase II.

Yesterday, the Dutch Intelligence and Security Services Act referendum marked a first for the Municipality of Groningen: at five polling stations, rather than counting the votes by hand, they were counted using a blockchain application. The council worked on this project with Berenschot consultants and LAB15 technology partners. The turnout could be followed in real-time and when voting closed, it was compared with the number of votes counted.

The Economic Board Utrecht (EBU) has asked Berenschot to research promising blockchain propositions in the Green and Healthy domains in the Utrecht region.

2016 was in many ways the year of blockchain, and of developing concepts for blockchain business applications. You’ve probably heard a lot about blockchain in the media, and you might be aware that the technology and its applications are not (yet) easy to understand.