One of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals is to provide legal identity for all of the world’s population by 2030 – a goal that may be more relevant than ever now that new coronavirus immunity ID certificates are being discussed. To get a sense of the scale of the world’s current identity crisis, consider that approximately 75% of the world’s population currently lacks a bank account due to their inability to prove their identity through a valid passport, birth certificate, utility bill, or other means to complete KYC (Know Your Client) procedures.

A blockchain-based solution could be a starting point for a permanent record of legal identification. In addition, due to the ledger’s decentralized design, it would eliminate reliance on a central issuing body or government involvement (a ledge meaning whereby the blockchain records and maintains all data exchanges).

A blockchain, in simple terms, is a growing and interlinked series or chain of documents known as blocks. Each block contains the previous block’s cryptographic hash or identity, transaction data, and timestamp. Because a blockchain is often controlled by a peer-to-peer network, any change to a block must be approved by most of the network’s nodes. Each of the nodes, which are computers, has a copy of the blockchain. After a hash examination, a transaction is only recorded into the ledger if a more significant number of nodes accepted it.

Blockchain technology, which has various applications in financial inclusion, smart contracts, and tracking goods and transactions, is a valuable tool for preventing fraud because records cannot be changed retrospectively.

With this in mind, we’ve compiled a list of top Europe’s most promising firms that are promoting and expanding the usage of blockchain in their core services and products. We generated this list by looking at things like growth rate, closed fundraising rounds, global launches, and team size, among other things.

1. Odem – Odem, a Zug-based Swiss business, is bringing blockchain to education. Its goal is to modernize the antiquated infrastructure that supports education, training, and employment, making them universally inexpensive, accessible, verifiable, and transportable. The firm received roughly €2 million in funding in 2018, which is used to enhance its learning platform, allowing students to own and own their academic records in one location for the rest of their lives, safely kept on the blockchain.
2. DappRadar – DappRadar, a Lithuanian firm created in 2018, was listed on our list of Lithuanian startups to watch in 2020 and received €2 million in venture funding in 2019. Dapps (decentralized applications) run on peer-to-peer computer networks, use open source code, and are launched using blockchain. DappRadar monitors these Dapps (a total of 2,900) across several blockchains to filter out the fraudulent and irrelevant activity and give actionable market intelligence.
3. Bankera – Bankera was founded in 2017 in Vilnius, Lithuania, by Vytautas Karalevicius to integrate traditional and crypto economies into a single platform that provides crypto-friendly financial services to businesses and individuals around the world. The company focuses on solutions that are easy to use, cost-effective, and quick. Bankera is trying to become a blockchain-friendly bank, with crypto-backed loans for individuals and businesses, crypto-funds (comprising multiple cryptocurrencies and crypto tokens), and robo-advisory wealth management solutions. In February 2018, the company raised over €100 million in an Initial Coin Offering (ICO).
4. Limechain – The headquarters of Limechain are in Sofia, Bulgaria. Nick Todorov, Vladislav Ivanov, George Spasov, and Chris Veselinov founded the company in 2017. With a portfolio of blockchain development, smart contracts, ICOs, and crowd sales, the startup focuses on establishing a blockchain solution for startups and large organizations. LimePay, for example, is a SaaS platform that allows end-users to quickly conduct transactions for decentralized applications (dApps) using fiat money without having to register or create a crypto wallet. Instead, exclusively a credit card is required, and the customer can make crypto payments to retailers who only accept crypto. Procter & Gamble, Raiffeisenbank, and Vaultitude are among the startup’s biggest clients, indicating that the company is on the right track.

5. Solve.Care – Pradeep Goel launched Solve.Care, a worldwide healthcare blockchain technology startup, in Tallinn, Estonia, in 2017. The company wants to make the world’s healthcare systems more transparent and eliminate bureaucracy. It presents a patient-centric platform for connecting stakeholders and coordinating medical services, benefits, and payments more organized and less inconvenient. It facilitates payments between patients, doctors, pharmacists, laboratories, employers, insurance, and others by running on the Ethereum blockchain and adhering to the ERC20 token standard. In addition, it has developed a global network of healthcare experts, contractors, and advisors and has raised €26.7 million.