PoCathon 2021 - Inspiring innovation that harness verifiable credentials

Innovation continues to be a buzzword in today’s environment as businesses continuously adapt to changing stakeholder expectations with new strategies and solutions. The pandemic has also accelerated the importance of innovative solutions that leverage digital identities and verifiable credentials to safeguard public health information and restore international travel. 

As we continue to foster digital trust globally through verifiable credentials, we at Affinidi also strive to catalyze innovation and generate new ideas with other parties in the ecosystem. In line with this commitment, we hosted a PoCathon several weeks ago, inviting developers across the world to use Affinidi’s verifiable credentials API and SDK stack to build use cases that have the potential to solve real-world challenges that we are facing today. 

Developers had the opportunity to submit their solutions under three main categories: Healthcare; Fintech; and other industries such as Education, Real Estate, Travel, and others. We are pleased to have received 39 submissions from 471 participants, and reviewed 25 project presentations. This strong turnout is a testament to the thriving developer ecosystem and its growing capabilities. 

The enthusiasm and passion for innovation were evident among participants as they spent weeks ideating, designing, and developing verifiable credentials-based solutions to many real-time problems we face today. The result was a basket of submissions, ranging from empowering sex workers to creating secure proxies for the corporate world.

Along with the other judges, we were thoroughly impressed by all the submissions, which showcased how participants efficiently utilized Affinidi’s API and SDK stack to develop verifiable credential-based applications that address prevalent issues. 

After the six-week-long PoCathon, we are delighted to announce the winners for each category. These projects cover a range of real-world problems such as the availability of life-saving Automated External Defibrillator (AED) devices, provision of goods and services by healthcare professionals to an insured patient, and privacy of travelers’ data when visiting hotels. 

The winners are:

1) Healthcare

• First Prize: AED Access, created by Dave McKay, to allow qualified personnel to access the AED devices.

• Second Prize: YouNo, represented by Alan Wang. His project uses VCs to give people who work in the sex industry strong and respected protection to prevent the spread of sexually  transmittable diseases.
  

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2) Fintech 

• First Prize: Daver Proxy, an SSI-based prototype to simulate a corporate proxy creation which can be used to designate a person who is authorized to act on behalf of the company.
• Second Prize: RippleFund created by Callista and Carey. This project used Affinidi’s API to make crowdfunding accessible to and trusted by the public, to promote entrepreneurship and innovation.

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3) Open

• First Prize: TransportHub represented by Priyanka Pol, Nita Hinge, Madhusudan J, Tanvi Lokhande, and Mandar Tawde, who came together to revolutionize the future of trucking and logistics with verifiable credentials.
• Second Prize: The Hospitality Manager, a way to protect travelers’ privacy and help them travel light when visiting hotels for vacation or business. This project was created by Arnav Ladkat and Aamir Miyajiwala.
• Third Prize: David Bensadon who used VCs to enable migrant domestic workers to build up their CV, so they can have a thriving career, better salaries, and quick access to third-party services.

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Apart from these winners, there were also special prizes awarded to selected projects and impressive submissions that made an indelible mark in our inaugural PoCathon. You can view the full list here. 

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A huge thanks to all participants for their submissions as we work towards enriching the world of self-sovereign identities. Through initiatives like PoCathon, we aim to create an ecosystem for creating and sharing digital credentials in an open, interoperable, portable, and privacy-preserving manner. To learn more about how we are providing the building blocks for an SSI ecosystem, please visit here: https://www.affinidi.com/.

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For media enquiries, contact:

Rachael Renovah

Affinidi

rachael.r@affinidi.com

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