Blockchain start-up accelerator Satoshi Block Dojo officially launched on Wednesday, August 25 at a meetup event held in London, United Kingdom. The start-up accelerator offers entrepreneurs who aim to build businesses running on the BSV blockchain the opportunity to grow their companies and deliver products to market in record time while courting funding from investors.
Start-ups who apply to join Satoshi Block Dojo and pass the evaluation process are awarded a £10,000 ‘golden hello’ in addition to a wealth of training and services provided by the company and its partners. The team aims to fast-track 241 start-ups by 2026, putting each start-up through a rigorous 12-week programme, split into two six-week sprints, in which they will develop a minimum viable product of their application that is fit to present to potential investors.
Once these investor partners agree to invest in the start-up, the team will receive £140,000 in SEIS funding for their first year of operations. After this year, the start-up may secure up to an additional £1.5 million in EIS funding from the same investor partners, provided they have built a functional product and are generating revenue.
As a start-up accelerator for BSV-based applications, Satoshi Block Dojo offers myriad services and supporting tools to entrepreneurs and developers who are building new businesses on the BSV blockchain. These include handling legal contracts and financial activities, providing two specialised mentors for 24-hour advice, pairing entrepreneurs with the right co-founders, offering BSV coding training via Vaionex Corporation’s SatoLearn platform and creating an investor pitch deck and sales strategy for start-ups.
The model used by Satoshi Block Dojo benefits start-ups, investors, the accelerator itself and the entire Bitcoin SV ecosystem by enabling the launch of new and exciting applications on the BSV blockchain. The accelerator is run by a ‘dream team’ of highly qualified business and blockchain experts who offer powerful and valuable insights into how applications built on BSV can succeed.
The launch event saw the team behind Satoshi Block Dojo take the stage to launch and explain the vision behind the accelerator, in addition to presentations by Bitcoin Association Managing Director Patrick Prinz and nChain Chief Scientist Dr Craig S. Wright. In case you missed it, we have recapped the highlights of the Satoshi Block Dojo launch event below.
Craig Massey – Chairman
Satoshi Block Dojo Chairman Craig Massey kicked off proceedings by outlining the procedure for the evening and explaining how he became interested in blockchain technology and BSV. He spoke about his impressive track record as an investor and serial entrepreneur, and how he hoped to nurture and fund new companies building applications on the BSV blockchain.
He explained how Satoshi Block Dojo aims to help blockchain entrepreneurs focus on building their applications by handling all the extraneous work required to administrate the process of building a new business, allowing developers to get on with creating new technologies.
Massey believes that the BSV blockchain holds significant potential for the development of cutting-edge applications, especially when compared with alternative blockchain protocols which offer only limited functionality and speculative investment tokens. He closed by highlighting the reasons he chose to launch a start-up accelerator for the BSV ecosystem and showed a video presentation which summarised Satoshi Block Dojo’s start-up acceleration process.
Richard Boase – Head of Entrepreneur Engagement
Next up was Richard Boase, who heads up entrepreneur engagement at Satoshi Block Dojo. He began by summarising the basic proposition of the accelerator and walking viewers through the process and the support offered to new start-ups.
‘The goal is to find new start-ups, take them through education and training on BSV tools, offer support for all the admin hassle, put them through sprint methodology to build an MVP and during the 12 weeks we find an R&D client so they can iterate fast and get to market. Finally, we do the introduction to the business angels in order to help them raise their money,’ Boase said.
He also explained the evaluation process which determines whether a start-up will qualify for the ‘golden hello’ and participation in the acceleration process, noting that there are many evaluators which assess the potential and feasibility of the ideas pitched by BSV-based start-ups.
Satoshi Block Dojo aims to offer as much support as possible to start-ups so that they can hit the ground running without being limited by the constraints of administrative, financial and legal hassle, Boase said, and he encouraged those interested in building applications on BSV to sign up for the accelerator.
Robin Kohze – CTO
Satoshi Block Dojo CTO Robin Kohze took the stage next to speak about the accelerator’s technical support offered to developers through his Vaionex Corporation’s SatoLearn tutorial platform. In his role as CTO, Kohze also assesses the technical capability and potential of start-up pitches, differentiating real and applicable ideas from those which are not technically feasible.
He said that through completing the courses offered by the SatoLearn workshop, which will be available to all Block Dojo start-ups, developers who are new to the BSV ecosystem can begin building applications within a week.
Satoshi Block Dojo will also give start-ups access to Vaionex’s Relysia infrastructure, an API infrastructure that abstracts much of the complexity of Bitcoin SV development away, Kohze said. This allows start-ups to focus on building applications within an accessible framework without being impeded by interaction with the low-level complex mechanisms of the Bitcoin protocol.
James Marchant – Chief Investment Officer
James Marchant, Satoshi Block Dojo Chief Investment Officer was up next, and he began by stressing the importance the accelerator placed on enabling new and exciting businesses built on BSV. He provided insight into his background as a successful founder, CEO, and entrepreneur, as well as how he found his way into the world of blockchain start-ups and BSV.
Marchant went on to outline the investment philosophy behind Satoshi Block Dojo’s approach to courting funding for BSV start-ups, giving a more detailed walkthrough of the investment cycle experienced by developers who sign up for the accelerator.
He added that cashflow is typically the primary reason why such a large proportion of start-ups fail, and the Satoshi Block Dojo team aims to provide their start-ups with the best chance possible at succeeding by leveraging their extensive expertise to source funding for the benefit of those enrolled in the programme.
Patrick Prinz – Bitcoin Association Managing Director
Bitcoin Association Managing Director Patrick Prinz took the stage next to introduce the association and explain its involvement in the BSV ecosystem. Bitcoin Association is a Switzerland-based global industry organisation that works to advance business with the Bitcoin SV (BSV) blockchain and digital currency.
Prinz began by explaining how he became involved in the world of Bitcoin and blockchain, how he was at first put off by the technical aspects of the technology but later changed his perspective and improved his understanding of how BSV and the Bitcoin protocol work. He highlighted the educational tools made available by Bitcoin Association, such as the Bitcoin SV Academy, which offers a number of courses catered to various degrees of technical understanding.
He expanded on the potential of Bitcoin and blockchain technology, noting that it was the missing piece in the puzzle of the global data economy.
‘The blockchain as scalable neutral ground where you maintain control and data sovereignty is the real cloud and it is the missing puzzle piece to realise the data economy that is going to be a part of our life in the future,’ Prinz said.
He concluded by highlighting how blockchain technology will enable this new data economy, stressing the powerful implications of the data sovereignty and interoperability provided by BSV.
Michael Hudson – Bitstocks Founder and CEO
Up next, Bitstocks Founder and CEO Michael Hudson offered his perspective of the Bitcoin protocol and insight into the implications of the Bitcoin network. He described the Bitcoin network as a digitised piece of paper which can be used to record and verify transactions, with satoshi tokens functioning as the ‘pen’ that creates these transactions.
‘[Bitcoin] is not only reinventing the piece of paper and giving humanity a new pen – every single interaction is logged in a chronological time fashion, which means we as a global collective can break our amnesia because we can store and log absolutely everything,’ Hudson said.
He stressed the importance of data integrity and explained how the BSV blockchain can enable people to have complete control over their digital lives and grants them the tools to keep or monetise their personal information at will.
Dr Craig S. Wright – nChain Chief Scientist
Dr Craig Wright, Chief Scientist at blockchain development company nChain, explained the value of Bitcoin’s simple functionality as a source of truth that provides an irrefutable record of transactions verified by consensus.
He also spoke about the importance of data sovereignty and how the new data economy monetised the source of data, people, without empowering them with the ownership of this information themselves. The BSV blockchain aims to remedy this by allowing people to regain control of their information and the decision of whether to supply and monetise this data.
Dr Wright concluded by highlighting the importance of Bitcoin as a source of what is true and false, and stressed the importance of a system that honestly recorded these facts – especially considering the prevalence of misinformation and dishonestly manipulated data in the incumbent system.
Panel Discussion
The event concluded with speakers returning to the stage for a panel discussion and rapid-fire Q&A session. The composition of the panel was as follows:
- Dr Craig S Wright
- Robin Kohze
- Craig Massey
- Patrick Prinz
- Michael Hudson
- Richard Boase
Questions began with a discussion around the ability for the BSV blockchain to compete within the broader digital ecosystem, with Dr Wright pointing out that the network is designed to cater for the wider public and provide accessible utility through its support for unprecedented transaction volumes.
Panellists also discussed the question of sustainability in the blockchain industry, highlighting that the BSV network offers a far more environmentally efficient solution than other protocols like Bitcoin and Ethereum thanks to its ability to scale and reduce the energy cost per transaction as block sizes grow on the network.
In response to a question around the adoption of the BSV network, Prinz noted that industries had found significant value in the blockchain protocol’s ability to support data-driven business models and those which rely on low-cost, high-frequency micropayments.
The event closed with a brief summary by Craig Massey, who encouraged developers and entrepreneurs to sign up for the Satoshi Block Dojo start-up accelerator, followed by a live draw in which one lucky audience member won their choice of either two tickets to Tokyo, Japan or 10 BSV paid to their wallet.
To find out more about the Satoshi Block Dojo start-up accelerator or to apply, sign up on the company’s official website.
