The Cardano Summit 2023’s Battle of the Builders, sponsored by CV Labs, Genius X, EMURGO, STORM Partners and Faculty Group was a resounding success. The Summit saw attendees explore the Cardano Market, showcasing various Summit exhibitors, along with the NFT Gallery and Pitch Arena.  In his opening remarks to the Battle of the Builders, Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation, explained how this new aspect of the Summit intends to support innovation, entrepreneurship, and venture building.

In his opening speech at the Cardano Summit, Frederik Gregaard said that potential investors often ask him how they can investigate a project’s product-market fit, plus the readiness and longevity of Cardano’s ecosystem. Gregaard answered these by highlighting the sheer vitality of Cardano’s projects and the number of Cardano repositories on GitHub which both provided abundant proof.  He encouraged projects to advocate for themselves and for Cardano as a beacon of innovation.

Battle of the Builders Pitch Competition

The final contestants in the Battle of the Builders presented their pitches in front of the jury and Summit attendees on the first day of the Summit. The top 10 projects included:

1. NMKR: Allows users to mint their own NFTs or build a secondary NFT marketplace.
2. NEWM: Aims to provide a music streaming marketplace governed by musicians and their fans by giving artists ownership of their creative content.
3. Xerberus: Enables users to assess and manage the risk of their digital assets portfolio.
4. FiDa: Tokenizes insurance contracts to address existing industry challenges resulting from increasing claim costs.
5. Mehen USDM: Looks to create bridges between traditional finance and blockchain via a fiat-backed stablecoin.
6. Iagon: Means to provide users with an AI-driven, shared storage platform that simultaneously ensures data compliance, privacy, and security.
7. Maestro: Gives users a complete Web3 stack that makes it easy to build DApps, DeFi protocols and others; it also offers a smart contract marketplace.
8. zkFold: Offers a zero-knowledge rollups scaling solution for the Cardano blockchain.
9. Finest: Presents users with an accessible platform to trade tokenised real world assets (RWA).
10. TVVIN: Intends to improve the accessibility of traditional assets like precious metals, minerals, and commodities by leveraging blockchain, AI, and metaverse technologies.

Each contestant received five minutes to present their project. There was an incredible range and quality to the Top 10 projects presenting. The expert panel included:

• Frederik Gregaard, CEO, Cardano Foundation
• Janis Aguilar, Head of Acceleration, CV Labs
• Sothy Kol-Men, Co-founder, Genius X
• Nikhil Joshi, COO, EMURGO
• Takashi Hayashida, Managing Partner, EMURGO Ventures
• Sheraz Ahmed, Managing Partner, STORM Partners
• And our very own, Michal Uhliarik, Partner and CTO, FacultyGroup.

When asked about his experience judging the contest, Michal had this to say:

“It was a great privilege to be a judge for the Battle of Builders. All the participants have manifested the primary strengths of the Cardano ecosystem - innovation,  global ambition,  deep care and connection with the community. This experience showcased the massive potential for disruption and reinforced my belief in our strategic focus and cooperation with Cardano and its participants.”

The Battle Winners

The Battle Winners were Maestro in first place, NEWM in second place and zkFold in third place. The winners will receive these additional ‘prizes' as part of Faculty Group’s sponsorship of Cardano Summit 2023:

• A place in Otaris’ upcoming Cardano-focused cohort of their accelerator programme, launching later this year.
• 1 month’s free Market Making by Artis, Faculty’s proprietary Market Maker. Our standard service level including: Algorithmic Market Making, Liquidity support, DEX and CEX support for up to two pairs, and, most importantly, Treasury Management to ensure the long-term viability and liquidity of these projects as they grow.
• 1 month’s free "Marketing Department as a service" for the overall winner, which includes CMO, Assets and Branding, as well as community management to set projects up for success when it comes to marketing strategy, sales and business development.

The 3 winning builders will also receive potential investment from Faculty Capital, the venture capital arm of Faculty Group. Their unique approach to investment blends venture capital funding with deep expertise gained through working with web3 start-ups across many different sectors, including DeFi, gaming, entertainment and infrastructure.  

Faculty Group and Cardano are committed to harnessing the best of Web3 and creating bridges into ecosystems across the blockchain space.  Together we are building the future today.

About Cardano Summit

CeAnn Simpson

An experienced editor & analyst, CeAnn has been writing in the blockchain/DeFi/web3 space for six years. She loves creative challenges, producing podcasts and gaining insights from clients and guests.

Share this article