Blocksmith: our first venture

One year ago I was writing about Whitesmith’s journey to become a product studio and how 2017 was a year of many changes on that level. At that time, I didn’t know what 2018 would bring, but I knew that we aspired more…

2018 is the year of our new (ad)venture! We’re very excited to introduce Blocksmith, a blockchain development studio that aims to demystify and democratise the access to blockchain.

The opportunity

In its early days, Bitcoin and all that it entails was limited to geeks, nerds and tech enthusiasts. However, in 2017 the Bitcoin bubble exploded, and it went mainstream. Everyone was talking about this cryptocurrency and the technology behind it, people started to be aware of the advantages of blockchain technology and how it could be used to change the world beyond cryptocurrencies.

A lot of exciting things are being made during 2018, but blockchain technology is still far from solving all our problems. Like all new technologies, blockchain will have a slow trajectory of adoption, and despite its benefits, several obstacles are preventing it from becoming as straightforward and integrated as other technologies. Some of these obstacles were the opportunity we needed to start something new called Blocksmith.

Blocksmith

Regulation, energy consumption, lack of understanding, scalability, user experience or accessibility are just some of the main obstacles to blockchain adoption. We will not be able to work on all these matters, but we think we can knock out some of these entry barriers.

The first one is the lack of understanding of the technology and its use cases. We believe in the power of blockchain to transform the way we do business but that doesn’t mean that blockchain is suitable for every industry or use case. So, part of our work is to help startups, corporate mavericks and industries evaluate if blockchain can effectively add value to their business and how it could be implemented.

After we analyse the opportunities, we create a proof of concept or minimum viable product. At this stage, the critical aspect is to build a product that is simple to use and can be accessible to everyone. For this matter, the second entry barrier that we will be working on is the poor user experience and poor accessibility that blockchain technology and its products have. Based on the experience from Whitesmith in building products for multiple industries and different targets, we will be able to develop blockchain enabled products that are easy to use, simple to set up and accessible to everyone.

Having these two ideas in mind and with our fantastic team & partners, we are building a trusted brand who supports innovation through blockchain technology and its subsequent adoption.

Regarding our partners, Blocksmith would not happen (so fast) without our primary partner and supporter - KR1 - Europe’s leading digital asset investment company. This partnership gathers the expertise and knowledge of KR1 on the blockchain space with the experience of building products that Whitesmith has.

A curious note is that Keld (one of the founders of KR1) was one of the first clients of Whitesmith and we have been working together ever since. It’s all about building relationships, right?

What can you expect

In the last few months, Blocksmith has been more present in the blockchain community contributing to several open source projects, participating in challenges and organising some events that allow us to share best practices from the technical to the business side.

We are also growing our network of partners and clients, working on some new blockchain products that will make a dent in their respective established industries and we hope to share a bit more soon.

If you are curious to know how the future with blockchain looks like, don’t forget to get in touch! You can follow our latest news on medium and twitter.

Stay tuned for more news! We will share more updates about Whitesmith family.