BLOCKPOOL
The Blockpool project, officially titled ‘Pooling SME adoption and deployment of Blockchain and other DLTs,’ was funded by the European Union through the H2020-INNOSUP-2018-2020 program. Running for 24 months from 2019 to 2021, the project brought together 7 organizations from Greece, Belgium, Spain, Cyprus, Germany, and France and received a funding grant of €1,495,175.
The project aimed to enhance the innovation capacity of SMEs by providing improved innovation support. Leveraging the influence of intermediary organizations such as clusters and federations, along with cross-regional industrial networks, the project sought to pilot the acceleration of SME adoption and deployment of Blockchain and other Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs). The main goal of the project was to expedite the cross-border adoption and deployment of blockchain technology by European SMEs. Blockpool sought to evolve beyond the pilot project phase and establish itself as a sustainable portal for blockchain and DLTs deployment.
The Blockpool project involved building and reinforcing blockchain capacity for SMEs and intermediaries across various value chains. This was achieved by strengthening both the supply and demand sides through the implementation of a Blockchain "deployment pool" and generic support activities. In addition to facilitating actions to improve framework conditions and enhance the capacity of SMEs, intermediaries, policy makers, and regulators, Blockpool developed a deployment pool. For the purpose of this project, 25 SME projects were selected through an open call, allocating at least 50% of the total project budget to test and validate new blockchain solutions in prominent sectors such as supply chain, energy, healthcare, Fintech, insurance, legal, shipping, and social good. SMEs participating in the program benefited from the support of the mentors’ network, training through MOOCs/webinars, and access to other innovative tools.