1871 Announces 2024 Web3 Innovation Lab Cohort

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Chicago, January 24, 2024 – 1871, a nonprofit global innovation hub, announces its list of the 2024 cohort members for its first-ever Web3 Innovation Lab, in partnership with Advanced Technology Cluster and US Blockchain Coalition, supported by Hyperledger, Fenwick, and Genesis Block. 

The Web3 Innovation Lab marks the 5th Innovation Lab created by 1871, running in parallel with 1871’s second annual Cannabis Innovation Lab for the Winter 2024 season. The Web3 Innovation Lab offers a cutting-edge platform for growth-stage entrepreneurs and startups within the Web3 and decentralized tech industry. 

This dedicated lab fosters innovation, collaboration, and growth, providing cohort members access to resources and industry-specific expertise from VCs, late-stage and corporate partners, and industry enthusiasts to solve leading Web3 issues for industry transformations. 

The U.S. Blockchain Coalition’s co-founder and executive director, Arry Yu, will be playing the vital role of the Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) for the 2024 lab. This year’s focus areas are Building out the Digitally Native Middleware, All Things Identity, Enabling Government, Enabling Enterprise, Use Cases for Normies, and Layer’s 0’s & 1’s. 

The 28 selected cohort participants will collaborate with one another and the entire Web3 and decentralized tech innovation ecosystem through 4 immersive weeks of curated programming, workshops, and problem-solving sessions. 

Cohort members have solutions spanning Web3 and the decentralized tech sector, covering the 2024 focus areas. Connect with the 2024 cohort and discover their innovative startups at our upcoming public immersive weeks. 

2024 Cohort Members 

14bis Supply Tracking | Eleanor Mitch, CEO

14bis Supply Tracking ensures end-to-end accountability of assets across systems and industries so nothing gets lost or forged. We started working with Aerospace and Defense logistics and supply chain customers to increase mission readiness by providing access to verified data insights to increase margins, security, and efficiency. Like the highly intelligent and adaptable octopus, our company leverages a layer that sits on top of all your existing systems, you don’t have to rip out or replace anything. 

Web3 Lab focus area: Enabling Enterprise 

Bitpowr Technologies | Oyetoke Toby, CEO & Founder 

Bitpowr is building critical blockchain infrastructure for financial institutions and digital asset businesses to build financial products. Bitpowr offers an all-in-one platform that provides simple APIs and SDKs for businesses to spin up and manage thousands of wallets across multiple blockchains deploy and embed programmable MPC Custody solutions to secure and manage digital assets operations. 

Web3 Lab focus area: Enabling Enterprise 

BlockSpan | Jon Pastor, CEO & Co-Founder 

BlockSpan is a comprehensive NFT data API and analytics solution. Our platform’s core functionality encompasses detailed indexing of metadata and token activity, advanced pricing data extraction, rarity and spam score calculations, and optimized caching of media files across multiple chains. We provide a simple-to-use API, with one consistent call across chains, for developers to integrate into their applications.

Web3 Lab focus area: Building out the Digitally Native Middleware 

BlockSurvey, Inc. | Wilson Bright, CEO 

Web 3 form & survey platform. BlockSurvey empowers Web 3 companies to create and distribute forms & surveys with key features like verified Web 3 wallet address collection and token gating for use cases like airdrops, whitelists, and waitlists.

Web3 Lab focus area: Enabling Government 

Chainparency | Travis Reeder, CTO

Chainparency is on a mission to restore trust through community and technology. The company develops innovative blockchain-based applications and digital tools that enable enterprises and organizations globally to real-time collect and seamlessly record supply chain data on a distributed ledger for data integrity, preservation, and 24/7 auditability purposes. A mobile device and subscription to the company’s GoTrace application are all that is needed to deploy an end-to-end supply chain data collection and traceability solution at scale.

Web3 Lab focus area: Enabling Enterprise 

Credenza Inc. | Vicki Raimey, COO

Credenza, established in 2022, is powering the future of consumer engagement through the creation of a universal identification that captures actions across both digital and physical domains. From this, we provide a holistic and contextual view of each consumer, allowing for more personalized relationships, while unlocking new sustainable revenue streams.

Web3 Lab focus area: All Things Identity 

CryptoLegacy.ai | Sree Chintala, CEO 

CryptoLegacy.ai is revolutionizing Digital Asset Protection & Inheritance Planning. Our hacker and quantum-resistant vault safeguards crypto keys, passwords, and sensitive files and ensures seamless transfer of the assets to the designated beneficiaries.

Web3 Lab focus area: Use Cases for Normies 

Fresh Credit | Cesar Tinajero, Executive Director & Co-Founder 

FreshCredit is a fintech company that develops tools enabling credit anywhere. It increases access to credit on a global scale and empowers individuals to own and manage their data.

Web3 Lab focus area: Enabling Enterprise 

Gamr | Seyi Fakoya, CTO

Gamr is a next-generation platform for gamers to compete and get paid. Gamr App is live with 300k users, over 2,000 tournaments hosted, and paid out $100k to 2,000 gamers while generating $400k in revenue (B2B).

Web3 Lab focus area: Use Cases for Normies 

GradientFI | Michael Olorunninwo, CEO 

Programmable financial infrastructure for B2B and B2C digital platforms and marketplaces. 

Web3 Lab focus area: Enabling Enterprise 

IndyGeneUS | Yusuf Henriques, CEO & Founder 

IndyGeneUS is a precision medicine company using next-generation sequencing technologies to identify unique gene variants in diseases by pairing a patient-centric approach and philosophy with a proprietary Web3, blockchain-encrypted precision health discovery platform.

Web3 Lab focus area: All Things Identity 

Lit Protocol | David Sneider, Co-Founder 

Lit is an internet native security and identity network. With Lit, you can create and control keys and run code for virtually any application that can be made private, immutable, and / or autonomous.

Web3 Lab focus area: Building out the Digitally Native Middleware

MINTangible | Amyli McDaniel, CEO

MINTangible is an enterprise-grade intellectual property rights and legal management solution for Web3 digital assets.

Web3 Lab focus area: Building out the Digitally Native Middleware

Niftmint | Jonathan G. Blanco, CEO & Founder 

Niftmint provides brands with the tools to authenticate their products and experiences and create digital twins with tokenization. Niftmint is an API-first company that integrates into e-commerce platforms so marketers can one-click install and begin authenticating products without forcing complicated technology on the brand or their customers.

Web3 Lab focus area: Enabling Enterprise 

Qila.io | Sid Ugrankar, CEO

Qila is a Blockchain-as-a-Service offering that enables enterprises to adopt blockchain as a technology with a managed network infrastructure. 

Web3 Lab focus area: Enabling Enterprise 

QSTN | Orrin Campbell, CEO 

QSTN is a Web3 survey marketplace where businesses fund surveys, reward participants, and uphold user privacy through our data wallet-driven profiles.

Web3 Lab focus area: All Things Identity 

Raze Fintech Inc. | Brian Anderson, CEO

Raze is a disruptive operating system, enabling companies to raise capital in private markets with significantly less friction and cost by benefiting from blockchain technology, while substantially increasing transparency, access, automated compliance, and liquidity for their investors.  Since its inception in early 2022, Raze has been offering a unique way for startups to directly raise capital with their investor communities while offering innovative new tools and technologies to successfully close their round.

Web3 Lab focus area: Use Cases for Normies 

(Smart) | Thomas Crowley, VP, Product & Strategy 

​​(Smart) is a SaaS company developing blockchain-based solutions to empower consumers with their data. Specializing in B2B2C engagement, our initial focus lies in direct sales and homeowners’ data, leveraging our team’s deep industry experience.

Web3 Lab focus area: Enabling Enterprise 

SunDAO Network | Noel Myers, Co-Founder and President/COO

The SunDAO Network is a dynamic data as a service platform for the solar industry to locate, buy, sell, store and monetize solar data. 

Web3 Lab focus area: Layer 0’s & 1’s 

SUNN Blockchain | Meghan Hendley Lopez, CEO & Co-Founder 

SUNN Blockchain is focused on incentive driven and environmental standards towards a more distributed equitable future, emphasizing trust and transparency within the carbon and ESG market. SUNN works in tandem with corporations and government entities along with utilizing Environmental Real World Assets in collaboration with our blockchain technology.

Web3 Lab focus area: Layer 0’s & 1’s 

Taro Finance Inc. | Dominic Niolu, CEO & Founder 

Taro Finance is a real-world asset tokenization platform for private market securities. that compliantly utilizes crypto/DeFi rails to create infrastructure to drive access, transparency, and peer-to-peer secondary liquidity in private markets.

Web3 Lab focus area: Enabling Enterprise 

TexChange Unbrokered | Christian Gaona, CEO

TexChange Unbrokered is a digital B2B marketplace for private firms in hard industries to buy and sell their materials and services in the global market without brokers.

Web3 Lab focus area: Enabling Enterprise 

ULedger | Joe Honan, CEO 

ULedger is the leading data-integrity platform technology organization harnessing our patented AI, Machine Learning, and Blockchain Technologies to authenticate, validate & create public trust while maintaining data privacy. We provide the applications, infrastructure, and ecosystems for organizations of all sizes to transform and thrive in a global Web3 marketplace.

Web3 Lab focus area: Enabling Enterprise 

Vennity Inc. | Vlad Avesalon, Co-Founder & Product Lead 

Vennity is a cutting-edge location-based NFT platform that transforms the way creators engage with communities using digital collectibles. Utilizing augmented reality (AR) and geolocation, our platform offers a unique, map-based social network that encourages active exploration and interaction in both digital and physical worlds. This innovative approach not only bridges the digital-physical divide but also enhances real-world engagement, providing a thrilling and rewarding experience for users​​.

Web3 Lab focus area: Enabling Enterprise 

Velocity Career Labs | Dror Gurevich, CEO 

Velocity Career Labs (VCL) has developed a purpose-built decentralized protocol and blockchain network that serves as a public infrastructure for the exchange of verifiable, trusted, and globally interoperable self-sovereign career credentials, with an immediately addressable $30B global workforce verification market.

Web3 Lab focus area: All Things Identity 

Virtual Practicum | Dege Nsoki, Founder 

The AIpprenticeship™ by Virtual Practicum is revolutionizing tech education. Offering a self-directed curriculum, participants use data science, analytics, and AI to co-create their learning pathways. Upon completion of modules, participants receive unique NFT credentials, turning their achievements into valuable digital assets. With a 100% placement guarantee, this innovative learning experience combines a global community, hands-on projects, and a direct pathway to a successful tech career.

Web3 Lab focus area: Use Cases for Normies 

World Play League | Peter Tomala, CEO 

World Play League is a fan and community-owned game platform helping studios increase their monetization while creating a next-generation game league for players. With World Play League, players join a like-minded community with a vetted catalog of quality games, rewarding them for their time and talents.

Web3 Lab focus area: Use Cases for Normies 

Yeetum | Tobalo Torres-Valderas, Chief Architect 

Yeetum Intelligence Platform serves as a central hub for learning about cybersecurity and economics, featuring a weekly newsletter with updated cyber and economic intelligence. It also provides an information club membership and connects a network of executives and analysts.

Web3 Lab focus area: Use Cases for Normies 

About the program 

Cohort members will participate in 4-weeks of hybrid programming, alternating each week for virtual and in-person experiences in January, February, March, and April 2024. The program culminates with a capstone-like event, the 2024 Web3 Innovation Summit, open to public participation on 4.18.24. 

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For inquiries about involvement in partnering with us or learning more about sponsor options for the Web3 Innovation Summit, connect with our team. 

About 1871 

1871, a nonprofit global innovation hub, exists to inspire, equip, and support early-stage, growth-stage, late-stage, and corporate innovators in building extraordinary businesses. 1871 is home to ~500 early-stage startups, ~250 growth and late-stage companies, and ~60 corporates, and is supported by an entire community focused on accelerating their growth and creating jobs in the Chicagoland area. The member experience includes virtual and in-person access to workshops, events, mentorship, and more. The nonprofit organization has 350 mentors available to its members, alongside access to more than 200 partner corporations, universities, education programs, accelerators, venture funds, and others. Since its inception in 2012, more than 1,050+ alum companies are still active, have created over 14,700 jobs, and have raised more than $3.7 billion in follow-on capital.