The newest NGI TrustChain start-up cohort was chosen from a pool of 162 candidates for the grant funding.
The EU has introduced €1.8m in grant funding for 15 European start-ups creating blockchain applied sciences to combat on-line misinformation and false identities.
Awarded by means of the European Fee’s NGI TrustChain initiative, the so-called “democracy grants” will see every start-up obtain as much as $117,000 to fight the rise of on-line misinformation on platforms corresponding to X (previously Twitter), TikTok and Meta, amongst others.
The newest cohort, which is the third of its sort, represents 10 European international locations and was chosen from a pool of 162 candidates for the grant funding. So far, NGI TrustChain has invested greater than €4.6m in funding to 43 firms.
Dr Muttukrishnan Rajarajan, professor and director of the Institute of Cyber Safety at Metropolis, College of London, stated that misinformation, hate speech and on-line hurt in democracy are “urgent challenge[s]” given that just about half the world’s inhabitants are voting in elections this yr.
“TrustChain start-ups are working to make use of blockchain, identification, privateness and interoperable decentralised applied sciences in order that the web ecosystem may give the general public confidence in on-line actions.”
And in accordance with Sean Kane, co-founder and chair of the F6S blockchain start-up community, solely six in 10 folks belief on-line data.
“Pretend and misleading data is in every single place,” he stated. “These 15 newest grants will assist prime new European blockchain and identification start-ups empower trusted dialogue in European digital public areas.”
The 15 start-ups that obtained funding underneath the EU scheme are: ZKorum (France), AI-MetaBloQ (Greece), Compellio (Luxembourg), Forkbomb BV (Netherlands), Enismaro (Italy), Arsys Web (Spain), Acurraent UG (Germany), In Commerce 4 You (Italy), QX by Qpick (Poland), Digital Democracy World (Sweden), Pavlos Efraimidis (Greece), Metropolis and Me doo Nis (Serbia), Gheorghe Asachi Tech, College Iasi (Romania), SecureOpinion (UK), and Neuron AI (Greece).
Earlier this yr, in response to rising misinformation on-line, the EU dropped new election tips for on-line search and social media giants forward of parliamentary elections that came about in June.
These included necessities round organising inner election groups, selling official data on electoral processes, adopting measures to cut back the danger posed by generative AI and different tips for the graceful functioning of the democratic course of.
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