Aeternity Africa, a Nairobi-based blockchain platform is seeking to promote, showcase and demonstrate the disruptive potential of blockchain technology in Africa through its monthly events that bring together entrepreneurs, business leaders and decision makers from specific industries to share with them the transformative and disruptive nature of crowdfunding on the blockchain technology.
This Saturday, 24th November 2018, Aeternity Africa will be showcasing a platform for enabling SME’s raise startup and scaling capital using blockchain technology through a concept known as an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), a fundraising mechanism in which new projects sell their underlying crypto tokens in exchange for bitcoin and ether. It’s somewhat similar to an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in which investors purchase shares of a company.
ICOs are a relatively new phenomenon but have quickly become a dominant topic of discussion within the blockchain community. ICOs are easy to structure because of technologies like the ERC20 Token Standard, which abstracts a lot of the development process necessary to create a new cryptographic asset. Most ICOs work by having investors send funds (usually bitcoin or ether) to a smart contract that stores the funds and distributes an equivalent value in the new token at a later point in time.
According to Frank Deya, the Chief Operating Officer at Aeternity Africa, “We are seeking to change the SME financing landscape in Africa by leveraging blockchain tech, the platform will legitimize the ICO fundraising model and ensure that investors; big or small have confidence in ICO’s to support African SME’s in their pursuit for start up and scaling capital.”Aeternity aims to help SMEs weed out negative elements like scams and frauds as well as enable investors looking for viable ventures to weed out scams by pre-screening businesses via a number of parameters that form part of the due diligence process. Other functions include the implementation of aeternity blockchain features such as the dominant assurance contracts and use of oracles to ensure that the provider of a good or service only gets paid after delivery.
“We strongly believe this will play a role in solving the SME financing gap that has constrained the development of this critical sector of the African economy,” concluded Deya. If you are looking to raise funds for your business or is an investor looking for feasible projects to put your money in, register here. Registration closes soon.
