Permissioned email on blockchain, secure medical supply chain, and a platform for private sponsorship of investigative journalism.
ETHDenver is a blast as always. It was great to see the Ethereum ecosystem growing as a whole — from DeFi to better UX with Ethereum DApps and tooling. Quorum continued to show up as the de facto private/permissioned blockchain at the event.
Here are the three projects that built on Quorum and took home bounties.
Winner: Enhancement/Extension of Quorum Tools Team: Trevor Clarke, Hushel Robert, Mike Purvis
Traditional email has fundamental problems: no spam resistance, limited privacy, and no data ownership. Liame reimagines email as a web3 experience — your wallet is your inbox.
How it works:
Why Quorum? Liame needed speed, throughput, and permissioning around which contacts can reach your inbox. Quorum’s privacy features were a natural fit, and its compatibility with Ethereum meant Liame could integrate quickly via standard RPC.
The team also demoed autonomous communication — smart contracts triggering email notifications for meaningful DApp events (e.g., earning an NFT reward).
Tracking the integrity of medical supplies from manufacturer to patient on a permissioned Quorum network.
With the COVID-19 pandemic exposing fragility in global medical supply chains, MedChain tackled the problem of counterfeit and misrouted supplies. Every step in the supply chain — manufacturer, distributor, hospital — is a permissioned node. Private transactions ensure sensitive procurement data stays within the consortium while maintaining an immutable audit trail.
A platform allowing anonymous donors to fund specific investigative journalism pieces without exposing their identity.
Investigative journalism is underfunded and increasingly vulnerable to pressure from powerful interests. Fourth Estate used Quorum’s privacy features to allow verified sponsors to fund specific stories while keeping both the donor identity and funding amounts private — visible only to the publication.
Smart contracts held funds in escrow, releasing payment to journalists when editorial milestones were met — without requiring a trusted intermediary.
Shoutout to every team that built at ETHDenver 2020. The breadth of what developers bring to these events — in 48 hours — continues to be genuinely impressive.