Every bit announced on May 19, Swiss cryptocurrency exchange Lykke will exist offer four prizes totalling 200,000 Swiss Francs ($205,800) equally part of the Open Initiative.

The initiative is looking for new proposals from developer teams for blockchain-based solutions to problems linked to current economic turmoil, divided into four categories.

The jury and the categories for tech

Judging the contest will be Lykke CEO Richard Olsen, former CFTC Chairman Christopher Giancarlo, and Ashkan Nikeghbali, a professor at the University of Zurich. Giancarlo is also serving equally a strategic counselor to the Open Initiative.

The four categories are blockchain-backed platforms for digital vouchers, supply chains, a real-time economic news system, and the more general category of research initiatives.

Olsen told Cointelegraph that he views major technical innovation as the next stage of economic recovery: "What's lacking is profound innovation that addresses the inefficiency of the economical organisation." He elaborated:

"A central issue is that the governments have been more in a reactive, more than panic-like way. And it'southward at present, as the first onslaught has happened and people get back to work that it's very of import to at present exist strategic."

Commenting on the part of the COVID-19 pandemic in inspiring new technological solutions, Giancarlo told Cointelegraph:

"One of the things that a crisis does is it stimulates imagination and innovation. During peaceful times, people are non faced with the tension on a normal way of doing things. Then suddenly you have a crisis similar this that puts enormous tension on traditional processes."

Terms of the contest and potential futurity rounds

Submissions are welcome from all over the earth. Giancarlo told Cointelegraph, "The transformational nature of exponential digital engineering crosses borders."

The current window of submissions ends on July 3, at which bespeak the jury volition select winners. However, Olsen hopes to continue the contest further into the time to come to promote further fintech development.

In March, Giancarlo spoke to Cointelegraph near the Digital Dollar Project, a remember tank he co-founded to push for a central banking company digital currency in the United States.