block chain

Chapter 2 of the book provides an introduction and overview of various blockchain platform startups from recent years that currently exist in the market:

1. Everledger: a permanent ledger for diamond certification and related transaction history.
2. Cardano: a smart contract platform that seeks to deliver more advanced features than any protocol previously developed.
3. Stellar: a platform that connects banks, payments systems, and people. Moves money quickly, reliably, and at almost no cost.
4. NEO: a competitor to Ethereum, NEO is developing an open network for a smart economy.
5. Coinbase: a platform to buy and sell bitcoin and ether.
6. Lisk: a platform that enables the development and publishing of blockchain applications with your own sidechains.
7. Blockstream: offers software and hardware solutions using the Blockchain.
8. tØ: a blockchain-based trading platform.
9. OpenBazaar: a decentralised marketplace.
10. BitFury: one of the biggest bitcoin mining infrastructure providers
11. Augur: a decentralised prediction market built on the Ethereum blockchain.
12. Neureal: open source and decentralised artificial intelligence.
13. Maidsafe: a distributed platform that enables the creation of fast and secure applications.
14. IPFS: a peer-to-peer distributed file system that aims to replace http.
15. Imagjn: developing a reputation protocol to enable collaboration among individuals, organisations, and things.
16. EOS: a smart contract platform for DApps that raised over $4 billion in their token sale.

You task in this assignment is to select one of these startup companies mentioned from the textbook and conduct a brief research assessment on them in a 3-4 page paper addressing the following:

1. What is the company’s target business function?
2. What type of business advantage do they provide markets and companies?
3. What is the current challenge do you think in your own words this company has in being adopted in business today?
4. What is the company’s overall marketing approach? Are they on social media, blogs, or an any other medium to be discovered by clients?

This paper should be double spaced, Times New Roman, 12 PT Font, in APA format. A title page and references page is expected, but does not count towards the 3-4 page minimum. A minimum of 3 references are expected.