Blockchain-Powered Creative Notarization Startup Ascribe Raises $2 Million

Another startup looking to find innovative applications for Blockchain Blockchain Blockchain comprises a digital network of blocks with a comprehensive ledger of transactions made in a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or other altcoins.One of the signature features of blockchain is that it is maintained across more than one computer. The ledger can be public or private (permissioned.) In this sense, blockchain is immune to the manipulation of data making it not only open but verifiable. Because a blockchain is stored across a network of computers, it is very difficult to tampe Blockchain comprises a digital network of blocks with a comprehensive ledger of transactions made in a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or other altcoins.One of the signature features of blockchain is that it is maintained across more than one computer. The ledger can be public or private (permissioned.) In this sense, blockchain is immune to the manipulation of data making it not only open but verifiable. Because a blockchain is stored across a network of computers, it is very difficult to tampe Read this Term technology has secured investment. Ascribe, which describes its solution as a "notary and timestamp for intellectual property and creative works," has raised $2 million in seed funding. The investment was made by Earlybird Venture Capital, Freelands Ventures, Digital Currency Group, and various angels, according to a report by TechCrunch. The solution lets artists and writers certify work as their own when publishing to the web, using the blockchain to generate an indelible record and timestamp of the work's existence. It can then be sold, licensed or lent out while preserving the integrity of the owner's rights. The startup's three founders have backgrounds in finance, technology and curation. Bruce Pon, Ascribe's CEO, described how the blockchain can protect rights to digital art:

“We are working on securing copyright, giving creators a means to easily license and transfer their work and we're swallowing the Internet to give creators visibility on what happens to their work. The idea to use blockchain to allow artists to create digital scarcity germinated in mid-2013 when Trent and Masha asked ‘Can you own digital art, like you own Bitcoin Bitcoin While some may still be wondering what is Bitcoin, who created Bitcoin, or how does Bitcoin work, one thing is certain: Bitcoin has changed the world.No one can remain indifferent to this revolutionary, decentralized, digital asset nor to its blockchain technology.In fact, we’ve gone a long way ever since a Florida resident Laszlo Hanyecz made BTC’s first official commercial transaction with a real company by trading 10,000 Bitcoins for 2 pizzas at his local Papa John’s.One could now argue that While some may still be wondering what is Bitcoin, who created Bitcoin, or how does Bitcoin work, one thing is certain: Bitcoin has changed the world.No one can remain indifferent to this revolutionary, decentralized, digital asset nor to its blockchain technology.In fact, we’ve gone a long way ever since a Florida resident Laszlo Hanyecz made BTC’s first official commercial transaction with a real company by trading 10,000 Bitcoins for 2 pizzas at his local Papa John’s.One could now argue that Read this Term?’ Trent built a prototype in fall-2013. In mid-2014, we decided to leave our companies to start Ascribe full-time. Since then, we’ve been refining the technology and working with early users.”

One notable feature is the web crawler, which scans the web for copies of your images and can notify you where they appear. Pon explained:

"We’ve set our development team to build the tools to crawl and index all digital artifacts on the internet and then perform a similarity search using web-scale machine learning. This means that within a reasonable amount of accuracy, we can tell you where your stuff has ended up."

In its FAQs, Ascribe says its solution can also work for physical objects, such as physical art.