JAPAN, January 6 — SoftBank, the 62nd largest company in the world and Japan’s biggest internet and telecommunications corporation has co-launched a decentralized blockchain development contest for entrepreneurs and startups with Topcoder.

The company is seeking for a basic prototype of an international fund-raising platform with a greater level of transparency. Contestants will have three months, from January 6 to March 31 to design a decentralized and blockchain-based unalterable record-keeping application which could be implemented in cross-industry platforms.



Smart contracts made by the Bitcoin blockchain technology are important in holding transaction history and network data, explains Softbank. The distributed ledger technology and its built-in systems could transform applications utilized by telecom operators and internet companies in Japan.

The SoftBank team will judge the submitted blockchain-based systems by various criteria – including transparency, creativity, simplicity, and efficiency. The winners of the competition will work with Softbank to develop a fully functioning prototype of the international fund-raising platform.

SoftBank explains that the users of the platform must be able to complete the following tasks:

Organizations create charity projects User chooses a charity project and makes a donation User as a volunteer provides their computing resource to the donation platform and records the donation data to the blockchain Charity organization decides what to use the donation

“Topcoder will compensate members in accordance with the payment structure of this challenge. Initial payment for the winning member will be distributed in two installments. The first payment will be made at the closure of the approval phase. The second payment will be made at the completion of the support period,” announced Topcoder.

While the SoftBank engineering team will look into the technical side of the system, Topcoder will explore the use of flat colors, simple fonts, smart use of space, and cleanliness of graphics used on the platform. Softbank and Topcoder are looking for decentralized fundraising platforms with a convenient user experience that will be tested by its existing clients and stakeholders of the company.

“As a prototype, the customer will demo the service internally in their company, to their partner companies, and to charity organizations,” added the organization.

In a clean and simple mobile (iPhone and Android) and web-based (HTML5 and CSS3) platform, startups are required to develop a proof of concept implemented system that allows anyone on the application to publicly track the donations.

Such level of transparency will enable both organizations and the donors to observe the dispersion and allocation of funds in real-time, without delay. Since a decentralized and peer to peer system eliminates the need for intermediaries and third party applications, it will cut a significant portion of costs for SoftBank. Currently, the corporation is hoping to see an automated application without central authorities involved.

The Japanese tech giant, which also holds the shares of Alibaba Group (37%), Sprint Corporation (80%), and Yahoo! Japan (35%) will test the fund-raising platform using its huge and diverse clientele, across various industries. The corporation hinted that the SoftBank team may run pilot tests with charity organizations in Japan to ensure high levels of transparency and efficiency of the platform.