A new era is starting for slock.it.

Looking back at the history of slock.it, we have had a lot of ups and some downs. In spring 2015, my brother Simon and I began working on prototypes for smart locks connected to the Ethereum blockchain that would use smart contracts to handle access-control permissions. We presented the first prototype on June 30 at the Bitdevs NYC MeetUp in Manhattan.

Booking an apartment through our mobile app, paying for it, and opening a DanaLock based on events in a smart contract

After working for the Ethereum Foundation for about a year and a half as a lead tester, I officially founded slock.it together with Simon and Stephan Tual, the former CCO of Ethereum. We made our first public announcements at Devcon1 in London. With outstanding feedback and backing from the Ethereum community, we continued working on the universal sharing network (USN) and The DAO framework.

2016 was a particularly challenging year, with the rise and fall of The DAO . We gained a lot of experience and learned a lot during those times, making us a bit wiser and much more resilient.

In 2017 we received seed funding from US investors and were able to grow the team and continue to work on our core products.

2018 saw the launch of the Incubed client, a minimal verification client suited for mobile applications as well as IoT devices. By selling enterprise licenses and providing consulting services, we became profitable and grew to more than 30 people.

But although we were a successful company — with exceptional strengths in coding and product development — I always felt we were missing the business development and marketing expertise needed to bring us to the next level and help us introduce our excellent products to the market.

Then, at Devcon 4 in Prague, I watched the stunning presentation of Blockchains’ CEO Jeffrey Berns. Blockchains proved to be a company with a strong and compelling vision that appeals to end users, values that matched our own, and an excellent marketing team. Here was a non-ICO company that was focusing on public chains, Ethereum in particular, and seeking to bring the benefits of this technology to the masses. On top of that, it seemed obvious that they also have the resources to do so. From that moment on, it was clear to me that we needed to work together. I wanted our technology to be used by every IoT device in the smart city Blockchains is planning to build in Nevada.

In his presentation, Jeff mentioned Griff Green and Jordi Baylina, both good friends and people I cannot praise enough, especially because of their work resolving issues related to The DAO and other security incidents in the Ethereum world. Griff confirmed to me that Jeff is legit and introduced us.

After initial discussions in January at CES in Las Vegas, we met several more times until we reached the point where we felt it makes sense and benefits both companies to get together through a merger and acquisition. I became convinced of Blockchains‘ values, goals, capacities, and vision for a better world through the use of public blockchains. I felt like Blockchains would be completing slock.it, filling our gaps. But also vice versa: Blockchains has not yet gained the same level of software development experience in the blockchain space as we have, so we would complete them as much as they would complete us.

We at slock.it are excited to work on Blockchains‘ core products related to custody and management of digital assets, self-sovereign identity and reputation solutions, as well as all the exciting projects in Innovation Park where we can put our IoT solution to use. We are looking forward to further developing the Incubed client and our end-user-facing product, the USN , as well as some developer tools we will be releasing in the coming weeks and months.

As a result of the acquisition, we will significantly increase the size of our team in Mittweida and Berlin and are looking forward to hearing from excellent candidates who want to join us in our endeavors.

There is a bright future ahead, and I can’t wait to build all those things, and put them into the hands of a lot of people …

Christoph Jentzsch