SEED Group, a member of The Private Office of Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum in The UAE signs a strategic business and technology partnership with two of the world’s leading blockchain organisations, Blocko Inc. and the Aergo Foundation, to help government and other large organisations to further innovate, embrace and deploy high-scale and highly-secure blockchain solutions to accelerate the regions digital transformation for its citizens and businesses.

• deployment of Aergo, a world-leading pioneering blockchain platform, across MENA

• Blocko’s enterprise blockchain design, implementation and knowledge/skills transfer

• advanced energy efficiency, quantum-resistant, and secure digital asset capabilities

Dubai, United Arab Emirates – August 5, 2019 – SEED Group today announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership with the AERGO Foundation and Blocko Inc., a leading enterprise blockchain platform provider to provide local government and large companies with secure, scalable and high-performance solutions built around blockchain. UAE Vision 2021 directly aims to achieve social and economic development across the region and requires a shift to a diversified and knowledge-based economy. The agreement aims to address the most demanding and complex problems for organizations that aim to become part of this advanced digital ecosystem centered in Dubai but extending beyond the Middle East.

Following five years of successful large scale industrial in-production deployments with some of the largest companies in the world and with over 25million active user in firms such as Samsung and Hyundai, the AERGO Foundation and its strategic partner Blocko are bringing their technology platform, IT integration and execution know-how to Dubai. The prime objective is to help make the digitization programs of UAE Vision 2021 and Saudi Vision 2030 a reality. Many blockchain technologies today are either still in the proof-of-concept phase, are too complex to use, or do not have the capabilities to provide the performance and scale needed to secure millions of devices and users. An architecture is needed that can support multi-level business ecosystems and all-digital supply chains. AERGO, perhaps the world’s leading open-source hybrid blockchain platform, aims to address these needs by working with SEED Group.

“As the UAE and Middle East region start to build more advanced blockchain solutions for government services and our digital economies, we constantly get asked to identify innovative companies that can operate at the highest levels of security and scale. We are thrilled to be partnering with both the AERGO Foundation and Blocko. They have proven they can deliver and will now help the region to make its digital promise a reality for its citizens and businesses” said Hisham Al Gurg, CEO of SEED Group.

Won-Beom Kim, CEO and founder of Blocko that is backed by Samsung Ventures, said “it is both an honour and huge responsibility to be trusted and empowered through our partnership with SEED to take initiatives such as Smart Dubai and the Dubai Future Foundation to the next level of realization. Our advanced blockchain R&D team are ready for the challenge and we will immediately deploy a specialist team in Dubai to make this happen. Furthermore and through our academic research partners, some of the most advanced identity solutions, blockchain consensus algorithms, and energy-efficient cryptography will be made available to organizations that need to move beyond proof of concept experimentation to large scale highly secure deployments”.

“Proven technologies, developer-friendly capabilities, an open architecture – and a willingness to provide knowledge transfer by working with local partners – are core principles of the AERGO Foundation. As blockchain usage grows, solutions will be required to address very complex needs such as quantum-resistant and low energy blockchains. Securing digital assets, citizen identities and billions of IoT devices with distributed ledger technologies will also be needed. AERGO Foundation and its partners will bring these bleeding-edge innovations to The UAE via our exciting collaboration with the SEED Group” said Phil Zamani, CEO and founder of AERGO.

The partnership is about impact with organisations ready to embrace blockchain.

About Blocko Inc.

Blocko helps governments and large enterprises to design, deploy and manage high performance and security solutions and services built around an advanced hybrid blockchain platform. Recognized as one of the world’s most experienced companies in this space, having already helped many organizations to deploy production systems on blockchain, it develops and supports Aergo, an enterprise-ready blockchain operating platform that leverages and extends both public and private blockchains via best-of-breed cloud computing. Aergo’s flexible and familiar architecture allows organizations to build and deploy practical decentralized applications and enterprise-IT solutions on an industry-leading high-performance hybrid blockchain architecture that can be deployed on a full-stack (and low-cost) serverless computing platform.

For more information, visit www.blocko.io and www.aergo.io

About SEED Group

Over the past 16 years, SEED Group has formed strategic alliances with leading global companies representing diverse regions and industries. These companies have propelled their business interests and goals in the Middle East and North Africa region through the support and strong base of regional connections of the SEED Group. The Group’s goal is to create mutually beneficial partnerships with multinational organizations and to accelerate their sustainable market entry and presence within the MENA region. SEED Group has been a key point in the success of all its partners in the region helping them reach their target customers and accelerate their businesses. The Private Office was established by Sheikh Saeed Bin Ahmed Al Maktoum to directly invest in or assist potential business opportunities in the region, which meet The Private Office’s criteria.

For more information, visit www.seedgroup.com and www.the-private-office.com

Blocko Inc. Media Contact:

Obaid Khan

obaid.khan@blocko.io

+82 31 8016 6253

SEED Group Media Contact:

Nomarie Jean Lacsamana

jean@seedgroup.com

+971 4 373 5068

Watch: Exclusive Interview with Phil Zamani and Won-Beom Kim