The North America Blockchain Association (NABA) hosted their annual Blockchain Fintech Summit at the Santa Clara Convention Center on January 7th, 2017. Despite heavy rain, over 600 blockchain enthusiasts from the silicon valley attended.

Select highlights included Consensys Andrew Keys introducing their startup studio which is building a variety of decentralized applications ranging from intelligent document management systems, energy systems, to supply chain systems.

WeTrust presented their vision to leverage existing Social Capital and Trust Networks to improve financial inclusion, and create an alternative decentralized financial system built with communities as the focus. They explored the current state of financial affairs, where insurance and banking entities have an inherent conflict of interest with their customers. They also introduced the concept of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs), which is a simplified form of policyholder owned insurance program — used by over than one billion people around the world.

Matt Liston presented Gnosis, a decentralized prediction market built on the Ethereum protocol. Gnosis provides an open platform for anyone to predict the outcome of any event and plans to drastically simplify the creation of customized prediction market applications. Their vision is a future in which prediction markets are used to optimize an incredible range of processes and to provide a platform for information sales.

Tom Ding of String Labs discussed his company’s framework for decentralized cloud and how that could support powerful computation.

John Lindsay, the CEO and Co-founder of Bitwage, discussed their company’s growth as an international wage payment and payment processing solution that reduces transfer times and forex fees.

Yuxiang Wang, Vice Mayor of Guiyang, also gave a keynote at the event and evangelized Guiyang’s recent innovation and discoveries in the fields of big data and Blockchain. Blockchain will be a core initiative by Guiyang and they recently issued a white paper named stating their plans to foster growth of the industry.

Overall the event was a huge success, and it’s great to see Silicon Valley starting to catch up with developments in the blockchain industry worldwide.

Sponsors and co-organizers included IBM, Shanghai Institute of International Finance (SIIF), the Municipal People’s Government of Guiyang, Tianfeng Exchange Securities and the International Financial Centers Association (IFCA).

Here’s the full list of companies that presented at the event:

BlockSeer

Blockseer provides the analytics tools for these transactions and applications on the Blockchain.

BitWage

BitWage creates solutions for workers looking for remote work and looking to optimally receive their wages.

Gnosis Gnosis is the platform for the next generation of prediction market applications.

Gliding Eagle

Gliding Eagle provides transparent direct-to-consumer wine logistics to China.

GooCoin

GooCoin specializes in mobile cryptocurrency and cross-border payment based on Blockchain.

Skuchain

Skuchain builds Blockchain based products for B2B Trade and Supply Chain Finance.

Tendermint Tendermint is software for securely and consistently replicating an application on many machines.

Waterhole.io Waterhole is the mobile based marketplace for users to buy and sell bitcoin.

WeTrust.io WeTrust is a collaborative savings and insurance platform powered by Blockchain.