The wonderful community surrounding the æternity platform has been working very hard throughout the entire year — and it shows. The æternity crypto foundation is pleased about how far the æternity ecosystem has gone within just the past 12 months.

Lets take a look at what happened within the ecosystem.

First in the spotlight is our fellows at AE Ventures, which was rebranded from æternity Ventures last year. AE Ventures hit the $1.6 million mark in investments in 2019, and has substantially expanded its portfolio of blockchain start-ups throughout the year. One of these start-ups, AMPnet, even secured a partnership with Greenpeace. Another start-up under AE Ventures’ portfolio — Cryptotask, a decentralized freelancing marketplace, went live on the mainnet. which You can read more about the highlights of their year on their blog. It was also in the year 2019 that Microsoft Innovation Center (MIC) partnered up with AE Ventures in supporting the growth of blockchain technology in Malta.

æternity Americas was also on a roll, paving the way for a partnership with the Uruguay-based medical and recreational cannabis producer Uruguay Can, which will use the blockchain for tracking its supply chain. Apart from this, æternity goes down in history as the blockchain platform of choice for the first political party to embrace the technology — the Uruguay Digital Party will apply æternity technology for its internal democracy processes.

The æternity crypto foundation is absolutely proud of the community for all its efforts and achievements, and has been relentlessly working towards furthering the ecosystem as well.

As the world welcomes a new year, let’s take some time to look back at what the æternity foundation has accomplished last year. Here are some highlights from 2019.

Call for Proposals

The foundation launched the first call for proposals in early spring of 2019. Among the first batch of grants supported as a result of this call, was the amazing aeknow.org project. As the name hints, AEKnow is an information platform and blockchain explorer for the æternity blockchain, providing updates about development of the protocol, æpps, and the surrounding ecosystem. An interview with the creator of AEKnow.org can be found here.

Emin Mahrt joins the foundation as a Board Member

Emin Mahrt is well known amongst the community as the Chief Operations Officer and later as Chief Product Officer for æternity. In 2019, the æternity crypto foundation welcomed Emin to the æternity crypto foundation Board. Having him on the foundation team, he supported the sharpening process in the direction of supporting open source development projects. You can read more about his vision and ideas as ACF Board Member in his first interview with the foundation here.

Further Expansion of the team

Six new members joined the foundation in 2019. True to the foundation’s values and principles, a diverse and decentralized team of experts was formed, spread out over three different continents and time zones.