Polish blockchain company Skey Network is offering $1m to start-ups, individuals and companies that can come up with the best IoT blockchain applications.

Skey developed a connector combining IoT devices with blockchain technology. The crypto-based competition is designed to hyper-charge adoption of blockchain of things (BoT) products and technology.

In line with the launch of its own proprietary blockchain, Skey Network will be offering a total prize fund of $1m in Skey tokens to be split between ten winners. The prize fund is divided into a series of grants awarded at different stages of the competition with ten top prize winners and a special prize for the best overall project.

Winners will also retain all rights of ownership to products manufactured as part of the competition. The jury is composed of leading names in the global IoT, smart city and blockchain worlds.

The competition could be a catalyst for innovative ideas, concepts and prototypes, built on the Skey blockchain, which could underpin the smart cities of the future and is intended to incentivise developers and support more innovation in creating smart city technology on the blockchain.

Entrants can submit a ready-made product, service or app or a concept that they want to bring to life. Applications are open until January 7, 2022. Winners will be announced in May 2022.

The categories are smart city, sharing economy, Oracle, security, defi (decentralised finance) and NFT.

Skey Network combines Oracle, BoT and defi technologies to create a unique access key called Smart NFT. This provides blockchain-managed access to physical assets such as cars, apartment buildings or sharing economy assets such as smart bikes. Competitors are invited to look at any aspect of future smart cities and design a product to enable this.

“The decision to create our blockchain was really about utility and our vision of creating a universal standard of communication for all IoT and BoT devices to enable the smart cities of the future,” said Szymon Fiedorowicz, CEO of Skey Network. “The Skey challenge is a way to encourage innovation in this arena and to reward the biggest and best ideas from around the world. This is part of our commitment to underpinning future use cases for smart cities and we can’t wait to see what our competitors can create.”