Stellar Community Seed Fund Finalists: Mojoflower and Blocknify

Founder(s): Ólafur Páll Torfason

Use Case: Asset Issuance, Digital Asset Management

One of blockchain’s trademark features is the ledger, and Mojoflower plans to make good use of the Stellar ledger in their pioneering regtech solution. Founder Ólafur “Oli” Páll Torfason found that, during his time working as an entrepreneur, Icelandic companies are legally obliged to keep ledgers of share ownerships available to shareholders and the government. Share-ledgers are the highest legal proof of ownership. However, these share-ledgers are not standardized and keepers maintain these ledgers in all sorts of ways: paper, spreadsheets, or dedicated services.

Mojoflower aims to help the Icelandic government sustain oversight over these share-ledgers through a platform that issues SME shares and certificates on behalf of the government, all tokenized on Stellar. Tokenized shares would be held in shareholder wallets following a formal application process, and shareholders can use Mojoflower’s tools and platform to manage their shares however they please.

Mojoflower anticipates that, as more companies onboard onto Stellar and learn of its powerful payments features, new use cases will emerge beyond just share management. For instance, investors may want to pay out dividends or use collateralized loans directly on the network, leading to more demand for anchor services and increased capabilities on Stellar’s Turing Signing Server solution.

Conscious of the wariness surrounding blockchain at the institutional level, Torfason is determined to show stakeholders how blockchain can be used to innovate at lesser costs than traditional systems. Although Mojoflower’s use case is specific, its product will serve as proof-of-concept that institutions at the highest level can trust blockchain as a viable solution to their longstanding problems.

“What we want to create is a demonstrated product that really focuses on the core value proposition – of registering real-life companies onto the share ledger and showing users how they can create value from using less costly technology to do more complex actions,” says Torfason.

Founder(s): Christopher Cowles

Use Case: E-signature

E-signature solutions have been around for as long as people needed to sign documents, contracts, and agreements online. However, signers often have to rely on these solutions as the recordkeeper of the documents they sign. Having to go through these e-signature providers to verify signed documents and request records is tedious and often costly while not providing all the information a user needs.

Blocknify founder Christopher Cowles felt these “centralized black boxes” posed an unnecessary risk to users, especially given the improved capabilities of recent technology. To create an e-signature solution tethered to documents and payments, Cowles chose to build Blocknify on Stellar. Stellar’s ease of use, tools, specialization around asset-backed tokens, and low cost are especially optimal for how Blocknify works.

Using Stellar as the immutable public notary for each signature, Blocknify provides users all the tools and data they need to verify their signatures against Stellar and independently from any other party. Users from all over the world can legally sign documents with Blocknify while staying compliant with their country’s regulations. In addition, they can also tie their e-signature to any asset transfer on the Stellar network, making it ideal for payments connected to a contract such as loan agreements, equity agreement, and more.

For recordkeeping, Blocknify devised an alternative to holding onto the signed document forever. Blocknify “cleans up” the document by using standard PDF parsing to break down the PDF to its visible elements and then creates hashes of hashes. This process ensures that if even one pixel is off, the document fingerprint is completely different while still maintaining complete privacy of its contents. Signers can re-verify their signatures at any point following the instructions in the signature audit trail to reconstruct the signature hash.

As of date, Blocknify has already processed over 710 signatures on Stellar, counting amongst its customers large institutions such as an international venture capital firm. By focusing on its value proposition – offering e-signature directly and enabling high volume workloads at effective costs – Blocknify will continue to expand its customer base, double down on its marketing, and design integrations with clear ROI.