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Voatz has raised $7 million in Series A funding for its mobile voting technology

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Voatz, the four-year-old, Boston, Mass.-based voting and citizen engagement platform that has been at the center of debate over the merits and dangers of mobile voting, has raised $7 million in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Medici Ventures and Techstars, with participation from Urban Innovation Fund and Oakhouse Partners.

Voatz, which currently employs 17 people, is modeled after other software-as-a-service companies but geared toward election jurisdictions, working with state and local governments to conduct elections and provide related election management and cybersecurity services.

As we reported back in March, the city of Denver agreed to implement a mobile voting pilot in its May municipal election using Voatz’s technology, an opportunity that was offered exclusively to active-duty military, their eligible dependents and overseas voters using their smartphones.

The company hasn’t yet shared how many people wound up using the platform. As Voatz co-founder and CEO Nimit Sawhney told us late yesterday, “Our most recent election in Denver finished last night on June 4th and the post-election audit will be beginning shortly.”

Denver was not the company’s first pilot program. Rather, Voatz had conducted more than 30 pilots previously, including two in West Virginia last year that attracted the financial backing of Tusk Philanthropies, the philanthropic operation of investor and strategist Bradley Tusk.

As for where Voatz will be used next, Sawhney says to “stay tuned. The next phase of our pilot programs will be announced by the relevant jurisdictions a bit later in the summer.”

Voatz has become the best-known mobile voting app, which has also made it the target of some unflattering attention, including last summer, when numerous security experts criticized it roundly in a Vanity Fair piece. One said it was “going to backfire.” Another warned that the “United States needs some form of vetting process for online voting in elections.” A software expert separately called Voatz a “horrifically bad idea.”

Apparently investors, along with a growing number of city and state governments, are still willing to bet that it’s better than what’s currently available.

Voatz had previously raised $2.2 million in funding, led by the venture arm of Overstock.com.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/06/voatz/

Grainchain, a blockchain-based platform for commodity sales, launches in Mexico

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In the two years since GrainChain launched its distributed ledger-based transaction platform for bulk dry goods, the company has brokered thousands of contracts on everything from corn, sorghum, wheat and soybeans to even sand from its headquarters in McAllen, Texas.

Now the company is expanding its services to Mexico, partnering with the government of Tamaulipas to help farmers and grain elevators with commodity management and settlement.

Integrating with existing grain elevator equipment, GrainChain will deploy its sensors and software to automate the certification of inventory, invoice settlement and reporting to buyers and sellers, according to a statement from the company.

Although the company’s blockchain adoption is new, GrainChain began developing its technology six years ago as an inventory supply chain management toolkit for farmers.

The company’s founder and chief executive Luis Macias had sold his previous software business Verge Data to an insurance company in 2005 and took some time off before wading back into the software development business in McAllen.

In 2012, Macias says he was approached by Hi Star Grain about developing software to manage the sales process for bulk dry goods.

The company spent the next five years working on the technology.

Before a commodity is ever shipped, GrainChain sets up a contract between a buyer and a farmer for their supply, negotiated through GrainChain’s digital portal. That contract is submitted to the chain along with an agreed upon payment that’s held in escrow until delivery.

In the field and at the silo, GrainChain’s system consists of a logistics toolkit to monitor and track harvests coming out of the fields and through individual silos. The goods are certified for quality assurance using the company’s sensor technology, and that certification is recorded onto a HyperLedger-based blockchain.

Once the shipment is verified, payment is released to the farmer in the form of a dollar-backed GrainPay stablecoin that allows instant settlement of the transaction. The asset-backed token is burned once the contract is filled and the tokens are converted into whatever fiat currency was agreed upon in the initial contract.

GrainChain makes its money by charging a commission on every transaction that moves through its platform.

The company raised $2.5 million from Medici Ventures — the investment arm of Overstock — back in October and is now expanding into international markets.

“We’re giving the farmer the ability to work with a higher-risk customer because they’re getting guaranteed payment,” says Macias. “Sometimes, they can’t go past the normal broker they go through.”

Currently the company has 14 commodities including: corn, soybeans, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, sorghum, coffee, cocoa and sand.

“We have the ability to do any dry commodity that has the ability to be graded,” says Macias. “What we really found is that when there’s a contract that’s built and it’s slow-pay or no-pay or arbitration that comes through on the contract, it’s devastating to the farmer. This gives them the security to take on what would otherwise be riskier customers.”

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/02/grainchain-a-blockchain-based-platform-for-commodity-sales-launches-in-mexico/