BlockTrust, a pioneer in Web3Commerce solutions, will unveil the latest ID3 utility at Token2049 in Singapore, an on-chain creator and influencer rewards and commerce engine, designed specifically for growing and major global brands.

ID3, the custodial wallet infrastructure used by brands scaling to 100s of thousands of concurrent on-chain transactions across millions of consumers, will shortly release its Creator Engine for Brands, decentralising the $137 billion annual paid and earned media market.

Key Features of the ID3 Creator Engine:

• Proof of Influence: ID3 empowers brands to drive and reward brand advocacy across all social platforms via its customers, automatically paying User-Generated Content (UGC) (by likes, views, shares etc) with stable coins that can be used for future FIAT purchases. Proof of Influence provides brand’s with an alternative and more effective use of advertising budget, directly to the customer. Proof of Influence transforms followers into influencers and back to customers on a continuously scaling loop. 
• Proof of Purchase: ID3 captures big retail purchases by consumers in real life, rewarding stable coins when product barcodes are scanned, capturing all meta-data required to enable future consumer purchases directly from the brands online ecommerce with 1 click.
• Apple and Google wallet: Consumers access their favourite brand’s web3 Commerce environments, and their influencer coin balance, directly via a branded card in their apple or Google wallet, enabling permissionless login, direct notifications and messaging. 
• Proof of Attendance: Consumers' Apple or Google Brand Card can be used to authenticate their attendance at events and on-premise venues, swap contacts with fellow consumers, providing further stable coin rewards, digital drops, and status recognition. With this feature, brands are able to activate their followers, on masse, through direct communication via WhatsApp or notifications.

Meet BlockTrust at Token2049:
BlockTrust's executives attending the event include:

• Mike Alexander, Co-Founder
• Mike Haywood, Co-Founder
• Andrew Stedman, Chief Operating Officer
• Stéphane Zermatten, Director of Product Strategy & Marketing

Michael Alexander, Former CEO of Jefferies Bank in Asia, Former CEO of the $1bn EOS VC and now Co-Founder of BlockTrust explains: “Having been in the Blockchain space since 2016, we founded BlockTrust to help educate major global brands on the opportunities and threats that Web3 poses. In doing this we have reached over 300 C-level and board level executives to truly understand the needs of their customers and design products which enable their journey into Web3Commerce.”

Dr Michael Haywood, Founder of LiveHire.com, a “decentralised talent ecosystem” managing $billions in recruitment spend globally each year, Board Member of National Museum of Australia and now Co-Founder of BlockTrust adds: “Since the inception of Web3, major global brands have recognised the opportunity the technologies provide, but have struggled to identify applications that deliver genuine improvements in customer experience, product growth, and brand value. At BlockTrust we have been laser focused on developing products with real world use cases and utility for major brands, as they will be the ones to help bring the next 1 billion customers across to web3.”

If you're keen to discover more about ID3 or delve into BlockTrust's Web3Commerce suite, don't hesitate to get in touch with us at takecontrol@block-trust.io and arrange a demonstration for your Brand and Community.

Largest skill-based gaming operator utilizes leading identity verification platform to prevent fraud and accelerate business growth

Socure, the leading provider of digital identity verification and fraud solutions, today announced that PrizePicks, the largest skill-based fantasy gaming operator, has successfully implemented Socure's identity technology into their popular skill-based fantasy sports platform. Socure's robust approach has enabled PrizePicks to experience double-digit growth in new member approvals, reduce fraud losses, and drive massive growth in customer lifetime value.

Socure's platform gives PrizePicks a unified approach to verifying new player identities in real time with a proven, trusted, end-to-end platform, including KYC verification and identity fraud identification. By applying analytics models that track and correlate identity attributes, the Socure platform produces reliable, consistent and accurate determinations on the legitimacy of an identity. Socure's KYC solution delivers industry-best pass rates of up to 98% for mainstream populations and its Sigma Identity Fraud models achieve the highest fraud capture rates along with the lowest false positive rates in the industry, consistently capturing fraud in the riskiest 3% population by up to 90%.

Prospective members that fail initial checks are escalated to Socure's Predictive DocV to digitally verify the authenticity of identity documents, along with selfie analyses to verify biometric and physical identification card matches. Its Predictive DocV solution sets a new bar in accuracy, speed, user experience, and fraud reduction, far outpacing market competitors.

"Capturing fraud at the top of the funnel was a big ticket item for us at PrizePicks," said Jay Deuskar, co-founder and CTO at PrizePicks. "Socure's integrated capabilities for KYC, fraud and document verification are impressive and have helped us implement a powerful verification workflow in a single solution."

PrizePicks customers are sports fans who want a sleek and intuitive experience, Socure optimizes the account onboarding experience, making sure potential members don't drop out of the process due to unnecessary friction. With Socure, PrizePicks has gained a frictionless, highly-accurate solution that delivers a solid foundation of reliable identification and protection in an easy to use format that further enables rapid growth.

Led by Fin Capital and Vertex Ventures SEAI, funding will help bolster go-to-market engine, deploy next-gen technologies, and expand into high-demand markets

The all-in-one third-party management platform, Certa, today announced it has raised a 2x oversubscribed Series B led by Fin Capital, and Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India, with participation from Tru Arrow Partners. Existing investors Point72 Ventures, BDMI, which is part of Bertelsmann's corporate venture arm Bertelsmann Investments, the family office of Bernard Arnault’s Aglae Ventures, The Chainsmokers-backed Mantis VC, and GOAT Capital also participated in the round. This raise brings the total institutional investment in Certa to $50M to date.

Today’s organizations are increasingly global interconnected ecosystems of thousands of suppliers, partners, and clients. Each relationship adds risks like data security, privacy, and fraud. Additionally, companies deal with ever-increasing compliance burdens, such as the recent Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) in the U.S. and the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (LkSG), along with pressing Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) goals. A firm's competitive edge depends on its ability to work with third parties efficiently, safely, and swiftly. Existing systems at best offer point solutions which are often a pain to integrate, struggle to manage interconnected risks, and third-party data ends up siloed across multiple systems. Certa provides the most comprehensive and intelligent platform for global third-party management across procurement, compliance, ESG, and legal.

The results achieved by Certa’s clients speak volumes. “Business impact has been tremendous; we’ve been able to reduce our cycle times by over 78 percent,” said Linda Chuan, VP & Chief Procurement Officer at Box.

“We’ve been able to reduce our operating costs by 50 percent year over year and increase our on-time payments from around 40 to 95 percent,” echoed Mark Arrigotti, Head of Finance Operations at Uber.

To date, Certa has helped clients onboard and monitor millions of companies across 120 countries supporting 41 languages.

“This investment in a tough economic environment underscores the demand for a more complete, modern solution to manage third-party relationships,” said Jag Lamba, founder and CEO of Certa. “It is a testament to Certa’s best in class technology and the value we have delivered to clients, many of whom are large Fortune 500 companies. We are energized by the faith put in us by our rockstar investors and believe Certa is poised to be a next-gen category leader in third-party management.”

Certa will use the funding to bolster its go-to-market engine, expand its reach into new high-growth markets like Europe, and accelerate adoption. Since customer feedback is in the company’s DNA, Certa is pioneering the use of advanced Generative AI to streamline third-party ecosystems.

“Managing third parties is more than just risk and compliance - customers are looking for a full stack solution,” said Logan Allin, Managing Partner and Founder of Fin Capital and the newest Certa Board Member. “With its ability to redefine how businesses work and grow together, it’s an honor to partner with Certa on their journey as both an investor and board member.”

Video Streaming Innovations Include State-of-the-Art Monetization and AI Capabilities 

Harmonic today announced that it continues to elevate its market-leading cloud and appliance solutions for video streaming, broadcast and distribution at IBC2023. As the worldwide leader in video processing and delivery, Harmonic will showcase a breadth of innovations for live sports and event streaming; targeted advertising; cloud, on-premises and hybrid playout; primary distribution; and more.

"Live sports streaming is a multibillion-dollar market, and Harmonic's SaaS solutions are crucial to achieving unparalleled scalability and reliability, outstanding-quality streaming experiences and increased monetization for service providers," said Gil Rudge, senior vice president, video products and solutions at Harmonic. "At this year's IBC Show, we'll highlight the unique ways in which our new award-winning VOS^®360 Ad SaaS unlocks monetization opportunities for streaming services."

Harmonic will take video streaming, broadcast and distribution to new heights at IBC2023 with demonstrations of its VOS360 Media SaaS, VOS360 Ad SaaS and XOS Edge media processor:

• Maximize monetization: Increase ad revenues for live, linear TV and VOD streaming with Harmonic's new stand-alone VOS360 Ad SaaS offering, which delivers personalized ads to the individual viewer level. Key applications include virtual product placement, server-side ad insertion (SSAI) at scale for low-latency live sports streaming with squeeze back and double box ads in the same stream.
• Stream live sports and events at scale: Reliably stream low-latency live sports and events at scale with up to UHD HDR quality, best-in-class watermarking protection and targeted advertising for millions of concurrent viewers. VOS360 Media SaaS is also an ideal solution for customers looking to seamlessly transition from the Azure Media Services platform.
• Modernize channel origination: Make playout workflows smarter and more agile with Harmonic's cloud, on-premises and hybrid playout solutions. Originate linear channels from existing assets for broadcast and streaming with an AI-based automatic scheduling and recommendations engine. Brand live events with powerful HTML5 live graphics.
• Streamline primary distribution: Leverage satellite or transition to IP with Harmonic's primary distribution solutions powered by next-generation XOS Edge media processors. Advanced capabilities will be shown, including channel variants and targeted ad delivery, blackout management, and edge processing with total flexibility in output formats.

Industrywide Collaborations on AI and Content Monetization
Harmonic will highlight key collaborations with industry leaders to enhance video streaming and broadcast offerings:

• Google Ad Manager: Tight-knit integration between Harmonic's SSAI solution and the Google Ad Manager's streaming monetization stack is enabling customers to maximize revenue across all demand types at scale while supporting a quality viewing experience across all screens where consumers are engaging with their content.
• Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service: Through an innovative technology demonstration, Harmonic will showcase how to enhance personalized live sports streaming experiences and increase fan engagement in real time by leveraging Azure OpenAI Service.
• Advanced monetization partnerships: Harmonic will highlight innovations for linearizing and monetizing VOD content with Alpha Networks and solutions for targeted ad delivery at scale with SpringServe and Equativ. Harmonic will further showcase its open ecosystem approach with a demonstration of VOS360 Ad integrated with the AWS Elemental video pipeline.
• AI collaborations: AI-driven collaborations with Spideo, Mirriad, Leankr and Kebula improve automated channel scheduling, content preparation, monetization and sports highlights creation.

Tamr’s partnership with Google Cloud shaping the future of data and AI in industries

Tamr, the leader in AI-powered data products, is proud to announce its partnership with Google Cloud to launch Data & AI Cloud for Industries, starting with Data & AI Cloud for Marketing. This collaboration brings together easy access to the most relevant data, best-in-class analytics and AI/ML capabilities, accelerators and an ecosystem of partners and connectivity.

Data & AI Cloud for Marketing will enable customers to get more business value from data in the cloud with less overhead. Data & AI Cloud for Marketing covers a range of use cases, including marketing spend optimization, creative content generation and activation, personalization/segmentation, privacy-centric data sharing and collaboration, and customer 360 use cases, accelerating time to value on the cloud.

Google Cloud’s analytics portfolio of products, including BigQuery, forms the basis of Data & AI Cloud for Marketing. Tamr's integration with BigQuery provides customers with AI-powered data products that provide clean, consolidated, and curated data without requiring complex setup or manual effort. Organizations benefit from Tamr’s integrated, turn-key solution that combines AI/ML with humans-in-the-loop, a low-code/no-code environment, and integrated data enrichment to streamline operations. The outcome is higher quality data, faster and with less manual work.

"In partnership with Google Cloud, we’re making it easier for marketers to get the data they need to do more with less and hit their targets while staying within budget," said Matt Holzapfel, Head of Corporate Strategy at Tamr. “With Tamr's template-based data products, prebuilt with enrichment, and Google Cloud capabilities, marketers can deliver a high-quality customer experience powered by complete, accurate data.”

The combination of Tamr's expertise in unifying large amounts of disparate data sources quickly and accurately with Google Cloud’s expansive cloud offerings will transform how marketers approach their data as a product. Marketers can make better decisions faster while saving time and money to focus on what matters most.

"We're excited about choosing Tamr for our integration with Google's BigQuery," said Marshall Worster, Senior Director, Enterprise Transformation at Novocure. "Tamr's revolutionizing our approach to data management— increasing speed, enhancing accuracy, and bolstering confidence in our data management processes to advance our mission of providing the best care possible for our patients."

Latest Platform Release Streamlines Research Process, Expands Asynchronous and Global Recruitment Capabilities

Discuss, the leading purpose-built platform for turning experiences into insights, is changing the game for qualitative research with the latest release of the Discuss People Experience Platform. New features including generative AI-powered research summaries, enhanced asynchronous research tools and an expanded network for global recruitment are eliminating the long, winding road to insights and instead, offer customers a freeway to faster insights.

After introducing the first generative AI suite, Genie, for qualitative research, Genie Summaries was quickly adopted by dozens of Discuss customers who experienced the value of instantaneous recaps of live sessions and summaries across entire research projects. After thousands of summaries and customer feedback that helped further improve Genie summaries, it is now officially out of Beta and generally available for all new and existing customers. It is a step change in how researchers navigate their unstructured feedback allowing users to take hours of video and turn them into a final report in minutes.

“I used Genie for an online focus group project, and seeing the summary I was provided was one of those ‘wow’ moments for me, as I could see how the AI picked up on sentiment expressed through the longer conversation,” said Susan Sweet, Chief Insight Officer for Sweet Insight Group. “I’m excited most about the time savings, but also about the way it takes my own reliance on ‘emotional recollection’ down a notch, and I think it would be incredibly helpful for exploratory, in-depth interviews as well.”

Discuss has also expanded its asynchronous research tools and services to make it easier and faster to reach a global audience. These enhancements help customers optimize all types of research from in-home usage testing to shop-alongs and unboxing moments. Discuss also facilitates the recruitment of respondents for these asynchronous projects through the expansion of its global network of online panels and agency partners.

“This latest release is reflective of how the Discuss team truly obsesses over solving the biggest customer challenges in qualitative research combined with a world class innovation pace. We’re excited to continue pushing the boundaries and be out in front of the market providing our customers with a qualitative research platform that gets more robust almost weekly,” said Adam Mertz, SVP of Product & Marketing at Discuss. “The feedback from our customers and industry experts has been extraordinary in terms of the value of these new capabilities and their enthusiasm for how quickly Discuss has introduced them.” 

This focus on innovation and customer success, along with a unique unlimited research business model that removes the constraints of the past to scaling qual research has led to recognition across the industry for Discuss this year, including being named as a Strong Performer by Forrester in their Experience Research Platforms Wave and also receiving G2 leader recognition in their Recent Summer Grid reports for User Research and Video Feedback with top scores in ease of use, ease of doing business with, and quality of support. Discuss was also named a winner in the Analytics and Business Intelligence category of the 2022 and 2023 APPEALIE SaaS Awards.

BridgeFT's received the Industry Disruptors award, recognizing the impact its WealthTech API has on transforming the way financial institutions access critical data.

BridgeFT, an API-first, cloud-native wealth infrastructure software company that enables financial institutions, fintech innovators, and registered investment advisors to deliver better, data-driven outcomes for their clients, announced today that it has been received the Industry Disruptors award in the WealthManagement.com 2023 Industry Awards.

The prestigious award recognizes the impact BridgeFT's WealthTech API has had on transforming the way financial institutions and FinTech companies build next generation WealthTech applications.

"This is an incredible validation of the innovations BridgeFT is bringing to the wealthtech ecosystem," said Joe Stensland, BridgeFT's Chief Executive Officer. "Since the WealthManagement.com Industry Awards set the standard for highlighting the best in our industry, it is truly an honor to be recognized at this level by our peers."

BridgeFT's WealthTech API is the industry's first WealthTech-as-a-Service platform, offering a single, open API to trade-ready, multi-custodial data, analytics, and application services. BridgeFT's WealthTech API empowers clients to reimagine the potential of their financial data and technology stack. WealthTech API removes the need for individual data feeds from a range of custodians and back-office providers, allowing wealth management firms and FinTech companies to create differentiated, next generation wealth management applications.

Custodians hold a range of data that drives the investment ecosystem, from positions and balances to client holdings and trades. Each individual custodian has its own data policy, structure, and systems, forcing FinTech companies and other financial institutions to build custom programs for each custodian to ingest the data. This adds both development time and cost. By simplifying access to the underlying data, WealthTech API allows financial innovators to rethink and streamline their own tech stacks and create differentiated tools and solutions for their own clients with BridgeFT's applications and developer-to-developer support.

This year, BridgeFT launched its WealthTech API Marketplace, which allows clients access to a BridgeFT-curated group of partners that are reshaping wealth technology with an API-first approach to delivering application services that are pre-integrated with BridgeFT's WealthTech API infrastructure.

Now in its ninth year, the WealthManagement.com Industry Awards, known as the Wealthies, is the only awards program of its kind to honor outstanding achievements by companies, organizations and individuals that support financial advisor success. A panel of judges made up of top names in the industry, led by WealthManagement.com director of editorial strategy and operations David Armstrong, chose the winners. 

 Australia & BOCA RATON, Fla. & DENVER AustralianSuper, Australia’s largest pension fund, today announced that it is investing €1.5 billion to acquire a significant minority stake in Vantage Data Centers Europe, Middle East and Africa (Vantage EMEA), a DigitalBridge-sponsored company. DigitalBridge Group, Inc. (“DigitalBridge”), is a leading global alternative asset manager dedicated to investing in digital infrastructure.

AustralianSuper will be a key shareholder in Vantage EMEA, one of the fastest growing hyperscale data center platforms in the region. Together, AustralianSuper and DigitalBridge-sponsored vehicles will support Vantage’s expansion and development of hyperscale data centers across EMEA, utilizing the company’s campus model to drive accelerated time to market while building on its longstanding customer relationships, track record of growth and next-generation infrastructure capabilities.

The investment, which represents AustralianSuper’s first significant exposure in hyperscale data centers, provides AustralianSuper with access to an attractive market with strong growth prospects.

Nik Kemp, Head of Infrastructure at AustralianSuper, said, “The Vantage EMEA platform is at an exciting point in its history, with a strong pipeline of developments in growing markets across the region. We look forward to working with DigitalBridge and Vantage EMEA to continue to support the rapid growth of its customers while also delivering on our purpose to help more than 3.2 million members achieve their best financial position in retirement. The Vantage EMEA platform will complement our existing digital infrastructure investments and this acquisition represents an important step for the Fund as we build out our infrastructure capability in Europe.”

Jon Mauck, Senior Managing Director at DigitalBridge who leads DigitalBridge’s data center investment strategy, said, “We are delighted to welcome AustralianSuper as an investor to EMEA’s premier data center platform. Vantage, led by an experienced management team, has a track record of success and is aligned with the long-term growth of cloud demand and the need for AI infrastructure. Digital infrastructure continues to demonstrate its resilience as an asset class, and we look forward to building on our track record as we become a partner of choice to Australian investors seeking to increase their exposure to high-quality digital infrastructure investments.”

Sureel Choksi, President and CEO of Vantage Data Centers, said, “As data center demand continues to rapidly accelerate across EMEA, this investment will fuel Vantage’s ability to accelerate the growth of our environmentally friendly, large-scale data center footprint across the region and further deepen our relationships with customers as we enable them to grow and scale their businesses with reliable, efficient and sustainable data centers. We look forward to partnering with AustralianSuper and supporting our customers’ continued growth."

Since entering the EMEA market in February 2020, Vantage EMEA has expanded to six countries and established its presence in some of the region’s most important financial and commercial hubs, including Frankfurt and Berlin, Germany; Milan, Italy; Warsaw, Poland; Johannesburg, South Africa; Zurich, Switzerland; and Cardiff, United Kingdom. Most recently, Vantage EMEA announced its entry into the London market with 75MW of IT capacity across two campuses. Vantage EMEA has a strong focus on environmental sustainability and is committed to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2030.