This week was an exciting week a friend of mine, Sebastiaan van der Lans. His Dutch startup WordProof, as they were awarded a €1 Million prize by the European Commission.
With this contest, Europe aims to stimulate the use of blockchain technology to solve social problems. WordProof, founded one year ago, managed to leave 175 participants from all over Europe behind. Which is quite an impressive feat for this young startup.
WordProof is a technology that time-stamps your content in the Blockchain through a WordPress plugin. The timestamp itself is proof-of-existence (blockchain was invented for this in 1991) and with a blockchain account, your stamp claims your ownership.
As a reader (or search engine) you verify whether content actually comes from publisher, journalist, merchant (ecommerce), or whether it is actually written by a doctor or a politician.
– Bas van der Lans, co-founder WordProof
A perfect mechanism to battle fake news, says co-founder Sebastiaan van der Lans.
It also allow for an implementation that integrates timestamps in Schema Markup. It allows for a way to indicate and standardize how to deal with duplicate content, with or without permission, within publishers.
All in all a very promising solution to combat fake news, copyright claims and build trust on the web.
Congratulations Sebastiaan and team!
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