Earlier this month we made a list of the 10 blockchain startups and projects we’re most interested in. When we did that, we also asked the founders listed what projects — other than their own — they’re most interested in.

Some of the answers were other companies on our list, some were companies we’d not heard of previously, but, as it happens, a bunch of them were uPort, the company that’s trying to build a “self-sovereign identity” on the Ethereum blockchain.

What follows are our favorite blockchain founders’ favorite blockchain startups.

We didn’t include who named who, because we don’t want to start any beef in the Brooklyn blockchain world, where people know each other quite well. Particularly as people are looking for some actual blockchain applications to emerge amidst all the Bitcoin hype, these are the places to keep an eye on.

uPort

“What they’re trying to do around sovereign identity / identity verification is really impressive, and can make a massive, positive impact if they pull it off. On the one hand, it can put the power back into the individual’s hands when it comes to determining which data they want to share with a given third-party, and the amount they’ll be compensated for it (as opposed to, you know, just ‘using Facebook‘). What’s even more interesting to me is what it can do for persecuted populations around the world: to give them a way to prove their identity outside of government-owned channels. As globalist trends increase, that’s going to be an increasingly relevant and critical thing to have.”

“uPort allows you to control your own self-sovereign digital identity. Currently, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, eBay, etc. own and control your digital identity, which may not seem as controversial as things like biotech companies owning your genome or DNA sequence — not yet anyway — but I guarantee you in a world that’s becoming increasingly dominated by the internet of things, having ownership and control over your digital identity and reputation in the future will be as important as controlling the autonomy of your real physical person. Many years from now, when we look back at how companies controlled our identities, we will say it amounted to digital slavery.”

Bounties

“I really like Bounties, which was started by Mark Beylin. It lets users associate bounties (in ether or tokens) to tasks (software features, design work, etc). Users can grow reputation and earn money for putting their skills to work, which I think is cool.”