Philly blockchain project TrueBlocks nabs $120K grant from Ethereum Foundation

TrueBlocks founder Thomas Jay Rush sees a future where anyone can see, in real time, what’s happening inside an organization’s accounting books.

“I’m fascinated by what it means to be that transparent and hopefully we can help that happen,” says Rush, the organizer of the Philadelphia Ethereum Blockchain Meetup whose early stage startup just scored a $120,000 grant from Switzerland-based Ethereum Foundation.

The grant awarded to TrueBlocks (formerly known as QuickBlocks) is part of a nearly-$3-million round of grants into 20 individuals and organizations working in the blockchain space from the foundation, which was founded in 2014 by Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin in the Swiss “Crypto Valley” of Zug, Switzerland.

With the cash, Rush says the company will be able to fund the next six months of work. Alongside software engineer Edward Mazurek, what TrueBlocks is trying to create is a “fully-decentralized way to access data” produced by Ethereum addresses or smart contracts. For developers, the company makes open source software libraries. For consumers, it offers accounting, auditing and monitoring solutions.

“I fell in love with the data that’s produced on the blockchain,” Rush said. “I fell in love with the idea of a system that would let us build solutions to problems that are much bigger than what we can solve ourselves.”

(We included this startup, under its previous name, in this list of 10 Philly blockchain resources.)

Though it’s a registered company, Rush says TrueBlocks sits somewhere between a business and a research project.

“I’m just trying to understand what you’d need to do to get data to as many people as possible without extracting privacy,” Rush said.

Aside from larger grants for standalone projects, the Ethereum Foundation also pays people who are devoting their spare time to Ethereum blockchain projects $10,000 for 10-week “hackternships.” The application process for the next round of grants is already open.