What is LATTICE80? A Review

LATTICE80 is the world’s largest Fintech Hub headquartered in London, which was launched by to help Fintech startups to prototype, develop and expand their business models globally. It offers startup accelerator program and due diligence as well as a curated innovation program plus co-working space. 

It also offers support to existing corporate and financial institutions willing to adopt innovations, for instance by facilitating public-private partnerships in order to further develop new tech and financial infrastructure; and educates the public in relation to fintech and other issues.     

The hub, which is headquartered in London and with various branches in Europe and Asia, currently hosts 11,000 Fintech/blockchain/crypto startups and 200,000 fintech professionals in its database.

Lattice80 also offers services across the United States, UK, EU, MENA, Nordics, and Asia. Marvelstone Group is a privately owned hedge fund group.

Lattice80 KAYA Network comprises of a Fintech hub, Miss Kaya, KAYA Chain, and Impact Blockchain initiative as its four synergistic efforts. It aims at reaching out to the un-banked and the underbanked individuals and SMEs through these four synergistic efforts. 

For instance, it would facilitate the development of blockchain-based financial innovations that target the needs of legacy banks and financial institutions to serve the underbanked and unbanked, and facilitate and advise their adoption within modern banking environments.   

They recently announced a token and token futures for investment, and are intending to launch to new innovation hubs in Europe and Asia in the first half of this year and then 4 new hubs globally in the second quarter of this year. 

Need for innovation in financial markets

During the launch of a Fintech Hub branch in China's Hong Kong city, Joe Seunghyun Cho, Co-founder and Founding CEO of LATTICE80, said that 70% of the world's population still lives less than 10 dollars a day and legacy banking system is not catered to support this market. Fintech is very strategic to support this market with its lesser cost, simple-to-access, and simple-to-use solutions.   

Lattice80's FintechDB is a database of financial technology firms powered by artificial intelligence. It is part of the KAYA network, which aims to become the largest fintech network offering investment information regarding startups in the blockchain, cryptocurrency, and fintech areas. The platform aims to provide information to companies wanting to establish businesses and acquire local support.

In other words, investors willing to invest in startups and fintech can look up for relevant information in the platform, about the best categories they can invest in and the top companies in which they could invest in as well as the top investors in that country.

Thus the investors will reduce the time and money spent in trying to research and sort through numerous emerging fintech startups in order to find the ones that they can invest in. Obviously, it would be used to support market research by offering more accurate and reliable current market data, old company records, and custom variables about companies and investment opportunities.

The platform will utilize AI in order to identify investment trends and opportunities based on market data and co-relating custom variables developed over time to gather investment opportunities, and through collaboration with partners.

KAYA's UN SDG focused Blockchain Accelerator Programme

Last year, Lattice80 opened a new Fintech Hub branch office in Hong Kong to run UN SDG focused Blockchain Accelerator Programme.

The branch office is located in Sha Tin where a number of Sha Tin universities and Science Park are located and is close to the border of Shenzhen, China. Joe Seunghyun Cho, Co-founder and Founding CEO of LATTICE80, said at launch that Hong Kong was strategic because it is a traditional financial and trading hub that connects Asia and Europe and has the world's best exit market and access to global investors that budding fintech and blockchain startups would look for.

Plus the city has a much growth potential compared to the size of its finance industry. He said he believed that Hong Kong will be a leader in Fintech in Asia for the next 1-2 years and was the right place to bring the best fintech innovations embraced in China to the outside of the world. The accelerator program also aims to bring and facilitate the integration of innovations (hosted on its platform) to existing platforms like legacy banks and financial institutions, by working with the latter and innovators.    

The blockchain accelerator program is aligned with the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs). The UN also sees the blockchain as having the potential to greatly help SDGs end poverty, protecting the environment, and promoting well-being for all through 17 SDG goals are categorized in three main areas: economic growth, social inclusion and environmental protection. It has programs utilizing blockchain or trialing blockchain in these areas. 

The whole of use case of the blockchain related to these programs is to have the proper tech to help in the developing of economies and ecosystems that are sustainable enough to be useful for today's generation without compromising value for tomorrow's generation. Blockchain, as one of the techs that have potential to help achieve SDGs, is being applied in a variety of ways including healthcare, climate, food and other programs.

A good example is the World Food Programme’s (WFP) Building Blocks launched in 2016, which uses DLT to make cash transfers more efficient, secure and cost-friendly by eliminating intermediaries.

It thus addresses the "No Poverty" and "Zero Hunger" SDs by reducing payment costs, protecting beneficiary data, controling financial risks, and setting up assistance operations in the wake of emergencies. as of January 2018, over 100,000 Syrian refugees in Pakistan and Jordan redeem their World Food Programme provided assistance using the blockchain program, which aims to provide all 500,000 WFP-supported refugees in Jordan to receive provisions through this service.

Climate Chain Coalition (CCC) also uses blockchain to facilitate collaboration in climate issues, monitoring, reporting and verification of climate action impacts.  Therefore, blockchain startups can focus many areas of SDGs in their innovations.

The KAYA accelerator program also aims at fostering innovations to address SDGs in a variety of fields including poverty eradication, social inclusion, and financial inclusion and has the LATTICE80 Accelerator Fund that is targeted at funding SMEs.

Impact Blockchain is LATTICE80’s initiative to use blockchain to develop solutions that create social impact along the lines of the UN's SDGs. It explores ways through which blockchain and distributed ledger technology or DLT can be utilized to revolutionize the way we create and process transactions, share data, and reduce costs in financial transactions etc.

Lattice80 engages the community through this initiative by way of facilitating communication and evangelizing ideas about use of blockchain in solving social problems and issues.

Miss KAYA

Miss Kaya is the KAYA Network’s commitment to empowering women and reducing the gender gap. It aims to make  financial planning and management simple and fun by providing financial solutions to women.

KAYA chain and token

KAYA Chain is the Lattice80's own blockchain-based platform that is used to develop banking and financial services catered mainly to the unbanked and the under-served. The KaYA token is a utility token that aims at offering Lattice80 and partners' services to their customers. Its ICO concluded successfully last year. It is issued on the NEM platform on which Lattice80 also builds services.

KAYA Token Futures

Lattic80 listed the KAYA Token Futures on Delta Exchange, which is a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange, on February 8th, 2019. The launch was in order to develop a Crypto Volatility Free platform. The Kaya Token Futures will provide a crypto volatility free platform to fintech startups even as the Kaya network aims at connecting g startups with financial institutions, corporate, governments and the general public in 200 cities globally with a focus on the SDGs.

The KAYA token Futures is the first of the regular co-investing opportunities which KAYA aims at creating. It is targeted at investors willing to invest in startups in blockchain and fintech.

Project leaders

The project is led by Joe Seunghyun Cho who is the Co-founder and Founding CEO and he has over 15 years of experience in the Asian and U.S. markets. He has founded a number of fund management companies. Gina Heng is the co-founder and founded MissKaya.com. 

Joel K, another co-founder is also the President of Marvelstone Group.

Sang Min Kim, Former Senator is the advisor of the project and he is a  senator in the ruling party, Liberty Korea Party during the last presidency.