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Very, very good news, everyone: Economy TV, a South Korean channel, has announced that the second season of Block Battle: Who is the Next Satoshi?—the “world’s first blockchain survival program"—will launch on Thursday, June 20.
At Decrypt, we sadly missed season one, but we’ll—for sure—be tuning in to season two, which will be televised in China, Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam and Hong Kong (and on the Youtube channel Coin Cast).
The series, which is co-produced by production studio Viral Nation, challenges developers to, er, find a pretext to shoehorn blockchain technology into otherwise normal projects. “This year’s question is simple,” says the show’s press release. “Why does your project need blockchain technology?”
Block Battle further promises a “journey into the heart of the global emerging technology of Blockchain.” It takes place over five episodes, with teams competing to contrive the best blockchain tech solutions for a prize of “up to $10 million.”
It sounds like the participants will be put through their paces. Even from the get-go, applicants’ project ideas “will be subject to basic technical verification.” Then, as they advance to the finals, the ten final combatants will “participate in a multitude of competitions, including a 5-minute presentation, a one-on-one whitepaper battle, and a final competition” before a panel of hard-boiled judges from VC funds, cryptocurrency exchanges, and “successful” projects.
The team behind the show seem surprised to have snagged a second season. “There were no extensive marketing efforts, and we were able to finish a successful first Season,” said Viral Nation CMO Scott Park in the press release (we reached out for further comment, but have yet to receive a response). “The feedback we got from the teams and projects that participated was both positive and negative and there were first-time mistakes that we made in creating it. Because it had never been done before…”
And now it has been done, twice. Make of that what you will.