MIT has moved its blockchain research from the blackboard to the real world through a partnership with distributed ledger tech startup Ripple.
While MIT has long been involved in supporting the bitcoin and blockchain industries through research, the aim of this project is to develop blockchain, financial services and other enterprise data projects, the university said.
Project director David Shrier, of MIT Connection Science, said he expects this most recent step to attract a wide range of researchers, more than doubling in size its first six months of operation.
Shrier told CoinDesk: "It’s one thing to develop a four node test blockchain. It’s quite another thing to hook up to a large scale global network of nodes." As part of the research, which is currently being conducted by seven students and professors, MIT is running a validator for the Ripple Consensus Ledger, its permissioned distributed ledger system. The validator is a server that confirms transactions on the network on which the XRP digital asset sits.
Going back to early 2015, MIT has been involved in blockchain tech most directly through support of bitcoin development through its Digital Currency Initiative (DCI). Last month, the MIT DCI helped raise $900,000 to support bitcoin developers, with donors to the fund including venture capitalist Fred Wilson and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman
MIT’s decision to use Ripple over alternatives was in part due to what Shrier called the startup being "very well positioned" in finance. He added that the university is also interested in exploring "other different flavors" of blockchain. Laying the foundation
However, MIT’s embrace of blockchain has roots in its longstanding support of open-source projects in general.
Since 2007, MIT’s Internet Trust Consortium, which includes UBS and NTT Japan, has been developing open-source projects dedicated to helping people more efficiently manage their data. Last year, the consortium was […]
