UCL joins Hedera Hashgraph as a research partner

Hedera Hashgraph, the company behind the blockchain-like Hedera network, is adding one of the best universities in the world to its board of directors.

The first university on the board of Hedera

Hedera announced Wednesday that University College London (UCL) will join the board to manage a node on the hashgraph, offer Hedera consensus service to students and faculty, and participate in the next subcommittees that Hedera intends to create.

UCL is also conducting blockchain and governance research with Hedera. "They are very forward-looking in the DLT space," said MCL Harmon, CEO of Hedera, regarding UCL.

UCL is the third largest in the UK in total students enrolled and has an annual budget of around £ 1.4 billion. Being one of the most highly rated universities in the world, UCL currently teaches lessons to over 42,000 students from 150 different countries.

The UCL hosts a number of important educational faculties that have emerged as among the first protagonists of the academic world in the area of ​​blockchain and distributed accounting technologies (DLT).

It will be the first university and thirteenth member to be part of the Hedera board of directors. Until now, the governing body was mainly made up of blue chip companies including IBM, Boeing, Deutsche Telekom, Tata, Nomura and the banking technology provider FIS.

A COVID-19 task force

Earlier this month, UCL and the European Commission partnered with the International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications (INATBA) to coordinate blockchain vendors responding to the COVID-19 health crisis in Europe.

Separately, software development company Acoer is already using the hashgraph to create a digital date / time service for a COVID-19 database that it is developing in coordination with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization. , said Harmon.

"The launch of the COVID-19 Task Force by UCL demonstrates how governments, corporations, businesses, charities and medical research centers can take full advantage of the benefits of DLT to overcome unprecedented challenges," said Harmon.

A bridge to act on real world problems

Paolo Tasca, executive director of the UCL Center for Blockchain Technologies (CBT), said that the university decided to collaborate with Hedera Hashgraph after seeing his asynchronous byzantine fault tolerance, which has a lighter carbon footprint than other consent mechanisms.

“We are proud to join the Hedera Governing Council to lead the next generation of DLT. UCL CBT is ready to embrace this open and decentralized governance model and Hedera's innovative technological solutions to real world problems, "said Tasca.

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