National University of Colombia Joins Blockchain Global Consortium for Science

The National University of Colombia is joining the global  blockchain consortium for science dubbed Bloxberg, Mauricio Tovar Gutiérrez, co-director of the research group at inTIColombia told Cointelegraph en Español on April 15.

Bloxberg is a blockchain initiative formed by 12 research organizations from 10 countries and led by the Max Planck Society, with the National University of Colombia to be the only institution from Latin America. The parties reportedly aim to establish an infrastructure that “broadens the scientific landscape of regionally and nationally governed blockchain networks to become the first truly globally maintained decentralized network by scientists for science.”

Tovar Gutiérrez revealed that the project is still in the pilot phase. Bloxberg will purportedly find its application in registering and publishing of scientific articles in order to eliminate intermediaries, as third party consultation and evaluation of works are usually cost intensive.

The platform will also purportedly enable users to verify the authenticity of data, protect intellectual property rights, exchange research results, peer review and publish, and vet research organizations. Gutiérrez stated:

“The interesting thing about blockchain, for example for intellectual property issues, is that when someone registers something there, neither that person nor another person can eliminate it, then it becomes a certificate of whoever did something for the first time. This is another case of striking use, to identify or record some academic production and demonstrate authorship.”

The consortium also includes such organizations as Carnegie Mellon, UCL, ETH Library at ETH Zürich, Georgia Tech, IT University of Copenhagen, University of Belgrade, University of Johannesburg, University of Kassel, University of Nicosia, and University of Sarajevo.

Last month, the  Ethereum Foundation awarded a grant to researchers at Columbia and Yale universities for the compilation of a new smart contract programming language into the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The grant forms part of the foundation’s fifth wave financing devoted to supporting Ethereum 2.0 and Layer 2 scaling efforts.

Earlier in April, two South Korean universities — Yonsei University and Pohang University of Science and Technology (Postech) — partnered to create an entire Blockchain Campus with its own cryptocurrency.