Universities should explore blockchain, report says

Distributed-ledger technologies have broad potential, says European Commission’s Joint Research Centre

Universities, research centres and companies must all be involved in piloting distributed-ledger blockchain technologies, the European Commission’s evidence service said in a report published on 8 October.

Recent years have seen an “outburst of interest” in, and hype around, these peer-to-peer digital data exchange technologies, the Joint Research Centre said. Now their genuine potential for areas including trade, manufacturing, energy, healthcare and government should be explored by a range of actors.