Arizona State University (ASU) has announced a partnership with the digital currency Dash that will provide $350,000 to “accelerate research, development, and education in ways that advance blockchain transaction speed, efficiency, security, and expand its uses.” The funds will be allocated as follows:
- The Dash Scholars Program, which provides $100,000 in scholarships for undergraduate and graduate research fellowships;
- Research lab and Industry open source projects, providing an additional $100,000 in funding for ASU’s Blockchain Research Lab (BRL) and $50,000 in new funding for the Luminosity Lab, and
- Blockchain course development, with $100,000 for creating an online graduate course expected to be offered at ASU this fall.
The $350,000 is funded by Dash, via a successful treasury proposal. Director of ASU’s Blockchain Research Lab, Dragan Boscovic, commented:
ASU welcomes this initiative and is ready to play its role in creating a potent Blockchain research and innovation environment for young talents to develop practical Blockchain applications.”
Fusion of research and development
When thinking about digital currencies, there’s a tendency for the community to focus on the development side of the equation. New versions of the software, updates to add new features, roadmaps and the like – these usually get far more attention than research. However, the new features that get everybody so excited are made possible by researchers who discover the means and methods to add them.
While Dash’s Core DAO (distributed autonomous organization) is focused on development, marketing and the day-to-day aspects of maintaining a digital currency, there are at least two research groups working to move the project forward. Dash Labs is a DAO founded by Dash founder Evan Duffield, based in Hong Kong, that is working to develop hardware solutions to enable on-chain scaling using massive blocks.
Likewise, researchers at ASU are working on researching ways to improve Dash and solve the problems of cryptocurrency in general. Last summer, Dash funded ASU’s Blockchain Research Lab with a $50,000 donation. Dash Core Team CEO Ryan Taylor wrote:
Initial research [will] focus on throughput capacity and latency performance of blockchain technology, model and assess it for different network architectures (including Dash’s multi-tiered architecture), applications, and use cases to propose a “scalability” deployment guide and best practices.”
