Events

Today, October 10, 2017, reports of a draft blueprint surfaced for the European Union's commercial research group, the European Innovation Council (EIC). The EIC will grant 2.7 billion euros to around 1,000 projects between 2018 and 2020 during a pilot phase, as part of a consolidation of the Horizon 2020 program

5 million euros of the funding will go towards a "blockchain for social good" award, which is one of six new prizes to be added to the work program. Other new prizes include 10 million euros for an electric vehicle battery, 10 million euros for the development of a bench-scale artificial photosynthesis device capable of producing synthetic liquid fuel, and 5 million euros respectively for “a scalable, reliable and cost-effective early warning system for epidemics; ... a prize for an affordable way of launching nano- and micro-satellites into low-earth orbit; and a prize for technology to aid humanitarian work.”

The EIC is the product of consolidating the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Instrument, Fast Track to Innovation, FET Open, and Innovation prizes into a single entity. The SME Instrument promotes growth for enterprises in Horizon 2020-associated countries and was founded in 2014. As reported, EU research commissioner Carlos Moedas, who is a chief architect of the EIC, would like to oversee the interviews of those applicants that have made it through the second round of the SME Instrument program.

The draft plan indicates a deficiency in the success of startups that produce advanced professions, stating, "While Europe compares relatively well internationally in terms of numbers of start-ups, too few of these succeed in scaling up and generating high-skilled jobs."

According to the report, “The draft proposes that the mandate of the 15-person EIC advisory group, set up in January, should be renewed until 2020.” The group includes Cambridge venture capitalist Hermann Hauser; web entrepreneurs Taavat Hinrikus from TransferWise and Paddy Cosgrave of Web Summit; vaccine specialist and co-founder of CureVac Ingmar Hoerr, and Prince Constantijn Van Oranje of the Netherlands.

Jeremy Nation
Jeremy Nation is a writer living in Los Angeles with interests in technology, human rights, and cuisine. He is a full time staff writer for ETHNews and holds value in Ether.

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MELBOURNE, Australia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Monash University, one of Australia's leading universities, opened its joint blockchain cryptocurrency research and development lab at Monash’s Clayton campus with a node at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

This multimillion-dollar venture was funded by Collinstar Capital, an Australian asset management company and a market leader in Fintech, specializing in blockchain infrastructure, digital currency investments, and relevant consulting services.

The lab will focus on developing cryptographic technologies that will enhance and strengthen the Hcash blockchain.

“The blockchain technology used to develop Hcash is superior to that of the Bitcoin technology”

The Hcash project is one of the most advanced blockchains that took advantage of many technological breakthroughs that were not available to early blockchain developers.

The main mechanism behind Hcash is a distributed ledger that connects block-based and blockless-based Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) systems, allowing ledger assets and information to be transferred between multiple cryptocurrencies.

It has also adopted a hybrid Proof-of-Work (PoW) + Proof-of-Stake (PoS) for securing, governing and upgrading the network. As a result, Hcash is able to apply a more open governance model, where stakeholders have more input in the future direction of the protocol.

In addition, Hcash transactions and smart contracts can be conducted with an extra layer of cryptographic protection, affording its users enhanced privacy.

This is made possible by implementing a technology called zk-SNARKs, a novel form of zero-knowledge cryptography that allows fully encrypted transactions to verified as valid under the network’s consensus rules using zk-SNARK proofs.

“The blockchain technology used to develop Hcash is superior to that of the Bitcoin technology,” said Dr. Joseph Liu from Monash University’s Faculty of Information Technology, “We aim to make Hcash a connecting point for all existing blockchain systems, potentially allowing Hcash to function as a virtual cryptocurrency exchange.

Up until now, existing cryptocurrencies could only be exchanged within their own systems.”“I am delighted that Dr. Joseph Liu’s work has been recognized.

It is a testament to the wonderful young researchers we have in the Faculty of IT at Monash University who are leading the way in disrupting almost every industrial sector through new digital technologies,” said John Whittle, Dean Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University.

About HcashHcash, a "New Standard of Value", is a prominent open blockchain / cryptocurrency that is currently number 23 on the cryptocurrencies worldwide chart with a coin market cap of $253,285,351.

Contacts

Hcash
Gary Liu
[email protected]