Blockchain research is an important area of research and development these days. Now MIT has announced they will advance their blockchain research by running a validator for the Ripple Consensus Ledger.
Also read: Global Blockchain Forum Launched to Establish ‘International Industry Best Practices’
The Ripple Consensus Ledger Concept
Most digital currency enthusiasts will know the name Ripple, as this company has been focusing on the development of blockchain technology for financial institutions over the past few years. Or to be more precise, they provide global financial settlement solutions to financial players – mostly banks – which will help reduce costs.
But that is not all this company does, as they also want to offer direct transactions in real-time, which can be of high value in the international money transfer sector. Settling these global transactions in real-time is made possible thanks to the Ripple Consensus Ledger, which is also the foundational distributed ledger for the XRP digital asset. Unlike Bitcoin miners, the Ripple network uses individual validators to confirm transactions.
One of these Ripple validators will be run by MIT, as their Connection Science research initiative is exploring the options of a global Byzantine consensus database. This news is a significant notch in the belt for Ripple, as MIT is one of the world’s most renowned technological institutes. Moreover, more validators on the Ripple Consensus ledger will strengthen the network, and offer a bit more decentralization to this concept as well.
MIT Professor, Alex Pentland, shared his vision for this project as follows:
In this new experiment with Ripple, we are taking MIT’s experiential research approach to the blockchain, and we anticipate this collaboration will provide us new opportunities to test and deploy data applications and research.We’re pleased that the Ripple team has fostered a substantive dialog with us about the future of finance through the decentralization of digital currencies and value.
Professor Pentland and Managing Director David Shrier will lead the involvement of MIT as a Ripple Consensus Ledger validator. Furthermore, MIT Connection Science will continue to develop novel blockchain initiatives, and open source their code projects under the Internet Trust Consortium “umbrella.”
Both entities have a lot of mutual respect for each other, and Ripple is very excited to have MIT on board. Allowing money to move freely across the world – similar to how information is shared on the Internet – is a significant project, and having such a renowned institute contribute to these efforts can be invaluable to Ripple.
It has to be said that MIT will not need to use up too many resources to be a validator on the Ripple Consensus Ledger. All of these systems are very lightweight, and can be compared to running an email server. Keeping in mind how this technology has been embraced by 30 different banks around the world, exciting things seem to be on the horizon for all parties involved.
What are your thoughts on MIT becoming a validator on the Ripple Consensus Ledger? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: Business Wire
Images courtesy of Ripple, MIT, en.wikipedia.org
