Decentralization at its core. This technology wave is the first one in decades that is NOT dominated by Silicon Valley.
Ever notice that the foundational innovation in cryptocurrency, be it Bitcoin, Ethereum, fin-tech innovation on Blockchain in general, and all the major tokens.. are NOT from Silicon Valley? All prior waves in this modern era of silicon, computer and communications systems, Internet, web and mobile applications, and data science.. were ALL dominated by engineers and developers in Silicon Valley. This one is not.
While I had an early start in Bitcoin, and recognized it’s investment potential as early as 2010, it was not possible for me to find the right talent ‘in the valley’ — so I ended up finding and funding Bitfury, now an organization of 500+ people, decentralized and distributed over 16 countries.
Like the scene in Star Trek where the Genesis Project gives rebirth to a planet, products and technologies based on blockchain are sprouting EVERYWHERE, and an ecosystem is developing around the core innovators like Bitfury and a concept called ‘merge mining’.
A great application example enabled by merge mining is one launched today by Emercoin, which has an implementation that allows anyone to store ‘arbitrary’ data within the blockchain, enabling distributed verification services, ranging from validating identity of nodes on a technology infrastructure, such as decentralized DNS, or in the physical world, the validation of people’s credentials. Emercoin’s blockchain and the ledgering of it’s data, will be merged into the bitcoin blockchain via Bitfury’s distributed data centers.
In a world of ‘fake news’ and possibly made up credentials, how does one know if ‘what you see is what you get’ with respect to an individual’s professional skills? References can help, but they are subjective. How does one check on medical or educational degrees with low to no friction?
In this use case, Emercoin’s “trusted diploma” application enables educational institutions, or their graduates, to store and share verified diplomas and other educational or professional certificates on an encrypted and secure app. This product will be initially piloted with the Business and Technology University (BTU) of Georgia, and is designed as an open-source platform to be made available to educational institutions around the world.
Emercoin’s core innovation is called Name Value Storage (NVS) — while Bitcoin is well suited for financial transactions, Emercoin’s NVS allows for efficient time-stamping of META-Data on its own blockchain that in turn gets merge-mined into Bitcoin Blockchain for security. It broadens the applicability of the Bitcoin blockchain for ANY data that needs low friction and portable validation.
Some statements from the company on what the product enables for the certification use case are illustrative:
The new system will address a global challenge among educators, businesses and graduates to certify the online accuracy and authenticity of education credentials. Around the world, due to widespread corruption and manipulation, online displays of those credentials are increasingly viewed as unreliable proof of work.
Graduates also face difficulty obtaining their records from colleges or school systems that have closed or otherwise refuse to recognize their legitimate credentials.
The problem creates major challenges for a wide range of professionals, including college admissions officers, job seekers and business recruiters. It also poses risks for the general public, which often cannot obtain certified credentials from doctors, lawyers and other professionals.
Major global organizations identify corruption in education as a growing crisis that has far-reaching implications for our health and safety, financial security and business growth. Fake diploma mills have become a multi-billion-dollar industry, while legitimate schools, governments and businesses struggle to find an effective solution.
“Higher education institutions, governments, employers and societies generally, in both developed and developing countries, are far too complacent about the growth of corrupt practices, either assuming that these vices occur somewhere else or turning a deaf ear to rumors of malpractice in their own organizations,” wrote John Daniel in a 2016 report for UNESCO and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. “The needs of societies cannot be met if graduates do not have the competencies that higher education institutions purport to have given them.”
“The problem is an urgent one,” Stefan Trines, a research editor at World Education News and Reviews, wrote. “From an institutional perspective, the ramifications of failure to address fraud and corrupt practices are sometimes severe.”
The most prominent example of this corruption may be the University of Wales, which was abolished in 2011 because it ran degree validation programs with dubious or downright illegal overseas partner institutions, according to Trines. Dickinson State University in North Dakota was placed on notice by its accreditor, the U.S. Higher Learning Commission, after it came out that the university had been graduating international students from to-up programs with Chinese and Russian partner institutions without authenticated documents or appropriate academic prerequisites.
For private companies and governments, Trines added, hiring individuals with bogus credentials can be a public relations fiasco. And yet, he wrote, accounts of people getting critical, high-ranking jobs based on fake degrees surface too often, including at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Over time, the use case for this technology could be pervasive. Much like the little ‘check mark’ on Twitter or Facebook profiles, companies like LinkedIn or Indeed.com could provide validation of the data represented on profiles, knowing that data is tamper-proof and accurate.
Blockchain is becoming a core technology enabling greatly improved efficiency in the way governments, businesses and institutions deliver systems and services to people around the world. Emercoin is harnessing that technology to make sure those solutions are flexible, user-friendly and available for everyone.
Bill Tai, founder of ACTAI Global, is an Emercoin advisor and renowned venture capitalist.
