Expert Interview: Prof. Dr. Philipp Sandner, Head of Frankfurt School Blockchain Center
Prof. Dr. Philipp Sandner runs the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center (FSBC), founded a think tank founded in 2017 by the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. FSBC researches distributed ledger technology and crypto assets.
Philipp is a leading mind in the German blockchain scene and researches current trends in DLT, crypto assets and digital currencies. In addition to the research, he and his team at FSBC advise companies on their blockchain projects and organize events to bring together industry, start-ups and decision makers.
Philipp, thank you for your time. You are involved in many exciting topics and thus, your day is probably on a tight schedule. We’ll limit the interview to three, short questions.
Since the founding of the FSBC four years ago, you are also dealing with blockchain technology in a professional context. Why did you decide to make this field your profession?
Personally, it’s just a lot of fun advancing the blockchain technology and the blockchain scene. I enjoy both educating young people at the university and also passing on my expertise to businesses. The whole development of the scene has been highly fascinating. That’s why this became a passion after all.
You also do research in the fields of digital identities. What do you expect from the usage of digital identities leveraging blockchain technology?
First, you have to define what identity exactly is. On the one side, there are of course identities of people, then we also have identities of organisations, businesses, authorities and sooner or later machine identities. I believe that blockchain technology is suitable to manage all of these identities on a digital level.
However, this does not mean that identity attributes should be just stored on a blockchain system. Here it’s important to see what kind of data goes on the ledger and what data has to be stored outside of the blockchain system.
Basically, I as a human would be able to own a digital ID card which is bound to a blockchain system, but to such an extent that no sensitive information is actually stored on the blockchain. It’s also possible to store all kinds of other data onto a blockchain in a privacy protecting manner, so in theory I could also have a digital medical record. But what’s essential is clearly the identity. These digital identities can be designed in such a way to guarantee data protection compliance, privacy and data security.
A personal question to conclude this interview: If you could spend an evening with a famous person, who would that be and why?
Satoshi Nakamoto. I just find it so fascinating what this person or group has accomplished. I always question myself who that could be. Is it a group of people or a single person, is it a man or a woman and from which country? That’s why I’d like to spend an evening with Satoshi Nakamoto.
Thank you for the interview, Philipp!
