Blockchain News This Week: India and the World

The blockchain race is speeding ahead. Here is what happened in this space in India and the world.

Calicut University zeroes in on blockchain to secure academic records

After Kerala’s application of blockchain in supply management, now, their Calicut University is planning to use blockchain technology for document validation and digital certification in order to rid their academic process of fraud. According to the university, adopting blockchain was a major step in the ambitious ‘Total Digital University Solution’ project to be executed with UL Technology Solutions (ULTS) as technology partner.

BFI Conducts HashCon meet-up to bring together the blockchain community

Last week the Blockchain Foundation of India (BFI) held the HashCon meet-up #1.0. The event was the beginning in a series of events to be held across the year, ultimately concluding with BFI’s annual HashCon conference in 2019. The meet-up was an opportunity for people from every community of blockchain to mingle and exchange ideas. The aim of the event was to spread awareness about blockchain and to become a forum to link blockchain enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, investors, trainers, and developers.

Blockchain News This Week: India and the World

NSE to test e-voting via blockchain

India’s National Stock Exchange (NSE) has declared that they will be using Elemential Lab’s platform for e-voting on listed companies. The exchange is performing tests to validate the feasibility of this solution. The pilot project of the e-voting system is intended for establishing a blockchain that links the regulator with the listed companies and the RTA. The units will function with tokenized voting rights, which will make it smoother to transfer and proxy. The NSE will check the practicability of the system on the basis of its auditability and how easy it is to complete the process with the use of blockchain.

Dubai govt. aims to incorporate blockchain into payment portal DubaiPay

A government initiative led by the Crown Prince of Dubai called the Smart Dubai office (SDO), is incorporating blockchain technology into its retail payments smartphone app DubaiPay, facilitating real-time reconciliations and settlement transactions. Developed in partnership with Dubai’s Department of Finance (DoF), the retail payment smartphone app aims to upgrade DoF’s current procedures, which now rely on staff members physically going through payments collected from various portals to manually reconcile and settle them.

India cautious with blockchain but will embrace its power nonetheless, Oxford Analytica Briefing finds.

BitPesa, SBI Remit join hands for blockchain payments between Japan and Africa

BitPesa, a digital treasury management solution that uses blockchain technology to improve payment speed, has joined hands with Japan’s SBI Remit, the country’s biggest remittance service provider, so that Africans find it easy to buy Japanese products. The two companies are taking advantage of blockchain technology to lessen friction, and make cross-border payments between the two continents more efficient and inter-operable. The collaboration will help businesses between Japan and Africa grow faster.

AT&T is launching blockchain solutions for different industries

Telecom giant AT&T is launching a string of blockchain solutions to let enterprises in different industries monitor and manage data in a more efficient way. The solutions will rope in technology from Microsoft and IBM and can aid users in industries such as manufacturing, retail, and healthcare. The company highlighted in their website that it is matching its “edge to edge” competences with Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). AT&T’s Internet of Things (IoT) solutions deliver screening and automation capacities to several business processes.