Uni Kassel involved in the Austrian Blockchain Center

As part of the COMET program, with which the Austrian federal government and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) promote excellent cooperative research with a medium- to long-term perspective, the Austrian Blockchain Center (ABC), led by the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), is being established with partners from industry and science. Blockchain technology forms the basis of a number of applications, including cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

The ABC's diverse research and development topics are bundled into five areas: "Cryptography, Technology and Security", "Crypto-economic Modeling and Blockchain Applications for Enterprises", "Growth Industries and Blockchains in Manufacturing", "Data Science Methods of Blockchain Analysis and Prediction", "Legal and Political Implications". They deal with economic, technological, application, political and legal issues, among others.

As an example, the improvement of customer identification and thus the compliance of banks and insurance companies in this respect can be mentioned, which has so far been associated with the repeated submission of the same documents, long processing times, high costs, etc. For this purpose, entries in the blockchain refer to already verified customer identification data, which financial service providers can use again and again without any further verification effort, although data protection implications need to be clarified.

The use of blockchains in corporate accounting and auditing, the establishment of fraud-resistant tax collection procedures, the design and adaptation of compliance systems, the simplified processing of cross-border capital market transactions including their in rem protection through non-possessory liens, the introduction of digital central bank money, the cross-company management of measurement data or human-machine interaction as well as machine-to-machine communication in Industry 4.0 and the improvement of transparency in personalized multi-channel marketing are further promising application areas that are expected to generate strong growth impulses.

Three professors from the Department of Economics at the University of Kassel, who have already been involved in the application process for the center, will participate in the ABC: Prof. Dr. Jochen Michaelis contributes in the area of "Crypto-economic Modeling and Blockchain Applications for Businesses" with the project "Digital Central Bank Money - Implications for Commercial Banks and Monetary Policy", which he leads, and Prof. Dr. Dr. Walter Blocher as well as Prof. Dr. Georg von Wangenheim lead the project "(Legal) Issues of Cross-Border Traffic with Crypto Assets" within the area of "Legal and Political Implications".

The three Kassel professors see their participation in the ABC primarily as an opportunity to open up options for further cooperation between the ABC and the Blockchain-Center.eu at the University of Kassel through future joint project work. There are also already concrete plans with regard to joint doctoral training. A first cross-border PhD workshop on the topic of "Token Economy", in which moreover the University of St. Gallen (HSG) and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) are participating, will already take place on December 11, 2018.

Contact:

Prof. Dr. Dr. Walter Blocher
University of Kassel
Tel.: +49 561 804-2186
E-mail: blocher[at]uni-kassel[dot]de