Oxford Researcher Wants to Open World’s First Blockchain University in Malta

Researcher Joshua Broggi envisions a new university powered entirely by blockchain technology, and is seeking accreditation in Malta to establish what will be a world’s first.

Oxford Researcher Seeks Accreditation in Malta

Broggi aims to build the world’s first ever “Blockchain University” and is hoping to set up shop ashore the European island nation of Malta, according to Lovin’ Malta.

Woolf University will run entirely on blockchain technology in order to save on operating costs by automating administrative procedures. Meanwhile, blockchain’s cryptographic design and trustless immutable ledger technology will ensure degrees earned from the university are secure and can be validated using blockchain.

“We use a blockchain to create efficiencies by managing custodianship of student tuition, enforcing regulatory compliance for accreditation, and automation a number of processes,” Broggi told Forbes in an interview.

Woolf University will offer a variety of courses, both online and on-site. The structure is designed to encourage teaching anywhere in the world via personalized tutorials. Broggi says students and teachers alike will check-in, setting off a series of smart contracts that validate things like attendance and assignment completion, while also paying the teacher for their instruction and providing students with micro-credits to apply against their course.

The blockchain university has already caught the attention of professors from a wide range of prestigious universities including the University of Oxford, Cambridge University, George Mason University, King’s College London, Leipzig University, and Kyoto University.

The original plan to fund the world’s first blockchain university was appropriately going to be through an initial coin offering (ICO), however, Woolf has received enough private funding to forego the need for a public offering.

Malta: Earning the Nickname Blockchain Island

Broggi aims to open five colleges, and eventually plans to work with more than one regulatory partner, however, Malta was the immediate first choice.

Malta has quickly earned a reputation in the blockchain community as being welcoming and eager to push the emerging technology forward with regulatory support. Broggi says this makes Malta “an ideal partner for a borderless university.”

“As an island country, Malta has a long tradition of looking beyond its own borders, and Malta is now developing a robust regulatory framework for distributed ledger technology. Both the educational policies and the blockchain policies are supportive of Woolf’s aims and we look forward to continued work with Malta as they become ‘the blockchain island.’”

Joseph Muscat, Malta’s Prime Minister, has been hard at work to turn Malta into a “Blockchain Island,” in a move to bolster the island nation’s economy. Two of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges by trading volume, Binance and OKEx, will move their operations to Malta.

Binance CEO and cryptocurrency industry icon Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao praised Malta as “one of the best places” for blockchain companies, as it has been “very welcoming and reasonable” when it comes to regulatory law around blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

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