Internet behemoth Kakao’s Klaytn, a South Korean blockchain protocol, has pledged more than $20 million to promote blockchain research and financing at the National University of Singapore and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) (NUS).
On August 8, 2022, Klaytn Group CEO Seo Sangmin revealed the funding during Korea Blockchain Week. The program, known as the Blockchain Research Center Program (BRC), will rank among the top blockchain research projects in terms of financing grants globally.
A worldwide research team led by scientists from KAIST and NUS will run the BRC. Seo claims that the results of the research would be made available to the public as open-source software or research papers.
Outside researchers may contribute to current initiatives or make their own suggestions.
The proposal by the KAIST/NUS research partnership was chosen by the Klaytn Governance Council and outside experts out of the seven submissions submitted from 62 research institutes and 11 countries due to its “operational competency, research execution, and community involvement initiatives.” NUS came out on top in CoinDesk’s 2021 University Rankings for Blockchain, while KAIST came in at number 26 globally.
The BRC scheme from Klaytn is the second program this month to use a blockchain system to support higher education. A week prior, the Algorand Foundation revealed the names of the 10 recipients of its Algorand Centres of Excellence Program, among them Yale University, Purdue University, and Monash University in the US and Australia, respectively.
