Indian university joins Hedera decentralized governance council
Amid ambiguity from the Central government regarding cryptocurrencies, the country’s highly reputed Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) has officially become a member of the decentralized governance committee of the Hedera Hashgraph Council.
Being one of the topmost technical education institutions, IITM falls under the direct jurisdiction of the Indian Ministry of Education. Through its new membership of the governance council, IITM has joined 39 other global organizations that run initial network nodes to govern the Hedera ledger built on distributed ledger technology (DLT).
IITM has proposed testing of use cases and public blockchain for payments through the Hedera Consensus Service and the Hedera Token Service, in addition to the advancement of DLT capabilities in educational research.
IITM’s Center for Nondestructive Evaluations’s Professor Prabhu Rajagopal shared the news expressing he was “particularly enthused” by the opportunity of testing and scaling a variety of solutions in blockchain-powered information systems in industries like healthcare and digital media.
Back in May 2021, IITM researchers had launched a blockchain-backed phone app dubbed as BlockTrack that enables its users to digitize, compile and manage medical records.
To complement the innovative endeavour of national institutions, Maharashtra’s State Board of Skill Development has recently deployed an Ethereum blockchain-powered tamper-proof certification system called LegitDoc.
LegitDoc CEO, Neil Martis, has shared that other mainstream Indian institutions, including the National Institute of Technology and Ashoka University, are in the conversation for implementing similar systems in order to counter document forgery.
According to news, India’s lawmakers are in the process of passing a crypto bill that would tax crypto trading in the country. Still, analysts believe that this move will only push cryptocurrencies towards the mainstream in India.
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