Student Wins Satoshi Nakamoto Scholarship to Build Media-Focused Platform

Bitcoin SV (BSV)-promoting Bitcoin Association has awarded a PhD student at Cambridge University with its Satoshi Nakamoto Scholarship, designed to support the development of blockchain applications.

Per a Jan. 9 press release, Robin Kohze, a second-year human genomics PhD student at Cambridge University, became the first to receive the scholarship following a series of blockchain competitions within the Bitcoin SV Hackathon last fall. With his project dubbed, Hive, Kohze took second place. The scholarship is set to allow further development of Hive into a fully operational platform.

Challenging the media landscape

As the release described, Hive is geared toward changing the media landscape by implementing a molecular dynamic inspired incentive system, within which information can be added by users around the world. Detailing the operational principles of the system, the release reads:

“Every content node containing information needs one or more linked nodes and every new link to a node has a dynamic cost to generate comprehensive knowledge networks. The resulting graph database is directly stored and maintained on the Bitcoin SV blockchain to grant a maximum of interoperability and transparency.”

Commenting on the development, Kohze said: “With HIVE, I utilise the original Bitcoin protocol to implement a novel combination of game theoretical rule-sets to reconnect diverging perspectives in an increasingly polarised media landscape.”

Blockchain enters the education space

As digital currencies and blockchain technology are becoming more integrated into everyday life, educational establishments are expanding blockchain-based training services. Just recently, former MakerDAO contributor and Carnegie Mellon alumnus, Nikolai Mushegian committed 10,000 MKR — valued at just under $4.6 million at press time — to his alma mater to develop a research program for decentralized applications.

The Africa Blockchain Institute will open Rwanda’s ostensibly first blockchain school in 2020. The new school has five key courses in the pipeline: a blockchain essentials certification course, a blockchain developers’ course, an enterprise blockchain course, blockchain for lawyers and blockchain for impact.