Abstract Cubes
COVID-19

Jump to:

Explainer Animation

Tamper-proof Vaccination Certificate

Storyboard

COVID-19 Antibody Test/Vaccination Certification App

COVID-19 Blockchain Mobile App Infographic Click to expand image

As the Coronavirus Pandemic unfolds the OU’s blockchain team are working on a response centred on how our technology could support ‘Immunity Passports’ as have been mentioned by the UK Government in their daily briefings. This paper outlines our concept and prototype mobile phone app that facilitates the instant verification of tamper-proof test results whilst preserving privacy.

Publication

M. Eisenstadt, M. Ramachandran, N. Chowdhury, A. Third and J. Domingue, “COVID-19 Antibody Test / Vaccination Certification: There’s an app for that,” in IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology, DOI: 10.1109/OJEMB.2020.2999214

Partners

We are now working with four companies to see how we will scale up our solution for UK wide deployment:

BT Logo

BT

British Tele-communications PLC – A trusted brand with the ability to scale and deploy at national level

Condatis Logo

Condatis

A trusted digital identity partner of some of the largest enterprises and government departments in the world

inrupt Logo

Inrupt

Founded by John Bruce and Sir Tim Berners-Lee to rebalance power on the Web

Royal Pharmaceutical Society Logo

Royal Pharmaceutical Society

Our mission is to put pharmacy at the forefront of healthcare

Fujihara lab., Chiba Institute of Technology Logo

Fujihara lab., Chiba Institute of Technology

Researching how to apply blockchain to our society

Media

TEDxOpenUniversity

A Blockchain-based decentralised university – John Domingue

I believe that with blockchain technology we can create a radically new type of university: a DAO University. A DAO is a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation which operates with no central control and no humans in the loop and are based on Smart Contracts: pieces of computer code on a blockchain which can represent and enact financial and legal contracts.

In a DAO University value and reputation associated with teaching and learning would be accounted for through a blockchain with no central control. Instead the whole learning community would agree how the educational elements, for example, learning materials, teaching resources and teaching delivery are shared and recompensed.

A DAO University is a next step evolution in higher education. A born digital community owned educational institution for the 21st Century. This talk was given at TEDxOU on November 8th 2019 (https://www.tedxopenuniversity.com/).


Media


Video Jump Points:

What are Blockchains?

Blockchain is most commonly known as the technology underpinning the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. But in recent years the open source code of the Bitcoin blockchain has been taken and extended by many groups to expand its capabilities. Blockchain technology, which can be thought of as a public distributed ledger, promises to revolutionise the financial world. A World Economic Forum survey in 2015 found that those polled believe that there will be a tipping point for the government use of blockchain by 2023. Governments, large banks, software vendors and companies involved in stock exchanges (especially the Nasdaq stock exchange) are investing heavily in the area. For example, the UK Government recently announced that it is investing £10M into blockchain research and Santander have identified 20-25 internal use cases for the technology and predict a reduction of banks’ infrastructure costs by up to £12.8 billion a year.

The reach of blockchain technology will go beyond the financial sector however, through the use of ‘smart contracts’ which allow business and legal agreements to be stored and executed online. For example, the startup company Tallysticks aims to use blockchain based smart contracts to automate invoicing. In October, 2015 Visa and DocuSign showcased a proof of concept demonstrating how smart contracts could be used to greatly speed up the processes involved in car rental – rental cars can be driven out of the car park without any need to fill in or sign forms. The ability to run smart contracts led Forbes to recently run an article comparing the future impact of blockchains to that of the Web and Internet.

We believe the blockchain technology and smart contracts can also be used in education in many interesting and potentially revolutionary scenarios. On this website you can see some of the ways we see the future of education developing using the blockchain and what we are doing to progress towards our vision.

Find out more about Blockchains
Abstract Cubes

Experiments with the Ethereum Blockchain

Ethereum is a platform for decentralised applications, built on top of a blockchain mechanism, which can be used for public data storage and computation. It acts as an immutable public ledger, which provides strong cryptographic guarantees for data integrity. One definitive feature of the Ethereum platform is the ability to execute Turing-complete Smart Contracts. A Smart Contract is a program on the blockchain. We have been investigating the possibilities that the Ethereum blockchain infrastructure affords.

Below you can see some screencasts of some of our other experiments with Ethereum:

Latest Movie


Learn about QualiChain

Education

Learn about QualiChain
Learn about QualiChain

IoT and RDF

MyCovidCredentials
MyCovidCredentials
View all experiments

Publications

Media

YouTube Premiere: Blockchains, Fact and Fiction - a legal perspective

This video was filmed in July 2019 as part of The Open University Business and Law Festival, during The Open University's 50th Anniversary celebrations. #OU50 Following the announcement from Facebook that they will launch their own cryptocurrency (Libra) in 2020 interest in blockchains and claims about their potential continue to grow. Karen Foley interviews John Domingue and Dr Robert Herian, who will very briefly explain what this technology is and then explore its implications for the legal arena. Their shared viewpoint is based on experiences in implementing and deploying blockchains in a variety of contexts and working with and advising a wide variety of players including startups and large companies and the European Commission.

Credit #OU50


Open University in £40m campaign to create more computer scientists

The Open University in Milton Keynes is at the heart of a £40 million drive by the Government to help train more computer scientists. It is leading one of the five main themes – on university learners – being addressed at the new Institute of Coding.

Credit Business Weekly


View all related media

Talks

Blockchain: Hope or Hype? - John Domingue & Sajida Zouarhi

How does blockchain work and has its usefulness been over or under estimated? John Domingue and Sajida Zouarhi show how blockchain is being implemented in a real-world setting. Blockchain, the technology that underpins cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, has an almost unlimited number of applications beyond finance. From digital identities to kidney transplants, blockchain technology solves the problem of intermediary trust between parties without a central authority.

This event took place on the Monday 24th September 2018


Towards the decentralisation of personal data through blockchains and linked data

A talk at the University of Bonn Computer Science Colloquium. It covers how distributed ledgers (blockchains) combined with decentralised linked data technologies such as Solid can support the management of personal data avoiding the issues highlighted in the media around for example, Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.

This event took place on the Wednesday 21st November 2018


View all talks

Events

The Role of Web 3.0 and Blockchain in the Future of Education Logo

The Role of Web 3.0 and Blockchain in the Future of Education

11th October 2022, University of Patras, Greece

Alexander Mikroyannidis gave a keynote talk at the 7th panhellenic scientific conference “Integration and Use of ICT in Education”, organised by the University of Patras in Greece. The event was very well attended by researchers and educators from higher and secondary education. Participants exchanged best practices on the effective use of ICT in different stages of the teaching and learning process. Alexander’s keynote talk was entitled: “The Role of Web 3.0 and Blockchain in the Future of Education”. In his talk, Alexander discussed the potential impact that emerging decentralisation technologies, such as Web 3.0 and Blockchain, can have on the future of education. In particular, Alexander presented the pilot that he has led in the context of the European project QualiChain. Within this pilot, Alexander has investigated the use of decentralisation technologies towards providing lifelong learners with transparent and immutable educational accreditation. A key output of this pilot is the Badged Open Course (BOC): “Decentralising Education Using Blockchain Technology”, which introduces Blockchain technology and its potential for decentralising and transforming education. The course is available on the Open University’s OpenLearn Create platform and is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0, which allows the reuse and adaptation of the course materials for non-commercial purposes. Upon completion of the course, learners earn a free statement of participation.

John Domingue at EDUtech_EUROPE 2022 Logo

John Domingue at EDUtech_EUROPE 2022

6th October 2022, Amsterdam

John Domingue attended the EDUtech_EUROPE 2022 conference. The event brought together more than 3000 educators, 250 speakers and 200 edtech providers from across Europe to present stories, showcase innovation and inspire educators across the region. There were four event themes: T1: Schools Leaders and Hybrid Learning T2: Schools IT & Digital Leaders and Digital Pedagogy T3: Higher Education Leaders - Leaders and People T4: Higher Education IT & Digital Leaders and Next Gen Learning. John Domingue took part in the T4 Panel with Pierre Boulet, Vice President of Digital Transformation at University of Lille entitled: Digital Credentialing: the 21st-century approach to documenting learning. It was moderated by Rajarshi Chakraborty, MD of Erasmus Centre for Data Analytics. Their discussion focused on: Giving students control over secure, validated and machine-readable credentials An expendable solution to learning documentation Articulating your vision and designing pilots for innovative blockchain and NFTs. Browse the conference hashtag #EdutechEurope to learn more about the event.

Blockchain Hackathon 2019 Logo

Blockchain Hackathon 2019

9th February 2019, Tokyo, Japan

METI has been holding discussions on the applicability of the technologies to the domains of academic degrees, courses and career certifications as well as management of research data, taking advantage of its project titled “FY2018 Industrial Technology Survey”(Research for Applicability of Blockchain Technologies to Universities and Research Institutes to Promote Mobility of Domestic and Overseas Human Resources and Secure Reliability of Research Results as well as Research for Winning of Standards therefor). In light of the discussion results, METI will organize a Blockchain Hackathon, aiming to further promote social implementation of the technologies.

View all events

Courses

We have collated a list of online courses from external providers. You will need to contact those providers for more information on their courses if you require it.

Please note: as we are a research department we do not offer any blockchain courses ourselves.

View all courses

Team

John Domingue
Professor of Computer Science (Project Champion)

John Domingue Photo

I’m interested in how blockchains can be used within higher education and corporate training and also the relationship between semantics, big data and blockchains. Within the learning area I see a number of scenarios where radical improvements may occur including: embedding micro certification within blockchains; the development of educational currencies to support the crowdsourced accreditation of ‘soft skills’ such as collaboration, communication and leadership by peers; and new disruptive models for teaching and learning where intermediary layers are removed resulting in dramatically reduced costs and increased openness. Interoperability between blockchains and the automation of a number of tasks associated with the development of blockchain applications (DApps) through semantic technologies is a second focus.
Michelle Bachler Photo

Michelle Bachler
Research & Innovation Software Manager

Danny Barthaud  Photo

Danny Barthaud
Research Software Engineer

Niaz Chowdhury Photo

Niaz Chowdhury
Research Associate

Robert Herian Photo

Robert Herian
Lecturer in Law

Pasquale Iero Photo

Pasquale Iero
Research Assistant

    Zeeshan Jan Photo

    Zeeshan Jan
    PhD Research Student

    View full team

    Consultancy

    How can we help you?

    The OpenBlockchain team have a wealth of knowledge and experience and a testbed architecture to support investigations in the use of blockchain in almost any scenario imaginable. We provide Research Consultancy Services that are tailored to your individual needs and can support anything from improving your understanding of the potential of blockchain, to in depth technical discussion and testing of scenarios at prototype stage. We are keen to build research relationships with commercial and academic partners and to identify sources of research funding that we can leverage to fund longer term relationships. We have already submitted a number of bids to research grant funds in the UK, working with commercial partners in domains including energy management, professional development, teaching and recruitment.

    Pricing

    Our Research Consultancy starts from as little as £1000 per day and we will always enter into initial conversations without any fee.

    Contact Us

    If you have an idea you would like to discuss, just use the contact form and tell us a little about it – we will be happy to start a conversation and work out how we can help you.

    Trending Blockchain News

    RSS Google Alert – Blockchain

    Latest Experiment
    MyCovidCredentials
    MyCovidCredentials
    Latest Media

    YouTube Premiere: Blockchains, Fact and Fiction - a legal perspective

    This video was filmed in July 2019 as part of The Open University Business and Law Festival, during The Open University's 50th Anniversary celebrations. #OU50 Following the announcement from Facebook that they will launch their own cryptocurrency (Libra) in 2020 interest in blockchains and claims about their potential continue to grow. Karen Foley interviews John Domingue and Dr Robert Herian, who will very briefly explain what this technology is and then explore its implications for the legal arena. Their shared viewpoint is based on experiences in implementing and deploying blockchains in a variety of contexts and working with and advising a wide variety of players including startups and large companies and the European Commission.

    #OU50

    Recent Talk

    Blockchain: Hope or Hype? - John Domingue & Sajida Zouarhi

    How does blockchain work and has its usefulness been over or under estimated? John Domingue and Sajida Zouarhi show how blockchain is being implemented in a real-world setting. Blockchain, the technology that underpins cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, has an almost unlimited number of applications beyond finance. From digital identities to kidney transplants, blockchain technology solves the problem of intermediary trust between parties without a central authority.

    This event took place on the Monday 24th September 2018

    Upcoming Event
    The Role of Web 3.0 and Blockchain in the Future of Education Logo

    The Role of Web 3.0 and Blockchain in the Future of Education

    11th October 2022, University of Patras, Greece

    Alexander Mikroyannidis gave a keynote talk at the 7th panhellenic scientific conference “Integration and Use of ICT in Education”, organised by the University of Patras in Greece. The event was very well attended by researchers and educators from higher and secondary education. Participants exchanged best practices on the effective use of ICT in different stages of the teaching and learning process. Alexander’s keynote talk was entitled: “The Role of Web 3.0 and Blockchain in the Future of Education”. In his talk, Alexander discussed the potential impact that emerging decentralisation technologies, such as Web 3.0 and Blockchain, can have on the future of education. In particular, Alexander presented the pilot that he has led in the context of the European project QualiChain. Within this pilot, Alexander has investigated the use of decentralisation technologies towards providing lifelong learners with transparent and immutable educational accreditation. A key output of this pilot is the Badged Open Course (BOC): “Decentralising Education Using Blockchain Technology”, which introduces Blockchain technology and its potential for decentralising and transforming education. The course is available on the Open University’s OpenLearn Create platform and is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0, which allows the reuse and adaptation of the course materials for non-commercial purposes. Upon completion of the course, learners earn a free statement of participation.