Blocktech Collaborates With French University Of Armenia To Establish First Blockchain Lab In The Country

By Rishma Banerjee

Blocktech, a New York-based blockchain technologies company, along with the French University of Armenia (UFAR) have announced that they will be collaborating to launch Armenia’s first-ever blockchain lab. The lab is all set to work on the economic implications of Cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies with an interdisciplinary outlook. The French University of Armenia (UFAR),  in Yerevan, has  more than 2,000 students interested in  blockchain-based technologies, which even the government officials of teh country have identifies as a field with massive potential. The courses here will be approaching the subject both a for a technical and a business point of view and will have experts of the industry as mentors. The students will also get a lifetime opportunity to work in ongoing projects.

The lab will conduct interdisciplinary research into the crypto-economic implications of blockchain technologies, in collaboration with the university’s departments of Finance and Law, as well as the newly formed Department of Informatics and Applied Mathematics. The research will cover topics relating to decentralized application architectures, including smart contract development, bonding curves, token-curated registries, oracle and curation services on the Zap platform, and crypto-economic design patterns.

Nick Spanos,  the CEO of Blocktech and the founder of the Bitcoin Center, the world’s first live cryptocurrency trading floor in New York City, said,

“The rise of blockchain has ushered in an entirely new ecosystem of commoditized trust… Cryptoeconomics is the umbrella field through which we study human behavior and systems design in our new decentralized world. UFAR is the perfect partner for tackling this vital area of research.”

Dr. Kristina Sargsyan, a faculty at the Department of Informatics and Applied Mathematics, and the university’s Program Coordinator for Industry Partnerships noted,

“Technology is a major priority for the French University of Armenia heading into the next decade… We are honored to partner with Blocktech given Nick Spanos’s pioneering work in the blockchain industry and we are confident that this will expand opportunities for our students tremendously.”

Ever since Spanos’s first visit to Yerevan in order to give lectures at the National Assembly of Armenia and at the American University of Armenia, Blocktech has been deeply involved and interested in developing the technological ecosystem of the country. They opened an iffive at yerevan, soon after instating  as the director. He said,

“The amount of passion for disruptive technologies and permissionless innovation that I have seen in Armenia is tremendous, especially in the aftermath of the peaceful velvet revolution. This partnership is exactly what is needed at this critical juncture.”

This lab at the UFAR is the second such lab to be built by Blocktech. The first one was established at the Taibah University in Madinah, where eminent artificial intelligence expert, Professor Walaa Alharthi, was appointed as director.