Dash has announced a research and development partnership with Arizona State University (ASU), including an additional $350,000 in funding.

Last August, a $50,000 grant was announced to form the Blockchain Research Lab with the Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering at ASU. Now, an additional $350,000 partnership has been announced to fund both the lab and a series of other projects. According to Dragan Boscovic, BLockchain Research Lab director and a research professor in ASU’s School of Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering, this partnership opens the door for ASU’s involvement in the rapidly developing blockchain space:

“ASU welcomes this initiative and is ready to play its role in creating a potent blockchain research and innovation environment for young talents to develop practical blockchain applications.”

The program will contain three key components: $100,000 for the development of a blockchain research graduate course (slated to debut this fall), $100,000 in additional funding for ASU’s Blockchain Research Lab (and $50,000 extra for the Luminosity Lab), and a $100,000 Dash Scholars Program for both graduate and undergraduate students. Kyle Squires, Dean of the Ira. A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, sees this as an opportunity for students to gain real-world involvement in the process of blockchain technology integrating into wide use:

“The Blockchain Research Lab not only offers students early access to blockchain technologies that are transforming the nature of business transactions, it is providing them an opportunity to be part of the design process and a unique opportunity for real-world innovation and design.”

An integral partnership to long-term scaling plans and wide adoption

While funding a comprehensive program, as well as granting access to one of the best blockchain development teams in the business, is certainly beneficial to ASU, this partnership also provides key benefits for Dash as well. According to Dash Core’s CEO Ryan Taylor, this benefits Dash in two key ways: enabling crucial research for long-term scaling solutions to withstand mass-market use, and paving the way for mainstream awareness and adoption:

“This is a remarkable partnership precisely because both sides will benefit greatly from tight collaboration. Dash benefits from gaining valuable independent insights into how we can improve our plans for scaling to massively large numbers of transactions. ASU will benefit from gaining access to one of the most innovative teams in the digital currency industry. The entire blockchain industry will benefit from the best practices that will emerge from the research, and the creation of a graduate course is a tremendous leap in blockchain’s path towards rapid, mainstream adoption.”

Scaling will be increasingly important as cryptocurrency grows

As the emerging field of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology sees wider and more rigorous use, the topic of how to adequately scale becomes more and more pertinent. Bitcoin has at present stalled out at about 300,000 transactions per day, with an average fee of around $25, while Ethereum has scaled much larger to 1.25 million, with an average fee of $1.44 at present. In order to reach mass market levels, blockchains will need to scale far beyond the current levels of the industry’s biggest players. Dash has a long-term scaling plan to rise to VISA-levels of daily transactions and beyond leveraging big blocks, incentivized masternodes, and dedicated open-source hardware.