The blockchain revolution: will universities use it, or abuse it?

Article from Martin Hall in Times Higher Education noting how blockchain has the opportunity to revolutionise higher education, but he asks, will it be used as a "force for good".

There is more to blockchain than moving money. It has the potential to transform our lives

Piece from the World Economic Forum that looks at how the coming together of universally available technology, a secure public platform and very low transaction costs will create opportunities across many arenas:

"Blockchain is, essentially, the most secure way we can make exchanges today, allowing you and I to send an asset without using a trusted emissary, creating a global common exchange digital marketplace."

5 blockchain use cases in financial services

Piece from Deloitte:

One of the most discussed topics in the financial services industry today is blockchain technology. We are beginning to understand what a blockchain is, but how can we best use this technology within our business?

Blockcerts — An Open Infrastructure for Academic Credentials on the Blockchain

Article from MIT Media Lab announcing the launch of BlockCerts.

Blockcerts provides a decentralized credentialing system. The Bitcoin blockchain acts as the provider of trust, and credentials are tamper-resistant and verifiable. Blockcerts can be used in the context of academic, professional, and workforce credentialing.

This is probably the first of many blockchain academic credentialing systems, but it's released under on an open source license, so will have some advantages for users. 

Further reading:
What we learned from designing an academic certificates system on the blockchain
Certificates, Reputation, and the Blockchain

What are Appcoins?

Coin Center explain Appcoins, what they are and how they can help crowdfund public goods like the development of open protocols.

Is this the future of financing open technologies?

State of Blockchain Q1 2016: Blockchain Funding Overtakes Bitcoin

Article summarising the CoinDesk’s Q1 2016 State of Blockchain report which includes key trends, data and events from the first quarter of 2016.

They ask "Are we just short distance (1-2 years) away from witnessing the radical, transformative effects of blockchain technology? Or is five to 10 years a more realistic timeframe before blockchain technology fully matures and achieves wide adoption?"

Where Is Current Research on Blockchain Technology? — A Systematic Review

Research which conducted a systematic mapping study with the goal of collecting all relevant research on Blockchain technology.

The objective is to understand the current research topics, challenges and future directions regarding Blockchain technology from the technical perspective.

The results show that focus in over 80% of the papers is on Bitcoin system and less than 20% deals with other Blockchain applications including e.g. smart contracts and licensing.

The majority of research is focusing on revealing and improving limitations of Blockchain from privacy and security perspectives, but many of the proposed solutions lack concrete evaluation on their effectiveness.

Many other Blockchain scalability related challenges including throughput and latency have been left unstudied.

The paper from Yli-Huumo J, Ko D, Choi S, Park S & Smolander K is available under Creative Commons licence from PLOS ONE.