NITI Aayog along with Proffer, a blockchain startup founded by graduates of MIT and Harvard, are organising a Blockchain summit and hackathon at IIT Delhi from Nov 10-13, 2017. The objective of this event is to explore how blockchain architectures can enable a new digital infrastructure for India.
Blockchain is a technology behind crypto currencies like Bitcoin. In essence it is a public ledger for every document tracked by this tech. In case of Bitcoin every single currency unit is a digital ledger, digital signed by its owner. When the currency is spend, the existing owner allows a new owner to digital sign the currency with his credentials and then the new owner holds the rights for allowing next owner to sign on the ledger. This way it creates a chain of digital signatures among which the currency has passed hands. Since every bit of currency is a ledger in itself, there is no need for a central server to verify its existence.
The same technology has been explored by various institutions and sectors to provide an unduplicated and faster processing of ownership. Say land holdings for example, once a land registrar create a Block and allows first digital signature to be made, the ownership will always remain undisputed as the chain will allow full transparency to the authorities of who held that piece of land and when.
The uses are practically immense – from stock holdings to individual’s medical history almost every record that needs to exist can be efficiently build using block chain.
For the Niti Ayog event, 1,500+ students from IITs, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, and top engineering institutions around the world will be participating in the event, with 500 attending in-person on IIT Delhi’s campus.
Microsoft, IBM, Accel, Coinbase, and Amazon AWS are sponsoring $17,000+ in prizes to reward the top 5 blockchain-based applications addressing problems in government/enterprise infrastructure, finance, energy markets, supply chain, decentralized Aadhar identities, information exchange, and more.
