RMIT suggests leveraging resources to make Blockchain Hub a part-time gig
The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology's (RMIT) pioneering Blockchain Innovation Hub – billed as the first social science research center to be funded by blockchain – is set to sideline a portion of blockchain research by 2025, despite a historic crypto market rally.
From next year, the hub will operate as a research group in the university's finance school and researchers will return to teaching, according to an email seen by Cointelegraph on December 12 and confirmed by an RMIT spokesperson.
In an email, RMIT's deputy vice-chancellor for business, Colin Picker, said the university was looking for efficiencies and had to make careful choices about where to send resources. He said the new blockchain hub model is strategic as it supports student learning to continue research and development.
In the year Founded in 2017, the future of the blockchain hub has been around since late November. Researcher Ellie Rennie said publicly that it was “closed” on November 22, but the center's co-director and husband, Jason Potts, told Cointelegraph at the time that talks about the Hub's future were “fluid” and “still in discussion.”
Bitcoin (BTC) reached over $100,000 on December 5, setting a new high for the cryptocurrency and sending the rest of the crypto market soaring.
Hub employees are not happy with the change
“It's not what we hoped for,” Potts said in an internal message Thursday to employees about the change. Hub said it will “shut down” on December 23rd.
RMIT's switch to Blockchain Hub surprised employees who were confused and angry by the decision, a person familiar with the situation told Cointelegraph.
Very few Hub staff have teaching experience, but starting next year, they will be required to spend nearly half their time doing just that, he said.
The shift to the Hub means that research into blockchain technology will end up at RMIT, where research groups – like what the Hub will become – are less serious, more informal and don't need to be involved in the research field.
The person said blockchain researchers may eventually gravitate away from the technology to research, but as most Blockchain Hub employees are associate professors or professors, they should continue to publish research at a high output level. to teach.
RMIT Building 97 is located in the central blockchain innovation hub in Melbourne. Source: Apple Maps
In the year People familiar with the matter previously told Cointelegraph that the resource has underperformed since its launch in 2017, as the quality of its research has declined and it has not received the funding it needs to support itself.
An acquaintance of Potts told BlockchainHub that academics were expected to be “industry-involved and entrepreneurial,” and that publishing in top-tier journals — essential for research funding — “was a secondary consideration.”
Related: Australia's fintech landscape shrinks, blockchain, crypto hits 14%.
The Hub's new setup comes weeks after what seemed to be an overnight shift in support for crypto came back to the mainstream in a big way with the US elections.
President-elect Donald Trump has promised to support the crypto industry when he takes office next month. Regulators in many countries look to the US for guidance on how to regulate their own markets.
In Australia, a minority in the centre-right Liberal Party have pledged support for local industry in the run-up to a federal election on or before May 17, which Coinbase's lobbying arm is aiming to influence.
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