We are used to talking about blockchain in relation to the circulation of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, but the blockchain is a model that can be replicated in almost any field. We have already seen it applied to the exchange of money through smartphones and the automotive sector by creating a partnership between some of the most important manifactures. The same can happen in agriculture.
This is demonstrated by a non-binding agreement (defined “Memorandum of Understanding”) signed between the government of Ethiopia and Cardano, a company led by Charles Hoskinson. Although the name perhaps will not suggest anything at all, he is the co-founder of the virtual currency Ethereum. The goal is to organize, at the beginning of the year, training courses for local developers to let them learn the basics of the functioning of the decentralized blockchain in Cardano, so that they can exploit the potential for the realization of software, solutions and services aimed at optimizing the activity related to agriculture. These are the words of John O’Connor, Director of African Operations of the parent company IOHK, entrusted to the editorial staff of The Next Web.
“This year we will offer our first course in Africa, probably in Ethiopia, and expect the first cohort of Ethiopian developers to be contributing to Cardano code by the end of the year,” he said.
Just signed an MOU with the Ethiopian Ministry of Science and Technology to explore training blockchain developers and use Cardano in the Agritech Industry pic.twitter.com/r06W0RSZye
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) May 3, 2018
At the moment it is not known in concrete how the initiative can one day come to help those who work in the country in the agricultural field. Also noteworthy are skeptical opinions on the effectiveness of the project: among those who have expressed perplexities is Dan Larimer, CTO of EOS (among other things competitor of Cardano), pointing the finger at the use of algorithms now obsolete and considered unsafe. Cardano, for its part, just this week presented a new algorithm for the management of the blockchain at the Eurocrypt event in Israel.
