Data & Analytics

MIT Adopts Ripple Validator To Advance the 'Internet of Value'

• By Leila Meyer
• 04/14/16

Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Connection Science, a research initiative that applies data and analytics with the goal of building better societies, has adopted a validator for the Ripple Consensus Ledger to advance research into the internet of value (IoV) — technology that enables money to move over the Internet as fast as information does today.

Ripple's distributed financial technology enables banks around the world to conduct transactions with each other directly and in real time, without the need for for a central counterparty or correspondent, according to information from the company. A Ripple validator is a server that confirms transactions on the network, and MIT Connection Science is now running one of these validators with the goal of "developing novel blockchain [public ledger], financial services and enterprise data projects and initiatives, including open-source code projects under the [MIT] Internet Trust Consortium," according to the news release.

Alex "Sandy" Pentland, founding faculty director of MIT Connection Science, and David L. Shrier, managing director of MIT Connection Science, are leading the project. "In this new experiment with Ripple, we are taking MIT's experiential research approach to the blockchain, and we anticipate this collaboration will provide us new opportunities to test and deploy data applications and research," said Pentland in a prepared statement. "We're pleased that the Ripple team has fostered a substantive dialog with us about the future of finance through the decentralization of digital currencies and value."

The Ripple network has been in operation for three years, and the company claims it has never lost or reversed a single transaction in that time. Thirty banks around the world have participated in real-money pilots using Ripple.