Cyrus Paolo Buenafe on CoinGeek Backstage: nChain partners with Philippine universities to integrate blockchain education

Blockchain solutions firm nChain has a lot of projects going on in the Philippines. As its Executive Chairman, Stefan Matthews, previously said, the country is crucial for nChain’s development of business initiatives.

At the Block Dojo Philippines Investor Night, one of nChain’s regional academic partners, the University of Asia and the Pacific, was present to share what the blockchain solutions firm has been working on with the academe.

According to the University’s Chair for the Department of Information and Science Technology, Cyrus Paolo Buenafe, the University of Asia and the Pacific has been on the lookout for blockchain since 2016 with a goal of incorporating blockchain into their portfolio and learn about its underlying technology and decentralized nature.

“When people hear about blockchain, things about cryptocurrency come to mind, but that’s not really what we’re looking into. What we’re looking for is the underlying technology of blockchain. We were interested in it because of its decentralized nature, its characteristic, and how these types of characteristics would actually help solve real-world problems,” Buenafe told CoinGeek Backstage. “What we’re looking into is to use information technology as a tool for social innovation.”

Buanefe explained that nChain is conducting an introduction to Web3 and blockchain for the University of Asia and the Pacific, teaching their master students about the fundamentals of the technology and anything Web3.

“We wanted to be able to design a course where the idea of blockchain or the concepts of blockchain are adequately delivered to a diverse set of people. Right now, we’ve been running it already for perhaps a month and a half. The feedback that we’ve been getting from the students were all positive,” he said.

Buanafe added that some students are struggling to follow the technical bit of the course. However, that’s understandable, especially for those who have just started to learn about the emerging technology. Another area they are exploring is the application and possible use cases of blockchain and creating another course about the technology, this time for professionals.

“I’m really excited to see the future iterations of this course. We are planning to run an undergraduate course this time sometime in August,” he shared with CoinGeek Backstage.

In March 2023, the global blockchain solutions firm signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Ateneo De Manila University to provide an additional blockchain leadership unit to its course offering.

Watch: Ateneo Blockchain Lab to test blockchain tech applications