South Korean blockchain startup Fantom enters into research partnership with University of Sydney

South Korea-based Fantom, a Directed Acyclic Graph-based (DAG) smart contract platform, has announced a research partnership with The University of Sydney (USYD), including a donation to the University’s Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies.

The partnership follows Fantom’s recent expansion into Australia, which marked the startup’s first destination in its global expansion outside of its home country. Fantom will fund university scholarships and a research group focused on developing a secure and low-energy programming toolchain.

Led by University of Sydney Associate Professor of Computer Science, Bernhard Scholz, the initial funding will support a dedicated blockchain research group in building a new programming toolchain for the community and Fantom through open source research and software artefacts. The aim is to create automatic bug-checking software for safer smart contract development.

“With the incredible research grant and support that we’ve received from Fantom, this project will help the University of Sydney deliver research papers and software artefacts, and provide unique blockchain-related research opportunities in higher education,” Prof. Scholz said.

Underscoring the need to lay heavier emphasis on blockchain-focused research, Dr. Byung Ik Ahn, CEO of Fantom, said that the university’s experienced faculty and talented students are uniquely qualified to improve smart contract functionality and create a new programming language that can help advance the entire ecosystem.

“This partnership will enable safer smart contract programming while also providing the hands-on experience necessary to drive blockchain innovation and development,” said Michael Kong, Chief Innovation Officer at Fantom.

According to the official release, the key focus areas of Fantom’s research partnership include:

• Programming methodology for smart contracts, which includes education and tutorials on blockchain's new programming environment.
• Programming language for smart contracts which aims to extend current programming language solidity so it becomes safer to use.
• Producing a verifying compiler that translates solidity (or an extension of it) to a virtual machine.
• A new, energy efficient, virtual machine with a compact bytecode format.

To achieve these aims, the funds will sponsor PhDs, postdocs, and professors, and will address the current lack of blockchain-focused research and initiatives in higher education, providing developers with the hands-on research experience necessary to develop programming language techniques and formal methods.

Earlier in June, Fantom raised $40 million from Hyperchain Capital, Signum Capital, 8Decimal, Arrington XRP Capital, Bibox Fund, Link VC, Nirvana Capital, JRR Crypto, among many others.