Best Universities for Blockchain 2022
The third annual CoinDesk Blockchain University Rankings launched today giving insight into the best universities for studying crypto. These are also some of the most influential universities conducting specialized computer science research driving the industry forward.
Breaking the data down geographically, 10 of the top 20 universities are based in Asia – with the top spot going to The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. America’s best crypto colleges are, in order, University of California-Berkeley, Cornell University and Stanford University.
These decisions were based on a methodology that factored in a school’s "scholarly impact," "campus blockchain offerings," "employment and industry outcomes" and "academic reputation." Impact is a difficult thing to measure, and is often influenced by personal bias.
Many U.S.-based readers, for instance, may be surprised to learn that American colleges are punching far below their weight when it comes specifically to the number of scholarly papers published about crypto.
“When taking this more holistic view of research, the U.S. arguably falls short of expectations with a grand total of zero schools in the top-20 paper producers,” Reuben Youngblom, an adviser for the rankings, wrote in an accompanying report. Just today, Fortune magazine published an article making the claim that New York City was the world’s crypto capital.
One possible explanation for Asia’s dominance here could be China’s decision to “seize the blockchain opportunity,” in 2019. The country, of course, then went on to ban almost all crypto activity the following year but research on permissioned blockchains (which are distributed like Bitcoin, but not freely accessible) continued.
This research is likely tied to China’s ongoing central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot, which hopes to create a unified payment system for the country and potentially bolster the yuan’s use internationally, or other government-led initiatives to integrate blockchain.
Another curiosity is Australia’s seeming overrepresentation within the ranking. Over 240 schools globally were considered, 50 were ranked and five of the top 20 were found to be based in Oceania (a region with about 2% of Asia’s population).
Missing from the list were some of the most important regions for crypto adoption: South and Central America, the Middle East and Africa. Chainalysis, a data firm, found recently that Latin America and the Middle East were among the heaviest users of crypto for daily transactions. And Nigeria, too, has a booming crypto industry.
Where’s India? Where’s Israel?
To some extent, while the ranking gives a fascinating look at one aspect of the emerging cryptocurrency industry it doesn’t account for the entire picture. Universities were essential to the development of the internet – so was the U.S. defense industry – and will likely have a place in Web3.
– D.K.
