Blockchain 

Blockchain is a decentralized protocol for transactions between parties, even if they do not trust each other. It is therefore the basis for crypto currencies, but can also be used in many other areas. Austria is one of those countries in which blockchain know-how was built up at a very early stage. The Austrian Blockchain Center (ABC) is one of the largest blockchain competence centers and bundles the comprehensive interdisciplinary competencies in the field of the fundamentals and application of blockchain technologies in one place.

The Austrian Blockchain Center 

The Austrian Blockchain Center (ABC) lead by the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration is dedicated to the scientifically grounded further development of the technology and its application for various economic sectors. The ABC involves 21 scientific institutions, 54 companies and 17 associated participants, including 16 international institutions/companies. 

Wide-ranging benefits

The Center's diverse research and development topics deal with economic, technological, application-related, political and legal issues. F.ex. improved identification of customers of banks and insurance companies, use of blockchains in accounting and auditing, establishing fraud-resistant tax collection procedures, simplifiying handling of cross-border capital market transactions, cross-company administration of measurement data or human-machine interaction and machine-to-machine communication in industry.

Cooperation for innovation and business location

Many block-chain-based applications and business models have already emerged through the collaboration of established actors, innovative start-ups and leading research and development institutions. The establishing of the Austrian Blockchain Center will lead to a significant intensification of these activities and, as a key to the creation of new jobs, should contribute to establishing Austria as one of the most innovative countries in Europe.

5 Topics 

The Centre is dedicated to five thematic areas: "Cryptography, Technology & Security" (coordination: SBA Research), "Cryptoeconomic Modelling & Blockchain Applications for Business" (coordination: WU Vienna), "Emerging Industries & Blockchains in Manufacturing" (coordination: St. Pölten UAS), "Data Science Methods for Blockchain Analytics & Predictions" (coordination: AIT and RIAT) and "Legal and Political Implications" (coordination: WU Vienna).
Emerging Industries, Industry 4.0 and Internet of Things 

St. Pölten UAS is the lead for "Area 3", the subject area on Emerging Industries, Industry 4.0 and Internet of Things. It focuses on the technological aspects of Blockchains in Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things. The convergence of Blockchain with emerging technologies in those fields such as semantic database solutions, machine learning, cloud manufacturing, 3D printing and machine-to-machine is at the centre of the activities.The main objective is the semantic and technical integration of trusted transactions in emerging industries under the premise of highly automated optimization of economical aspects.
On the one hand, Blockchain is used to improve manufacturing technologies and processes in an industrial context by, for example, researching distributed network consensus as additional trust layer in data sharing scenarios and therefore enabling M2M business scenarios and cloud manufacturing. On the other hand, technologies such as machine learning and data visualization will be applied to improve Blockchain-based processes in emerging industries.

COMET (K1) 

The centre is set up as a COMET (K1) centre. These centres are financed by the Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology, the Federal Ministry of Digital and Economic Affairs, the respective federal states involved (in the case of ABC Vienna, Lower Austria and Vorarlberg) and the partners from industry and science. The Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) is responsible for coordination and management. The centres promote the developing and focusing of competencies. K1 centres conduct research at a high international level and set new research impulses. They contribute to innovations, especially with regard to future-relevant markets.