Tencent’s WeBank and OpenNodes a deep tech ecosystem platform backed by IMDA and powered by Tribe, have joined hands to offer the financial blockchain platform, FISCO BCOS, as an ‘innovation playfield’ to technology students and academics in Singapore

The move is said to be aimed at advancing blockchain use within the academic community and encouraging them to pioneer innovations that can shape the future of different industries.

In their statement, they said that students will receive support from this joint ecosystem to test their disruptive ideas, as they use FISCO BCOS like LEGO bricks to build.

If the development is a potential game-changer, they would be required to open source the application as responsible members of the community – an approach that they claim is meant to hone a collaborative mindset.

Mentorship, technology workshops, and hackathons for market education and talent cultivation will constitute an empowering activity line-up for students as they build, unassemble and rebuild, in order to realise their visions.

Students from leading universities like Singapore University of Technology & Design (SUTD), Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Singapore Management University (SMU) are expected to join and leverage the FISCO BCOS platform according to their statement.

“We seek to spur the next-generation talents into building viable solutions using blockchain to serve the general public. Providing this open-source technology as a developer arena will also help us strengthen the stack of our technologies in the process while allowing for better products and services for the general public,”

says Henry Ma, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of WeBank.

‘Having a digital banking trailblazer like WeBank join our OpenNodes ecosystem opens new doors for our partners, and most importantly the student ecosystem since FISCO BCOS offers them an exciting opportunity to create and turn their ideas into reality using blockchain. Now is the time more than ever, for industries to ramp-up technology capabilities, and academics are the best source of disruptive innovations. What they need are the right tools and mentoring,”

says Ng Yi Ming, Managing Partner of Tribe, that powers the innovation thinktank, OpenNodes.

OpenNodes describes itself as a deep tech ecosystem platform, whose members include government agencies, major technology companies, and startups, from all around the globe. Considering the pressing need for innovation, the platform engages industry expert circles, students and academia to seek solutions to real-world problems.

Featured image: OpenNodes is at #SFFxSWITCH