Digital currency for public good

This design project suggested by Ella McPherson explored whether blockchain techniques could be used in action against human rights abuses. Jan Kis of IMC acted as a mentor to the student team.

Design brief:

The digital currency Bitcoin uses a block chain distributed database to guarantee that any transaction can be traced to a unique original coin. The same technique could be used for anonymous authentication of a chain of custody for other kinds of data. Your task in this project is to create a secure end-to-end system for authenticated reporting and verification of organised criminal activity, corporate safety violations, governmental human rights abuses etc. You need to think about how reports can get into the system safely, and how those receiving a report can use the block chain to prove that the evidence has not been tampered with, all without endangering the whistleblower.

Undergraduate group design projects