’We’re making the blockchain faster and more sustainable’

Prof. Georg Carle talks about the interdisciplinary research project ACE SUPPRA. In the future, blockchain technology could find application not only in cryptocurrencies and NFTs. In the ACE SUPPRA project, a team from TUM wants to make it real-time capable - so it could be used in networked cars, for example. At the Technical University of Munich (TUM), an interdisciplinary research team made up of experts from the fields of informatics, electrical engineering and management science will work to make blockchain technology significantly faster and prepare it for entirely new applications. In this interview Prof. Georg Carle explains the ACE SUPPRA project, which will receive around 4.5 million euros in funding. The term blockchain describes a number of methods to create a decentralized database. Information is incrementally added to this database in units known as blocks. In a cryptocurrency, for example, they contain information on transactions. The list cannot be altered. The accuracy of the information in a new block is not verified by a central unit which the other units must trust. Instead, a distributed consensus mechanism among computers that do not need to trust each other determines which information is entered into the block and which of the participating units may add the block. The enormous energy costs caused by the cryptocurrency bitcoin relate to its proof-of-work consensus mechanism. Modern blockchain processes use consensus methods that require much less energy. Prof. Carle, ACE SUPPRA, a new, large-scale research project on blockchain, is starting at TUM. What do you hope to achieve?