The Municipality of Rotterdam and the Port of Rotterdam Authority have jointly launched a field lab focused on blockchain technology.

The new applied research lab, ‘BlockLab’, is supported by the regional development corporation InnovationQuarter. It will serve as a knowledge center for the regional private sector.

The lab is jointly opened by Port Authority President and CEO Allard Castelein, Rotterdam’s Deputy Mayor for Economic Affairs Maarten Struijvenberg and the Director of InnovationQuarter, Rinke Zonneveld. It will provide a platform where theoretical blockchain ideas are developed, tested, and worked out into concrete opportunities in a real-world environment, together with consortia of developers and users.

“There’s this huge buzz about ‘blockchain’, but actually, there aren’t that many fully functional applications,” says Struijvenberg. “We’ll be changing this with BlockLab. This is important, because we need real innovations to launch the next economy. And blockchain can help us realise them.”

According to the official release, the lab will start with a core team of five, who work from the Cambridge Innovation Center in Rotterdam. The team will be working together with Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences to develop a curriculum intended to marshal the influx of talented new blockchain researchers.

“This alone makes it very interesting to us,” adds Castelein. “But I’m also thinking of the numerous applications that can be realised within logistics chains thanks to blockchain, allowing us to organise cargo flows more efficiently. This step is seamlessly in line with our ‘smartest port’ ambitions.”

The initial steps of the initiative include the launch of a blockchain application for stock financing in the port logistics sector, developed in partnership with Exact and ABN AMRO.

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