Professors from Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, and four other US colleges are joining forces to build a cryptocurrency (Unit-e) that will be faster than Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP.

The cryptocurrency is called the “Unit-e” and it is the first project from Distributed Technology Research (DTR), a Switzerland-based non-profit organization backed by crypto hedge fund Pantera Capital Management. In a press release published on January 17, DTR announced that Unit-e will be “globally scalable decentralized payments network” and a “killer application” for the blockchain ecosystem.

The Unit-e is also designed to cover smart contracts, making it a direct competitor to Ethereum. Moreover, its developers stated that they’re creating new systems and mechanisms to reach consensus and they are developing new ways of sharding to reach their transaction speed goal of 10,000 transactions per second.

On the other hand, Bitcoin can currently handle about 7 transactions per second. Ethereum can process less than 20 transactions per second, and XRP powers 1,500 transactions per second. Visa transaction fees vary on different. However, according to a recent report from Bloomberg, it’s claimed that it can handle around 1,700 transactions per second.

In a recent interview, when speaking about popular blockchains and cryptocurrencies, Joey Krug, Pantera co-CIO, claimed:

The mainstream public is aware that these networks don’t scale. We are on the cusp of something where if this doesn’t scale relatively soon, it may be relegated to ideas that were nice but didn’t work in practice: more like 3D printing than the internet.

However, from a practical point, beating Bitcoin can’t be that easy, if it’s not impossible. It is clearly the most battle-tested blockchain until today. In fact, it has demonstrated to be an anti-fragile beast from attacks, forks, corporate takeover attempts, government bans, media mud-slinging etc. Moreover, thousands of people have tried to create better coins: faster, more fungible, more private… but they had never beat Bitcoin and this is happening mainly for 2 causes. Firstly, even if the product is proved to be technologically superior, this is no guarantee of success. Second and most importantly, Bitcoin was never a static technology.

In conclusion, Unit-e is the first project listed on the official Distributed Technology Research website. Throughout this year, this project will continue to be actively developed and it will be launched by the second half of 2019. The question remains mainly about its success and if Unit-e could become one of the world’s largest and most promising cryptocurrencies in such a competitive ecosystem.

About Distributed Technologies Research

Distributed Technologies Research (“the Foundation” or “DTR”) is a non-profit foundation, based in Switzerland that funds innovative research and development of distributed technologies. Its first project is the cryptocurrency Unit-e. Backed by groundbreaking research, Unit-e is a globally scalable decentralized payments network.

For more information, please visit www.dtr.org.