Austrian Government Funds Development of Blockchain-Based COVID-19 App

Announced Wednesday, the country’s Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs awarded a €60,000 ($67,600) grant to a project called QualiSig, which uses elements of Austria’s digital identity system to create three COVID-related prototypes around fraud prevention, fake news and health data. The other main partners are Austria’s A-Trust, which administers the citizen’s digital identity infrastructure, and Danube University Krems, where the project was proposed by researchers Thomas Wernbacher and Alexander Pfeiffer.

Other uses The second prototypes involve preventing fake news by circumventing email and using a signable blockchain token, while the third combines recent test results for COVID-19 (signed by a doctor or health official) with a person’s digital citizenship to allow them to take a flight or attend a concert. Pfeiffer explained that because the tech is built using the Ardor mainnet, rather than a testnet, as well as real digital citizenship infrastructure, the prototypes can be transferred to real, live use in “weeks and not months”.

Timeline of Ardor