The 20 students, most of whom but not all were seniors, collected prizes totaling more than $28,000 in the Virginia Tech Blockchain Challenge.

Along the way, they treated a handful of curious onlookers to glimpses of the future. The breadth of potentially disruptive technology they displayed staggers the mind.

Broadly speaking, blockchain technology uses decentralized networks to process and store data securely and transparently. It’s a foolproof way to document the creation and ownership of intellectual property, or to log financial transactions, or anything time-sensitive, in a way that can be easily verified by anyone.

The student projects were more narrowly focused on building specific blockchain applications that provide value to Virginia Tech and its students, faculty, alumni and staff.

To learn more about blockchain, graduation, and these students, check out the whole article below.