UC Berkeley Launches Defi MOOC to Students and Opens to The Public

The University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkely) has introduced a massive open online course, or MOOC, concerning decentralised finance to the public.

Starting from this fall semester, the course provides 16 weeks of lectures to the public to fulfil “the purpose of bringing students and interdisciplinary experts together in Computer Science and Finance to discuss the emerging area of DeFi,” according to the official website.

“Over 1400 students have enrolled on the course,” so far, Dr Dawn Song, a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley, said on her Twitter.

This MOOC covers multiple issues, including the introduction of smart contracts, privacy in Defi, Defi Security and so forth.

This top-notch public university in the U.S and 8th best global academic institution in a recent Times Higher Education rankings, has organised a Bitcoin-related introduction course during the spring semester before the Defi MOOC.

UC Berkeley itself is also taking the world by storm in the blockchain and crypto sector. In May, the academic organised an auction for bidding non-fungible tokens (NFT) from Nobel Prize-winning inventions.

In June, local media KQED reported the winning bid eventually came in at 22 Ethereum (ETH), around $83,430 based on the current price. The bidding was owned by FiatluxDAO, a group of university alumni who formed a Decentralized Autonomous Organization.

The academy said 85% of the auction revenue would contribute to research funding and education-related, including the energy cost offset by the mining process of the NFT. The college would also get 10% from any subsequent sale of the NFT.

Defi has become one of the leading growth sectors in the crypto ecosystem. According to data provider DappRadar, the total value locked (TVL) in decentralised finance reaches $128.97 billion. TVL is a measure of the total value of assets committed to the Defi ecosystem.