The University of Surrey, together with the University of Edinburgh and Digital Catapult, has today launched the Digital Economy Centre for the Decentralised Digital Economy (DECaDE), thanks to £4million awarded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and £6million investment from industrial partners.

In a short space of time, we have seen our economy transformed by digital technology, offering everyone the opportunity to be a producer, seller and direct consumer of services. But these dynamic, peer to peer markets are all underpinned by centralised digital platforms. Users rarely have a say in their governance decisions, which often made isolation of the global impacts they have on society.

DECaDE asks what can we do to transform this emerging future economy into one that is fair, that has appropriate governance, and maximises opportunites for everyone to create value. How can decentralised platforms enabled by emerging data-centric technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Distributed Ledgers and Blockchain transform our future economy – and the way we work, interact and create value.

DECaDE is part of a programme of Next Stage Digital Economy Centres that will take forward previously funded inter and multidisciplinary applied digital economy research to “the next stage”, ultimately easing the pathway to better commercialisation. Across all five funded centres, the EPSRC contribution of £22 million has leveraged more than £29.5 million of partner contributions from industry and the universities involved.