Imagine an average 1,000-acre Kansas farm capable of yielding roughly 40,000 bushels of wheat seeking a loan from a local bank to fund its operations. Ripple says it could soon be possible for such a farm to create a digital twin of its wheat harvest and use that digital representation to obtain credit from a financial institution.

(A wheat harvest on the blockchain? Ripple and UC Berkeley’s new Center for Digital Assets could make it a future reality.)

“Blockchain and digital twin research will be among the projects supported at the new Berkeley Center for Digital Assets,” states a press release published on Wednesday by UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering.

Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI) is providing $1.3 million in RLUSD to UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering to launch the Center for Digital Assets (CDA), a new research hub that will study blockchain and digital twin technologies.

“The overall mission of the center is to foster pioneering research, education, innovation and entrepreneurship within the broader digital asset technology landscape,” said UC Berkeley Engineering Associate Dean for Research Tarek Zohdi, who will also act as the CDA’s faculty director.

So-called “digital twins” are simply digital representations of physical assets. In crypto circles, they would fit under the broader category of real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. The article explains that research at the CDA will focus on “physical assets that can be studied, tested, ascribed current and future worth, and ultimately bought and sold in the digital world.”

The article acknowledges that many aspects of this phenomenon are already taking place on a wide scale in the form of cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), but it seems the CDA will focus primarily on digitizing assets that already exist in the physical world. The aforementioned wheat harvest would be one such example, but others would include “semiconductors, cars, complex machines, planes, factories, farms and forests.”

Ripple and UC Berkeley have a history of collaboration dating back to 2018, but this will be first time the company funds the establishment of an on-campus research center.

“As a founding member of Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative, UC Berkeley has played a pivotal role in driving digital asset innovation,” said Senior Director of University Partnerships at Ripple Lauren Weymouth. “The launch of the Center for Digital Assets builds on that legacy.”

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