The system would offer an alternative to paying for content through subscriptions or sharing of data with advertisers by enabling consumers to pay only for what they consume.

“There’s currently no cost effective, practical way for people to pay per second to listen to music, access quality journalism or watch a film. But micropayments will allow us to pay as we consume, using tiny fractions of a cent that don’t impact our budget,” said research leader professor Radu State, of the University’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security Reliability and Trust (SnT).

The team will use Ripple’s Interledger technology, an open suite of protocols for sending money, be it fiat or crypto currencies, seamlessly across the internet.

In an online announcement published on Thursday, the university explained that for the money to find the cheapest route from source to destination, thousands of connectors will need to exchange continuous information about their exchange fees and liquidity.

The SnT’s role is to define how connectors exchange this information and allow millions of payments per second to take the cheapest route through the network. The connectors will make money by playing on exchange rates. State said: “Since cryptocurrencies are highly volatile we need to ensure that the network copes with this inherent instability.”

The collaboration was first announced in June 2018 when Ripple revealed that the University of Luxembourg was one of 17 universities selected for its University Blockchain Research Initiative. Ripple reported that it had committed over $50m in funding to the first wave of university partners.

In a tweet sent on 9 April during a trip to Silicon Valley, Luxembourg finance minister Pierre Gramegna (DP) had hinted at “further developments” of Ripple’s technology in Luxembourg. Specialist news site investinblockchain speculated the tweet could refer to Ripple-backed upgrades to be deployed across Luxembourg and Europe.