Swiss startup Fermat has announced the launch of a dedicated consortium to research use cases for its Internet of People (IoP) initiative.

Fermat has already put the IoP Consortium to use in a pilot scheme, run by Hungary’s ELTE University in partnership with EIT Digital Internet of Things Open Innovation Lab.

“Initiating a project via the IoP Consortium opens many doors for corporations,” Director Daniel Csendes commented in a press release on Wednesday.

“Not only can they gain access to our unified user base of over 2,000 experts across many fields, it also enables them to use our innovative infrastructure while taking advantage of the talent and knowledge of the institutions involved.”

The release coincides with an uptick in trading activity of the company’s IoP asset, while prices meanwhile remain relatively flat.

Fermat’s IoP concept is designed to make Internet of Things technology more personal, replacing, for example, web servers with “profiles” which implicate direct access from one user mobile device to another.

In essence, it is designed to be “comparable to Facebook + Google + all user databases combined but open for everyone to freely use it and innovate on top of it in a permissionless way,” the project’s website summarizes.

"Last month, Fermat announced the completion of its Profile Server and is gaining presence in Switzerland’s newly-branded Crypto Valley, a collection of Blockchain startups based in the town of Zug."

“In 2017, it is our aim to significantly grow our membership globally, establish further university partnerships, and oversee critical projects with our members to completion,” Csendes added.