(Read the report here)

Blockchain & the SDGs: How Decentralisation Can Make a Difference

Blockchain’s use beyond speculative finance is emerging and maturing. In a collaboration with dGen, we analyse this potential for social good, guided by the UN’s SDGs. Twenty-five external experts lend their insights into current and potential applications, from diverse organizations such as: Celo, Duniter, UCL, Affinidy, MineSpider, Cardano, Ethereum, Climate Chain Coalition, Energy Web, and more.. What role can and does blockchain play in achieving the SDGs?

Some of the questions tackled in the report:

How can blockchain make identity more accessible?
What can blockchain do for financial inclusion?
What does transparency mean for supply chains?
How can climate initiatives benefit from blockchain?

Read the report now!

(Event registration link here)

we are happy to invite you to join this exclusive launch webinar of the report “Blockchain for the SDGs” prepared by dGen and PositiveBlockchain.

Hundreds of tech entrepreneurs, startups, impact specialists, members of public or social organizations have experimented in recent years with the use of decentralisation and blockchain technology as potential solutions to solve our world’s burning issues.

What have they learned? What is the current state of blockchain implementation for social good? This is what dGen and Positive Blockchain‘s forthcoming report explores with valuable contributions from several external experts.

Take the opportunity to speak with some of our writers and listen to their insights and stories related to the fields of Supply Chain, Social Impact, Data Verification, Health, Financial Inclusion and workers’ rights. Speakers will be announced on social media and the report will be available directly after the webinar.

The event will be held on Zoom at 12 pm CET on the 29th of June. Sign up on eventbrite.

Positively Yours,

Sandra Uwantege-Hart

Sandra Uwantege Hart is the Pacific Cash & Livelihoods Lead for Oxfam, based in Vanuatu. She founded and leads the Unblocked Cash project at Oxfam in addition to managing a regional portfolio of humanitarian cash transfer response and preparedness projects. She has 11+ years of experience in natural disaster response and coordination and has worked in emergency and recovery operations in the Pacific, Asia, the Caribbean, and West Africa.  Sandra is a DevCon Scholar (2019) and Regional Ambassador at the Global Blockchain Council. She is a dual citizen of Rwanda and the USA. 

PB: Can you first tell us a little bit about what problems your project is tackling?

SH: The biggest problem is that aid delivery and relief efforts are not very efficient; They are expensive (it costs up to $3 to deliver $1 of in-kind aid, like food), slow (can take weeks to reach the remote areas), and not very transparent (which leads to donors’ mistrust and disengagement). This project was born in the Pacific Islands, which creates extremely context logistical challenges, with over 20,000 islands across a massive region into which you can literally fit the landmass of all 7 continents. The financial infrastructure and access to finance – which would enable the delivery of cash at a lower cost – is underdeveloped and simply doesn’t work for everyone. Finally, people affected by crises are rarely given the power to decide about themselves and are not included in the process of designing the programs, tools, and solutions to the problems they know best.  The Pacific is host to multiple natural hazards – climate change, cyclones, earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis. So for us, it’s not a question of if a disaster will happen – it’s a question of when. 

“The financial infrastructure and access to finance – which would enable the delivery of cash at lower cost – is underdeveloped and simply doesn’t work for everyone”

Oxfam staff Kalua shows the online dashboard to ADRA, World Vision and Red Cross partners at Sarakata registration site. (Photo: Oxfam in Vanuatu/Arlene Bax)

… and how does it work and what impact does it make? 

The Unblocked Cash project has been successful in tackling these issues. It is a fast, less expensive, transparent, and community-centric system to deliver much-needed recovery payments to people affected by natural disasters. It offers an opportunity to improve the efficiency of how aid is delivered without compromising transparency and sustainability and by integrating digital financial inclusion and utilization of decentralized networks for a more collaborative economy at the community level. It consists of three elements: e-voucher “tap-and-pay” cards used by beneficiaries, an Android Sempo app through which vendors receive the payments, and the Sempo online platform where NGOs and partners can monitor transactions remotely and in real-time. All transactions are recorded on the Ethereum blockchain. What we have effectively built here is a digital ‘last mile’ solution that can reach across islands and oceans to reach those for whom traditional solutions are typically inaccessible.

With our solution, we are on track to reach 35,000 people in 2020 (Q4 only) and scaling across the Pacific region from Vanuatu to Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands (in 2021). Although the solution was born in the Pacific, it’s not exclusive to it, and the project is already being piloted by Oxfam Colombia, with Oxfam Mexico and Oxfam Ireland being the next teams to use the solution. 

“With our solution, we are on track to reach 35,000 people in 2020 (Q4 only) and scaling across the Pacific region from Vanuatu to Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands (in 2021).”

How did you get to work on it? What brought you, a humanitarian, to the blockchain space?

When I starting dreaming up this solution, I was actually jobless – I had quit my previous job with the UN, disillusioned, feeling constrained, undervalued, and burned out. So, I had a lot of time to think – and the spark started with the documentary Banking on Bitcoin – which then led to what I call ‘blockchain fever’. It’s the rabbit hole of trying to understand the technology and getting that gleam in your eye, seeing it as potentially transformative. I did a deep dive of learning all I could – podcasts, white papers, blogs, etc. I actually remember the moment when I connected this with humanitarian cash assistance. I was sitting by the seaside in Fiji and realised that the most successful applications of blockchain technology – currency, financial transactions and the facility of exchange across networks of people all over the world – were actually, pretty close to what I try to do for a living. How to make it easier for me to transact with thousands of people at once, and help them transact with each other? I had all sorts of crazy diagrams and notes, and even my own little white paper. 

I am really just invested in getting help to people as quickly and as easily as possible. I used to work – for many years – in the delivery of food assistance in response to major natural disasters and eventually started working on the delivery of cash and financial services. Why? Because it’s just more dignified, and it is logistically easier. It also just makes more sense – as humans, we created currency and the exchange of money to better transact with each other, and this is truly universal. It cuts across humanitarian, development, and economic assistance.

Where do you currently see the biggest gaps in humanitarian aid? Can you name & describe the top 3 issues?

Over the last years, I have had a lot of improvement in the practices of the sector. More and more assistance comes in the form of cash (and vouchers), which has been proven to be cheaper, more effective, and a dignified means of assisting people in need. However, even if the entire sector would transition to cash modality, there are still the same underlying issues and room for improvement.  

• Costs – even if we go fully digital, the cost of remittances and fees of FSP are staggering at the scale that humanitarian organizations operate. On average,  the cost of delivery almost always outweighs the cost of what we are delivering, especially when that is in the form of goods. This is in the context of an environment where investments in foreign aid and humanitarian assistance are declining, while the frequency and scale of humanitarian crises are multiplying  – so we have to do more, with less. 
• Long times to deliver assistance – in case of natural disasters the time is money; fast access to food, clean water, shelter and hygiene products can prevent the outbreak of diseases, which have often followed the initial catastrophe and made the scale of the crisis bigger. One thing is to set up the response program fast, but the next thing is to ensure that beneficiaries receive assistance fast. This can prove particularly difficult in remote areas.
• Transparency & traceability – the problem with transparency is not the lack of audits of NGOs, which have usually very rigorous standards. It is rather a problem of the system design, the supply chain of assistance, which ends abruptly without giving us data/insights into the generated impact. How many times have we asked or heard the question after seeing multi-million dollar aid pledges…Where did that money go?  Although e-vouchers or mobile-money are a great improvement, as they offer new data and transparency, they have their limitations, too, and they remain designed by mobile service providers whose target clients are not our target beneficiaries. The data is not tamper-proof, cannot be accessed fully and in detail, and cannot be accessed in real-time. Therefore any irregularities cannot be solved on the spot. That’s where blockchain has its advantage over the existing digital solutions.

Market vendors. Santo, Vanuatu (Photo: Oxfam in Vanuatu, Arlene Bax)

Is this where do you see the biggest impact of blockchain technology in the aid sector? 

Honestly, I’m not sure, as there are a lot of areas of improvement and dozens of potential applications I can think of. I do think however, that this is the first, and easiest entry point. It’s a low hanging fruit in a sector that is moving quickly to replace “in-kind” assistance with cash, and that is confronted with the difficulties of doing so. So, the introduction of this solution at a time when that global shift is happening, but is difficult, is easier to welcome. I would see this as having the biggest impact of blockchain technology in the sector in the short term, also because digital finance and cryptocurrency are part of the most mature areas of blockchain technology generally. 

Other really promising applications can likely grow from this organically more easily than they can grow independently – by doing projects like UnBlocked Cash, we are introducing more and more humanitarian professionals to a new area of knowledge and a new skill, which will also give birth to new solutions, hopefully some of which I can’t even think of right now! But for those I can think of that are not like UnBlocked Cash, these are projects around digital identities for displaced populations, refugees and stateless persons; the use of automation, algorithms and smart-contracting for predictive disaster response and delivery; and creating systems that make the donation process more direct and transparent – from the donation point down to how someone on the ground uses it. Those are the use cases in my opinion, with the most promise.

Ray paying for taxi ride with e-card to the taxi driver and the Unblocked Cash vendor Alroy (Photo: Oxfam in Vanuatu, Arlene Bax)

There is some talk about a digital gap that might even become bigger as even more sophisticated tech is utilized in humanitarian and development initiatives.  What is your response to this?

Well, very honestly, if we are doing our job properly, we should be making sure this does not happen, period. Participation, access and inclusion are all core parts of the humanitarian approach and if this use of technology gets separated from that, we have failed. This is precisely why we (Oxfam and Sempo) chose to take an approach that integrates community participation in product iteration and that enhances digital access and literacy in that process – to make sure that the solution has a built-in role for the people least likely to be able to access the technology. 

This is also where the best product development, design and deployment systems are made. I am a deep believer – having been born and raised in emerging economies, I am totally convinced that the best and most successful innovations are born out of hardship. It is a luxury to have systems that work for you – those who know how it feels when they don’t are the ones constantly thinking of solutions – to be able to earn an income, raise a family, and put food on the table. To hustle. So, the more we can ensure that the communities we work with and in are involved in the process, the better these solutions will be. For me, that is the gateway to mass adoption.

Beneficiaries registration, Santo, Vanuatu, 21.10.2020 (Photo: Oxfam in Vanuatu, Arlene Bax)

A lot of projects are currently emerging with a keen focus on technological innovation. What other areas need to be done right in order to create a lasting impact? 

Involve the community you are serving – or, users – throughout the entire process. Design with and for its users. In Vanuatu, which is a testing ground for the project, we have worked with local teams, partners, vendors, and card users on designing the solution, piloting, and iterating it, as well as testing our training materials. 

We didn’t do it consciously, but once I was made aware of that, we actually did follow the Human Centered-Design & Design Thinking principles in building and developing this program. And we continue to do so, gathering feedback, iterating different components if possible.  Whatever we learn in Vanuatu, we share with our colleagues in other teams, so that every project can build on top of our lessons and ideas. 

“In Vanuatu, which is a testing ground for the project, we have worked with local teams, partners, vendors and card users on designing the solution, piloting, and iterating it, as well as testing our training materials. “

Secondly – this approach requires diversity in the design. This goes back to my reply to the last question – the tech sector is terribly NOT diverse. Not a lot of women, not a lot of people of color, not a lot of LGBTIQ+ peoples, not a lot of people from disadvantaged backgrounds or the Global South. Not a lot of people who don’t speak English (even as a second language). That is a major problem because it means that the people who need new solutions and bring a diversity of thought to the table the most are not the ones building them. Diversity in the teams that create these innovations is critical. Very personally – when I don’t see diversity in those teams, I’m immediately skeptical of how good the solution is.

How can we best follow your work?

You can follow our updates from the field and stories from our users, across social media:

Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Medium. We also have a telegram group (@unblockedcash) dedicated to any questions, discussions, and feedback. Or, you can find me on LinkedIn or  email me: sandrah (at) oxfam.org.au 

Thank you for sharing with us!

PositiveBlockchain: Would you like to help research impactful blockchain for social good projects? Explore our open database to see the projects already listed, and if you have any tips to share, feel free to get in touch with our team.

PositiveBlockchain: The Covid-19 pandemic has put the fragility of healthcare systems under public spotlight. According to the Africa CDC, over 1.4 million infection cases have been reported across the continent of Africa. Yet, global humanitarian relief bodies such as the IRC believe the true scale of the pandemic may be hidden because of a lack of testing and issues with data. This, however, highlights one of the many challenges in long-term healthcare transformation in developing regions. Can innovative solutions tackle the issues of data access, healthcare inclusion, service delivery and trust at the same time?

For the South Africa-based team of Ribbon Blockchain, healthcare ecosystems are critical to not only people’s well-being, but also social equity. Using blockchain technology to tokenize healthcare activities, Ribbon has set out to incentivise behavioural change and improve accessibility of quality data, thereby improving the resilience and vitality of public health systems that serve everyone, particularly the poor.

Today, we talk to Gugu Newman, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Ribbon Blockchain Pty Ltd, a for-profit, social impact company specialized in public health system automation.

Gugu is the vision lead behind Ribbon’s Public Health Incentives platform, which is designed to improve health system automation, efficiency, productivity and self-sustainability in public health systems in emerging economies. Gugu has over 23 years of work experience across the fields of product design, manufacturing, technology and media business sectors; including over five years as an entrepreneur.

Can you first tell us a little bit about your solution/ project/ initiative outside the current crisis: Which problem is it tackling, how does it work and what impact does it make? How did you get to work on it?

Ribbon’s Universal Public Health Incentivization platform seeks to improve the non-adherence to chronic medicine, and reduce poor health-related behavior. The platform is designed to improve public health systems by automating and enforcing quality rating of every single Patient-Healthworker interaction experience, and rewarding both parties for effort, efficiency, accuracy, productivity and accomplishment of specific tasks within set timelines to improve health outcomes.

For example, we use blockchain to pool and tokenize donor funding from fiat currencies into Dai stablecoin cryptocurrency pegged at 1:1 with the US Dollar, which we then re-distribute as Crypto rewards to patients, practitioners and community health workers for completing specific healthcare activities, such as testing for HIV and TB, initiating and adhering to prescribed medicines and treatment. All activities are recorded on the Ethereum blockchain as transactions stored in a decentralized database, generating real-world and real-time population health data and context of the healthcare ecosystem.

The socio-economic impact promised by our platform is improved adherence, behavior change, improved health outcomes, longer comfortable life for chronic patients and an efficient, self-sustainable public health system offering great quality of care delivery equal to or above private healthcare.

We began working on this platform after having been on the receiving end of poor public health services and having unfortunately lost family members to mis-diagnoses and incompetence in public health systems in Africa. The act of creating the Ribbon Public Health Platform was really our fight back, and a stand that no other life should be lost to the same negligence in public health.

How has the Covid-19 crisis affected your life and work so far?

Covid-19 has slowed down our work as public health facilities have been re-organized to put more emphasis and focus on Covid-19 patients and priorities and operation under a state of emergency, thus relegating all other health related issues and technologies to the back. This has made it difficult to implement new technology across the public health system and relegated novel innovations to the back seat.

We are hopeful however that as the peak of the pandemic subsides, we will find a way to work smoothly within the new normal.

How do you think the crisis will affect our life and work further down the line?

I think the crisis has exposed the lack of technological innovation and financial investment into public health, which was up to this point a very little understood or cared for sector, and perhaps we will see more innovation and general investment into health and lifestyle related areas of the economy. 

Health will likely become a standard investment item or expense entry in the business balance sheet, and health data could also make a new entry as a revenue item in balance sheets of companies with large workforces, customers and communities. A technology like blockchain enables transparency and tamper-proof capabilities to enable this new post-Covid world where healthy lifestyle tracking and data collection are core fundamentals of daily business practice.

In light of COVID19, how have you adapted work? Could you share examples of new or additional challenges you are working on, or of adjustments / additions you have made to your solutions related to the crisis?

We have learnt quite a lot from our efforts in pivoting to offer Covid-19 solutions in our platform. We figured out a very important milestone of how to integrate Covid-19 Track and Trace Bluetooth technology into our platform for remote data collection and for tracking people with intermittent internet access.

This ability opens up a whole new world of possibilities in remote data collection via Bluetooth enabled wearable wrist bands and mobile phones as well as via beacon technology. We are actively looking for investments into developing this pivot further.

How are you planning to develop it further? What are the biggest obstacles you need to overcome?

The biggest obstacles are finding the right investors to fund the research and development of how this Track and Trace Bluetooth technology interacts with blockchain framework, and to find developers who can engineer backwards to make this technology compatible with older non-Android & iOS mobile phones that do not have smartphone capability or internet access but do have Bluetooth. 

This business model might also not be financially viable since technology always moves forward, so it might just be a case of onboarding old users onto wearable Bluetooth bracelets, but the cost and time it will take to get users en masse onto that is another problem altogether.

Photo: Unsplash

Where do you see the biggest opportunities of blockchain and other technologies in relation to Covid-19? Where do you see risks?

Opportunities:

• I’m gonna be biased here and say I see behavior change incentives distributed via blockchain in public health becoming the new standard for public health
• I also foresee public health providing the utility that blockhain’s DeFI ecosystem (decentralized finance) lacks in real world settings, and this is something we’re designing and looking to incorporate into our business model.
  
• Health data sovereignty via blockchain could also become a thing
  
• Track and Trace Bluetooth technology for health and lifestyle will definitely become the standard to power future remote data collection efforts
  
• AI and machine learning for data analytics and information insights in public health are already in use and poised to expand
  

Risks:

• Health information privacy and security is already a big risk and will continue to be
  
• The potential ‘colonization’ of health data by Facebook, Google, Amazon and such other big platforms is still a huge risk to data ownership and beneficiation. I think governments will have to implement national policies to protect citizens against these giants
  
• I think it’s also very important to decentralize and reconfigure public health systems to become ‘Patient-First’-oriented and enforce personalized medicine through use of blockchain, if we are ever to improve the health of large populations and avert or survive future pandemics.
  
  

How can we best follow your work?

You can follow Ribbon Blockchain on Twitter @RibbonPlatform and our website https://ribbonblockchain.com/ and contact me directly via email on [email protected]

Thank you, Gugu, for sharing with us!

PositiveBlockchain: Would you like to help research impactful blockchain for social good projects in Africa? Explore our open database to see the projects already listed, and if you have any tips to share, feel free to get in touch with our team.

The United Nations Development Programme recently reported that the ongoing pandemic is “hitting hard on all of human development’s constitutive elements”, such as loss of income at a scale not seen since the Great Depression, loss of lives or damage to well-being at an astounding scale, disrupted access to education, all “likely increasing poverty and inequalities at a global scale”, making achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals even more urgent.


Photo: Castorly Stock from Pexels

Over the coming months, PositiveBlockchain will launch a broad selection of interview series related to how companies in the blockchain for social impact ecosystem are adapting their solutions or projects in this next phase of sustainable development. The series will focus on interviewing inspiring change-makers from different organisations, who provide inspiration and insights on how to address the multi-faceted and far-reaching socio-economic development challenges intensified by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Today, we talk to Kevin Pettit, Chief Operating Officer of Proof of Impact, a company providing verified impact investing solutions.

Kevin Pettit, Chief Operating Officer, brings infectious energy to everything he does. He brings to bear a strong background in blockchain, finance and technology to the Proof of Impact team. His successful track record of launching and accelerating financial systems is fueled by his unyielding commitment towards advancing high-performance teams to rapidly deliver growth. His deep passion for social impact led him here and his desire to rigorously disrupt the impact space as we know it keeps him going.

Can you first tell us a little bit about Proof of Impact outside the current crisis: Which problem is it tackling, how does it work and what impact does it make? How did you get to work on it?

At our core, Proof of Impact is a technology company that enables the tracking, measurement, and evaluation of impact investments. To dive in a bit deeper, we have developed a data collection and verification engine that is radically redefining impact as we know it – by using transparent and meaningful metrics to create natural alignment between purpose and profit. 

We quickly saw that the hearts and minds of consumers and investors are becoming more impact-minded, yet the tools to bring those visions to life lag behind. Frustrated with the conversations being had but little to no outcomes, we decided to tackle this issue head on. Backed by co-founders who are serial impact entrepreneurs, one with deep expertise in investment banking, we listened to the market and committed ourselves to developing the technological innovations needed to make investing in impact tangible, transparent, and verifiable. 

Focused on four key areas – impact investing, responsible manufacturing, philanthropic giving, and corporate social responsibility – our solution is tailored to the specific needs of those looking for new age digitized investment products. We proudly provide a customizable technology platform and visibility into key impact performance data to help fund managers and impact-minded professionals make more conscious decisions in everyday life.

Photo: Proof of Impact supporting maternal health services provided in Africa.

How has the Covid-19 crisis affected your life and work so far?

Let’s be honest. COVID-19 has left a lot of people feeling alone and helpless. Many of us felt ‘stuck,’ with little ability to take control and determine how to make a meaningful difference.

Logistically speaking, we built Proof of Impact to be a fully remote company, so daily life in that regard did not change too drastically, however the feeling of helplessness is something that my team – and mostly every team around the globe – has felt. We see this tidal wave on the news of how bad things are, and it’s hard to determine what our role is in helping be part of the solution. 

Things took a turn for the positive once my team and I decided to squarely focus on using our technology to give people an option to participate in the solution. That’s where the dramatic shift occurred. Our conversations changed and became highly action oriented. We creatively found positive ways to come together – from daily Zoom workouts which forced us to take a break from work to having check-ins with one another around how we were truly doing – we rallied together and have found ways to focus on the positive in an otherwise bleak time.

How do you think the crisis will affect our life and work further down the line?

COVID-19 has already accelerated the need for greater purpose beyond ourselves. Business as usual simply no longer exists. No longer can we ignore the consequences of doing things in the same ways, with no regard for the greater good. 

We can easily go down the line and discuss the negative ways COVID is – and will – impact society, but I like to believe that this will enable most people to tap into a higher level of consciousness. Prior to this global pandemic and subsequent crisis, impact was something of a self-realization prophecy, whereas now we’ve realized that doing good is much more of a basic human need than most once thought. 

I’d like to think the way we make decisions going forward has forever changed, in a very meaningful way.

Photo: In one of the projects supported by Proof of Impact, meals are being packed up and delivered to frontline healthcare workers.

In light of COVID19, how have you adapted work? Could you share examples of new or additional challenges you are working on, or of adjustments / additions you have made to your solutions related to the crisis?

When COVID appeared, the team and I realized rather rapidly that we had the ability to be relevant in a genuinely meaningful way. We sent ourselves into overdrive to address the crisis head on, by pointing our impact tracking and verification technology to track impact related to COVID relief.

For example, Proof of Impact partnered with United 4 Longevity (U4L), a new charitable foundation that collects funds to underwrite the donation of clean, nutritious foods to healthcare workers who are currently risking their lives in the battle against COVID-19. Proof of Impact supported U4L in measuring and verifying the impact of their efforts: the delivery of meals, snack packs, and fast bars to hospital staff and nurses at their homes to keep their bodies and immune systems healthy so they can be at their best to help fight this disease.

For each meal, snack packs, and fast bar delivered, Proof of Impact independently verifies the deliveries through a series of supporting data points, such as timestamps, delivery locations, photos of the deliveries themselves, and shipment tracking identification numbers. Through this partnership, U4L is able to add confidence from a third party verifier that their measurable impact has been achieved, while at the same time creating a more engaging giving experience for their donors.

As such, we’re balancing developing solutions that address the short-term crisis alongside long-term issues – such as Sustainable Development Goals for social and environmental good – that we have the power to effect. It’s satisfying to be able to use the impact tracking for meals for frontline healthcare heroes, which will be an extension of the capabilities of our platform for tracking the impact of future programs.

Different, yet the same.

How are you planning to develop it further? What are the biggest obstacles you need to overcome? 

Impact investors have shown up in this new reality. As leaders in our space, we’re constantly asking ourselves how do we develop the necessary tools to help them deliver on their commitments to become more sustainable. It’s our primary goal to empower investors with the right metrics to measure the success of their investments. If they can more efficiently and confidently track their impact, then they can optimize how funds are deployed in order to do the most good. 

Looking towards the future, the work we’re doing now sets us up for data-driven investment products that will make it easier for investors to engrain impact into the financial products themselves. The challenge here is mostly around impact data collection – what to track, how to track, and how to measure – alongside educating investors around what is truly possible when you have real-time impact data. Imagine a world in which you have real-time impact data to drive decisions? 

The possibilities are endless – and tremendously powerful. 

Where do you see the biggest opportunities of blockchain and other technologies in relation to Covid-19? Where do you see risks?

At Proof of Impact, we use blockchain to keep a transparent and immutable record of data as “proof” that social or environmental good has been achieved.The transparency and confidence that blockchain technology instils is hard to beat. It’s powerful to know – with certainty – that impact occurred. The trust that secure data via the blockchain delivers affords the opportunity to create smart, automated investment structures – such as performance-based investments. 

As we collect more data around the benefits achieved in communities globally, it becomes increasingly important to take strong steps towards protecting personal privacy and data, because once it is minted on the blockchain, there is no return.

How can we best follow your work?

You can follow Kevin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevindeanpettit/ and Proof of Impact: www.proofofimpact.com.

Kevin, many thanks for your insights and inspirations, and for the great work you are doing!

Learn more about Proof of Impact’s selection of programs aiming to support communities particularly hard-hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. They range from providing recycled soap to at-risk communities around the world, supporting the U.S. restaurant and hospitality industry by funding their food provisions for under-represented communities during a lockdown, funding repair teams in Kenya to secure water systems in the drought-prone regions, to funding basic PPE and reliable sanitation products for families across South Africa.

Digital Sovereignty and Inequality

Can we agree that at the halfway point, it has been a fairly comprehensive and eventful year so far? With every month comes another potentially ominous sign reinforcing the status of the year 2020 as a rupture point in global history. Bitcoin has also had a full-blooded year, going through the anxious sell-off, lots of global news regarding Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), an anti-climatic ‘Halvening’, a DeFi explosion and finally a relative price stabilization. Bitcoin has also seen further adoption with the likes of Raoul Pal and Paul Tudor Jones publicly endorsing Bitcoin within mainstream the financial space and in so doing positioning Bitcoin as the fastest horse ‘outside of system’. These are just two characters of the Bitcoin landscape but they are part of a normalization of Bitcoin as an asset which has seen a turbulent volatility in price. What hasn’t changed much however is the idea of Bitcoin and Blockchain as a burgeoning counter movement within an increasingly corporate business model of surveillance capitalism. The concept of out of the system money which works against corporate surveillance opens up conversations such as Inequality and resistance. I want to be provocative in this piece and ask if Bitcoin, a piece of computer code, can really help resolve inequalities entrenched within today’s financial and social system? It would seem odd at first glance and perhaps impossible in some ways but this view of Bitcoin depends on how we ‘see‘ Bitcoin and it’s underlying technology.

A brief reminder of the core features of Blockchain Tech:

The question of inequality is a deeper question that extends into many categories, but for this piece we contend by looking at, as mentioned above, surveillance as a business model and a decade of monetary policies which have normalized financial imagination and fiscal austerity. For example recently, Jay Powel the FED reserve Chairman, was asked about inequality in relation to monetary policy. His response was that “inequality has been something that’s been increasingly with us for four decades and it’s not really related to monetary policy.” But years of QE and ‘alphabet soup‘ programs have solicited frictions with the German constitutional court when it called “the bond purchase program and others […] have considerable redistributive effects – from the bottom to the top.” In a world upheld by a meme based social media, this translates into the now infamous “printer goes brrrr ” meme.

Bitcoin as Protest

Although Bitcoin is occupied by many competing schools of thought,  many Bitcoiners, like Max Keiser, agree that Bitcoin has a revolutionary technology which makes it unconfiscatable, easily divisible, and is deflationary at core. It opposes inflationary currencies at heart thus because it cannot be inflated out of worth. This property is a vital source of sovereignty and power in an age where algorithms, banks, and companies can take you offline instantly. Many have already been wrongly profiled or targeted by an algorithm, and if you haven’t yet had the pleasure your time time will come. People are wising up to the inescapable tensions confronting the rise of centrally coded algorithmic rule and democracy. A recent Forbes article illuminates how protesters are noticing and sharing the qualities of uncensorable money, just as ‘the Intercept’ breaks a story which reveals the Pentagon targeted its young population in a wargame scenario for a ‘Zebellion‘.

The questions here are fundamental and revolve around rule, democracy, surveillance and access to your wealth. These kind of conversations have previously been left to the experts, but as education and awareness meets growing distrust people understand the need for discourse on quite a political issue. This issue that extends beyond that of the individual. Indeed the overt weaponization of the international payments structures have forced this issue onto the realm of state and regions from Catalonia to Iran, alternative payment plumbing is a lifeline.  It also shows the potential power of the decentralized, trustless, algorithms to uphold rights when other systems cannot or do not. This technocratic argument extends to suggest that if humans aren’t able to be equal or fair algorithms can. This does seem paradoxically giving life to the origin ideals of Silicon Valley – who now are the main propagators of surveillance capitalism.

Following the weeks of the global Black Lives Matter (BLM) anti policing protests that have now spread around the West it would be apt to approach the topic of racism and the fortunes of the Black American community in a quest about inequality. While burrowing through Twitter I saw placards in the protest crowds touting Isaiah Jackson’s book – Bitcoin and Black America – one of the Gentlemen of Crypto Youtube duo. This is an organic and social media infused drive to educate ‘minorities’ about the potential of blockchain tech and specifically Bitcoin as a tool towards financial freedom. After following the duo for a couple of years, it has been glorious to see their electrifying rise to prominence. Jack Dorsey, the Twitter CEO endorsed the book in February and from London to LA the message has gone viral.

But what exactly is that message?

“Of course we need Police accountability, we need to adjust the judicial system as it’s

taking the wealth out [of the community] with 100 – 1 sentences of blacks compared

to whites.

After the smoke clears, focus on the economics behind Bitcoin, leveraging it’s

financial self-sovereignty to store black community wealth. Bitcoin won’t solve the problem

of racism but it is an unconfiscatable store of value which will help the community grow.”

– Isaiah Jackson

This is why the discourse on inequalities is so interesting. It always is almost always grounded in wealth, money, and finance. Indeed it is harder for somebody with money – and therefore able to access a justice system – to claim inequality. The discourse around ‘systemic racism’ has been given a cursory glance in schools, examined only momentarily in recent weeks, yet known to all as real at least subconsciously. Changing an entrenched operating system would be analogous to turning an oil tanker given the huge political and social capital and humility needed. That said, would Bitcoin and the idea of decentralization be able to give that jump start?

Digital Communities with Bitcoin

Deeply entrenched issues from redlining , Jim Crow laws to police brutality and billions in asset seizures. During Jim Crow, 90% of those lynched were black business owners representing a exceptional violence aimed at black wealth. Today this financial discrimination is reproduced through events such as the financial crash of 2008 which burdened ‘sub-prime’ or black-owned houses the most. Furthermore in the USA the New Orleans flooding debacle, and of course, many instances of unchecked discrimination has led to a natural reaction in the form of protests but more importantly for Isaiah Jackson, a search for alternatives. At one point in an interview when discussing community currencies Isiaah Jackson exclaimed, “just leave us alone, I don’t know how else to put it!” This is an issue that strikes at the heart of ideals of justice or meritocracy in any society but in the West specifically the tension is that of a proclaimed equality and inalienable rights versus a clarifying reality. In truth this is nothing new and has been simmering for decades.

This is an issue that strikes at the heart of the mythical ideals of justice or meritocracy in any society and these issues have been simmering for decades in the west generally. Technology they say, is neutral. What you do with it, however, isn’t. Let it be clear and absolute: Bitcoin and blockchain will not end racism, nor will it change the system that is heavily skewed against Black Americans or minorities anywhere. If boycott is a tool for subaltern communities the idea that Bitcoin is the mechanism by which it is made possible is appealing, but given the inherent volatility of the asset and the low market capitalization there is risk. However, I interpret the idea behind Bitcoin adoption as a form of protest to a skewed economic system to be as follows;

1. Bitcoin will become a global foundational asset class, and is still only 11 years old. Get in early to be part of the foundations of the next wealth reset. Highly speculative but logical.
2. Technological education of this independent asset will facilitate communities growth in the medium and longer-term while growing a critical mass toward Bitcoin and Blockchain tech.
3. Seperation of Money and State will happen, and Black communities need to front-run this societal move.

Ray Dalio last year famously stated that ‘capitalism is broken‘. Banks are able to access negative interest capital and simply earn money by virtue of being closer to the Central Bank, while the velocity of money sharply decreased and investments in the young or black communities have all but dried up. Many others in the financial world agree and suggest radical change is needed even to maintain the current system as inequalities woven into its fabric have become unmasked. The coronavirus has accelerated this unraveling in a faster way than imagined possible. The lack of action to support people and smaller businesses has forced people to think about taking their destiny in their hands. However, is community wealth and identity woven with cryptocurrencies and without danger? If voting with your feet and money is a hard protest movement, doesn’t this simply enrich early Bitcoin investors ? Can communities put their fortunes at the whims of market volatility or are stable coins the answer? Can decentralized blockchained communities be interloped and remain respectful while interacting?

Clearly there are many questions that will be answered only in the future, but these are the questions I find myself asking. Feel free to answer in the comments!

Black America and Bitcoin

When discussing the adoption of Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies there is often a chasm between different ethnic groups over access and knowledge of the technology. Information is indeed power, and Jackson suggests while African Americans materially underserved by the financial system, financial education, and cryptocurrency knowledge is needed. Indeed Bitcoin is still only 11 years young and further to that, other cryptocurrencies are still younger. The learning by doing adage can indeed propel early adopters of the technology and this is a thrust of his argument.

Jacksons call to action is to galvanize a community in America where 1 in 5 is unbanked and 1 in 3 is underbanked. Central to his call is keeping the wealth or value creation within the black community which has been robbed of its wealth so many times and in fact, is the largest consumer group in America with a buying power of approximately $2 trillion dollars. Nipsey Hustle who also encouraged a broad, black adoption of blockchain technology before being shot and killed is who the book is dedicated to. Jackson lauds the hustling nature of black youth and compares Bitcoin adoption to a basic community safety net.

He states that the unconfiscatable nature of Bitcoin means that regardless of police aggression or intimidation they cannot take the private keys of the Bitcoin wallet like that have been confiscating billions from those ‘suspected of crimes‘. Furthermore cryptocurrency is a good way to circumvent the disenfranchisement in banking services and predatory practices by payday lenders. It realigns the incentives into that of a saving currency and encourages investing locally. These ideas underline how Bitcoin acts to underpin the financial sovereignty of the individual. These locally based saving and investing incentives also challenge this evangelical idea of the Venture Capital world which shamefully only invests 1% into Black communities. Instead silicon valley and venture capital has been accused of diversity theatre and outright racism.

The wealth disparity is stark when compared to other ethnic groups. Recently there has been a revival of ideas such as #Blackdollarsmatter and Black Wall Street – where Black-owned businesses are logged and community members are encouraged to shop there to show a revival of local awareness and identity. Maggie Anderson in her 2014 Ted talk explained the power behind keeping money in circulation within the community. She describes how the simple but powerful issue of where your money goes has a ripple effect through society. Anderson states that “a dollar circulates in Asian communities for up to 28 days, in Jewish communities for nearly 20 days, in white communities for 17 days and in Hispanic communities for 7 days. Yet in the Black community, a dollar circulates for only 6 hours.” She suggests this can be combated by pooling resources into supporting black companies or suppliers which eventually stimulates growth in black employment and black entrepreneurship. After reading ‘The Colour of Money‘ by Mehrsa Baradaran Netflix stumped up 100 Million dollars toward a Black Fund aimed at community investments. When ideas matter and networks are powerful, change can happen incrementally and then all at once.

Finally, when discussing the tragic and avoidable death of George Floyd’s murder, formally charged with using a counterfeit $20 bill, Jackson said “the irony is crazy, with digital money you don’t have to worry about counterfeit ever again.” Indeed in the context that Wall St. has just received trillions in bailouts to support inflated asset prices as the systemic primary scaffolding. Lending and thus read banking- at beneficial rates are at the core of the solution for Black America. Despite Netflix’s call that 1% of Wall St wealth be ring fenced for Black America to kickstart community investments and build entrepreneurship and strength, the answers will not come from Wall St. Either through Bitcoin an equally sovereign stablecoin or within a Black banking model the funding architecture will be decided by how the system reacts to the protests and how communities vote with their money. Jackson underlines the point that “I am not saying that Bitcoin is the savior of police brutality however what I am saying when you own it and control your communities it is much harder for police to come in and take your wealth today.”

Bitcoin and Human Rights?

These are powerful arguments, and serve to remind that there is an expiry date to systemic abuse. I do think there are ways to pool Bitcoin together and encourage saving. There are ways to hedge downside risk so the community does not become exposed to highly volatile negative movements in price. The management system can be decentralized and verified through the protocol to ensure there aren’t accounting abuses. There are real questions that Bitcoin helps pressure the current structures with, and this ultimately is a good thing. There needs to be caution about the possible negative effects such as actually exiting the current system will make reentry more difficult and perhaps there is a risk of re-establishing ‘hard’ boundaries between black, Indigenous, white, and Asian communities.

This accumulation of wealth in opposition to each other can be problematic and perhaps leads to the balkanization of communities in the real world. In electronic format balkanization is decentralization and can easily work; it is just in how this translates in the real life world that needs to be well managed. This piece serves to underscore some serious attributes that Bitcoin has to re-energize Black communities, hold wealth within and stimulate investments. There are pressures that Bitcoin places on the existing system that cannot be ignored, nor should they as they have not served to heal society. However as with radical break away from something existing and common, misunderstandings and misinterpretations can be formed and avoiding that is up to society. At the end of the day the goals are genuinely inclusive finance and sovereignty. If this is not at the heart of the next reset following coronavirus we will be guilty of pushing communities away at a time of crisis.

Special Recognition to @bitcoinzay a.k.a Isiaah Jackson for highlighting the Black America angle to the Bitcoin movement.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared war on the corona virus also at the digital level. On March 28, the organization joined forces with several companies that already use the blockchain technology to develop a platform to collect and share data to fight the virus. Among them are IT groups such as IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and the blockchain company Hacera. In future, regional data on the spread of the pandemic will be summarised and evaluated on the “MiPasa” platform. The information will be exchanged between government agencies, health authorities, but also individuals. The Blockchain provides significant advantages: At the same time, the data can be transmitted and stored securely and always up-to-date and verifiable.

One of the pioneers in this field is the IT group IBM, which was once the largest manufacturer of personal computers, but has specialized in software, big data analysis and now blockchain technologies for many years. With its blockchain platform IBM Food Trust, retailers can trace the origin and whereabouts of individual goods, such as fresh fish or vegetables, back to the manufacturer in virtually real-time. What used to take days or weeks of research can now be retrieved in seconds. If you are intere

Customers of the IBM platform include large retail chains such as the French company Carrefour. By 2022, it wants to enable the traceability of hundreds of fish products in all 12,000 stores. Customers will then be able to scan a QR code on the packaging and receive all information about the origin of a product.

By using the blockchain, however, the companies are by no means only concerned with strengthening consumer confidence and guaranteeing the freshness of fish. The example of the luxury goods group LVMH shows this. With the technology companies Consensys and Microsoft, the French have created an application based on Blockchain that can be used to verify luxury goods. This means that the trade with cheap copies is massively hindered – and that one’s own brand can be strengthened and revenues tend to increase.

The market for blockchain applications will grow even faster, also due to corona expansion. Experts estimate that the volume will grow from $1.5 billion in 2018 to $23.3 billion in 2023. In the view of Gartner’s market researchers, the service and transport industries will benefit most from this. The blockchain already plays an important role in the financial sector. The growth drivers are: Greater efficiency, more transparency in the movement of goods and the controllability or verification of goods. Achievements that are more in demand than ever in the corona crisis.

(Read the full article on Medium)

180 million Euros.

That’s about how much the EU has invested in blockchain-related Research and Innovation projects. How much for projects in the category “Environment”? Well.. 1%.

With Environment being on top of government’s agenda, we have good hopes at PositiveBlockchain that this trend will change. And this was exactly the point of the workshop held in Brussels on the 14.01 on the initiative of the EPE and hosted by the Sustainable Development Observatory of the European Economis and Social Comitte (EESC). The event gathered experts from various institutions, representatives from the commission, research organizations and companies working in the fields of blockchain for SDGs with a focus on Climate Change and Sustainability.

A new man-on-moon moment

Goal of the workshop was to propose to include blockchain and DLTs in the program of the upcoming European Climate Pact which will be launched in March 2020 as part of the EU Green Deal, the so-called “man-on-moon moment” announced recently by the EU commission chief Ursula von der Leyen. The plan has the ambition to reach a total of 100 billion euros of funds in the next seven years and will be the horsepower of the “new European growth strategy”.

Participants have all acknowledged the transformative potentials of blockchain and DLTs to fight Climate Change. Presentations addressed potential benefits ob blockchain to fight Climate Change, streamline carbon certification exchanges, create incentives for individuals and organizations, provide transparency and trust in supply chains and food systems, etc. Potential ways forward as well as risks and current challenges of the technology (e.g. energy consumption) have also been addressed.

The slides presented by PositiveBlockchain are available here: http://bit.ly/EU-EPE-workshop

You’ll find in the slides an overview of:

• what is PositiveBlockchain and what are the key analytics of our projects database
• what are the EU initiatives in blockchain for SDGs/Climate Change: Ledger, Decode, P2P2 Models, My Health My Data, Next Generation Internet, PlasticTwist, Blockchain for Good Prize, etc.
• what are the main organizations fostering innovation, conducting valuable researches, curating communities and shaping the ecosystem of blockchain for SDG/Climate Change.

You may also want to read this previous article we wrote about 13 organizations and communities watching blockchain for good.

Spotted an error and want to make an addition? Let us know in the comments.

Enjoyed reading? Share to your networks and get in touch with PositiveBlockchain! hello (@) positiveblockchain.io

Followup the group on meetup.com here to receive future event invitations.

The topic this time was about Blockchain for a better Healthcare, in partnership with the Impact Hub Berlin, BerChain (Berlin Blockchain Association), the GIZ Blockchain Lab and Avertim (European consulting in Life Sciences). We had great speakers from startups Ribbon, IKU, HIT Foundation and PharmaTrace. We have summarized some slides, please find the link on this Medium post: http://bit.ly/2IYxRqw

+++++
Other open slide-decks here: http://bit.ly/2pzJNrF

+++++
Next B4SC Berlin meetups -> Aid Delivery in Nov/Dec 2019, Arts in Jan/Feb 2020 (contact us for partnership & speaking opportunities, or if you want to help organize!) ?