Klaus Schwab, author of The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Photo: XinhuaJOHANNESBURG – South Africa's economic development will ride in the cockpit of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.My assertion is based on the forecasts done by Klaus Schwab in his latest book, The Fourth Industrial Revolution.

According to this book, Africa will benefit immensely from the ageing declining populations in Europe, North and South America, the Caribbean, Asia (including China), southern India, and some Middle East countries.

This view is supported by the report published in 2011 by the African Development Bank (ADB) entitled “Africa in 50 Years’ Time”.

According to this report – Africa is the only region where there will be about 1.87 billion people of working age in about 50 years’ time.

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On the other hand, Africa will have more than 3billion people by 2050. This means that around 74percent of the African population will be of working age.

Other than an increment of nationalism sentiments across Europe and the US, the Europeans are tightening their migration regulations and that is why instead of importing skilled labour, they move their firms to the countries that have such labour.In the past century, East Asia and South America were the best beneficiary of this kind of direct investment.

However, due to Asia's ageing populations, investors will move their manufacturing plants to Africa, where there will be abundant labour and consumers of produced products.

According to the ADB, there is a huge decline in Africa's child mortality rate and deaths caused by HIV/Aids related diseases. This is a significant factor in Africa's population growth.Another crucial factor in favour of Africa's massive economic growth is the fact that the continent possesses half the world's arable land.

This will lead to massive agricultural investments and Africa's food production will feed the whole world.This view is supported by the World Bank - which predicted that Africa's agriculture and agribusiness markets are destined to top $1trillion (R14.39trillion) in 2030.

According to Professor Calestous Juma of Harvard Kennedy School of Government, three technologies will be deployed to boast agricultural output in Africa; these include Geographical Information Systems, nanotechnology, biotechnology and mobile-technology.

Four technological (industrial revolution) megatrends which will play a prominent role in driving economic development in the near future are: autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, advanced robotics, and new materials. Africa will be the biggest beneficiary of these technologies.

Due to the shortage of infrastructure in the form of roads, rail, border posts, airports, seaports etc, it is cheaper for Nigeria to import food from Peru instead of Cameroon.

Due to the fact that multinationals will mainly be operating in Africa, they will work with the African governments to build infrastructure that services their operations and transports their goods. In other words, infrastructure will be built through public-private partnerships.

It will be in the best interests of the investors to participate in the construction of the infrastructure.In some instances, the public (consumers) will also have to pay for this, in the form of taxes and payments, such as tolls.

Currently, due to the lack of infrastructure, trade among African countries is limited. By 2050, intra-African trade will increase substantially thanks to the availability of regional connectivity.

The availability of multinationals and infrastructure in Africa will inevitably lead to free labour movement. Something good about labour movement is that it will increase the flow of remittances across the African countries.

The incremental growth of populations, industrial production, agricultural activities and mining will require huge quantities of water.In certain parts of Africa, there is a lot of water in the ground and technology will be employed to extract such water.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution’s mega-technology will also be used to harvest rainwater.

Africa is surrounded by two oceans, the Atlantic and the Indian.Mega-technology will also be employed to extract water from these oceans and make it consumable.

Moreover, technology will play a critical role in the recycling of water.As a matter of fact, most production activities in manufacturing plants will be done with less water. Technology will play a critical role in promoting intra-continental trading and the supply of water.

Although the South African population remains stagnant and will not grow rapidly, South Africa can become the biggest beneficiary of this African growth.That is why South Africa should cultivate better relationships with other African countries.

Among other things, we should stop being xenophobic, and treating fellow Africans with arrogance and a condescending attitude.In the absence of huge population like other African countries, South Africa's strength will be to continue to serve as African gateway to the African continent and regional financial hub.

Rabelan Dagada is Professor of Practice in Digital Commerce at the University of Johannesburg's Postgraduate School of Engineering Management. He is on Twitter: @Rabelani_Dagada

The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.

There has been a lot of hype about blockchain technology – in particular, its potential to transform how humans transact, which could fundamentally redefine how business, governments and society operate.

Despite this hype, it is still a nascent technology with considerable challenges that need to be overcome. As the technology matures and is applied across a wider set of sectors and systems, there is both a challenge and an opportunity to realize blockchain’s potential – not just for finance or industry, but for people and the planet.

This report outlines how blockchain could disrupt the way the world manages environmental resources and help drive sustainable growth and value creation.

It identifies more than 65 use-cases where blockchain can be applied to the world’s most-pressing environmental systems challenges, along with eight ‘game changers’ where the technology could fundamentally disrupt current systems and approaches.

To date, these opportunities remain largely untapped by developers, investors, and governments, yet they represent an opportunity to unlock and monetize value that is currently embedded in environmental systems.

The report also highlights many of the current challenges that need to be addressed, outlines a set of principles for developing blockchain applications for the environment, and identifies the need for global platforms to incubate a responsible blockchain ecosystem.

Download the report here: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Building-Blockchains.pdf

UNICEF has launched a page that lets you donate to its Australian branch without giving any money at all. All you need to do is give away part of your computing power to let it mine cryptocurrency.

Over 2,600 people have already donated through what UNICEF calls The Hopepage. Users are able to set what percentage of processing power they’re willing to give the website out of a max of 80 percent. (Be careful not to set the percentage too high.)

The longer they stay on the site, the more cryptocurrency they’re helping to mine on UNICEF’s behalf. The site says the cryptocurrency will go toward giving children life-saving supplies “like safe water, therapeutic food, and vaccines.

”Once you click Start Donating, a pop-up in the browser appears stating that “www.thehopepage.org would like to use your computing power,” assuring you that the algorithms work through your browser’s sandbox so no downloads are necessary. (It appears that the site may not work on everyone’s computer.) The notification says it’s powered by Coinhive’s Javascript-based mining tool.

 That’s the same tool used by Salon as an experimental alternative to generating ad revenue, and weirdly by Showtime websites for a brief period of time. The tool mines Monero, an alternative to bitcoin that is said to be more private because it shuffles users’ identifying information.

Although Monero can rarely be used to purchase goods directly, it can be easily turned into fiat currency to buy supplies.The Hopepage shows you the hash rate — the speed at which you’re mining cryptocurrency — in the upper right corner. For me, it said six hashes per second when I gave the site 20 percent of my 2015 MacBook Air’s computing power, a tiny but admirable effort.

Once you’re donating, the page also tells you you’re giving toward Rohingya refugee children from Myanmar that have faced extreme danger and violence for being Muslim.

THE MORE COMPUTING POWER YOU GIVE AWAY TO THE HOPEPAGE, THE MORE RAPIDLY IT WILL DRAIN YOUR BATTERY AND WEAR DOWN YOUR PROCESSOR

If you’re on a laptop, you’ll notice your battery start draining after just a few minutes of using the site, if you’re not plugged into a power source. Be very careful as the more computing power you give away to TheHopePage.org, the more rapidly it will drain your battery and wear down your processor. It’s best to do this while plugged in.

It’s a creative way to get people to donate to charity, and it’s actually the second instance UNICEF has turned toward cryptocurrency to fund charity.

This past February, it launched a site called Chaingers.io asking visitors to mine Ethereum that would then be turned into funds for Syrian children. The effort has not been wildly successful as it’s only raised just over 996 euros (about $1,200) in the months it’s been live.

Still, we’re starting to see more people donate online in quick and painless ways. Facebook users are starting to ask their friends to donate to charities as a birthday present. 

The New Inquiry also launched a similar mining service last November called Bail Bloc, which donates Monero generated by users’ computing power to The Bronx Freedom Fund to help with posting bail.

By default, Bail Bloc draws on 10 percent of a user’s computing power and you can manually set it to draw higher amounts if your computer can handle the extra burden.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/30/17303624/unicef-mining-cryptocurrency-charity-monero

Bitcoin and hundreds of other blockchain-based cryptocurrencies are on the rise, allowing a new form of digital money that is not tied to a specific government. The technology that makes cryptocurrency possible is called blockchain, a decentralized general ledger controlled by all its users rather than a central bank.

While money based on large amounts of code may sound really complicated to understand, there are key aspects of blockchain that make it a very attractive technology for nonprofit organizations.

Geographically Agnostic

The distributed aspect of blockchain enables global organizations to be more efficient. For example, the UN World Food Program (WFP) was able to use blockchain to make cash-based transfers to organizations who are supporting Syrian refugees. According to Robert Opp, WFP’s director of innovation and change management, “blockchain technology allows us to step up the fight against hunger.

” Through this program, the UN can cut costs, control financial risks such as fraud and respond more quickly to emergencies.

Transparency

Traditional currencies are not easily tracked when they are exchanged. However, digital currencies are unique and are traceable throughout the ledger.

While there is a vibrant conversation within the nonprofit sector about the meaning of overhead and whether organizations should be measured by the percentage they spend on fundraising, one thing we know for sure is that donors prefer to fund projects directly.

Donors want to see where the money is going and how it is being used at any given time.

One new platform already taking advantage of blockchain is GiveTrack. GiveTrack takes donations for projects in Bitcoin and connects the financial information with the results of a project that are actively communicated by the nonprofit.

The side effect of this transparency could be an increase in trust that donors will have in organizations (which could increase giving). At the same time, it could create a lot of challenges for organizations when communicating with their donors about how funds are being spent.

The ledgers are not only used for financial transactions. Blockchain technology could also be used to track and protect valuable assets such as documents, art or jewelry throughout their lifetime journey.

Companies like Brilliant Earth leverage blockchain technology to better document the source of gemstones, ensuring they address the social and environmental issues related to mining and manufacturing precious stones....
Continue reading the 2nd page of this article on Forbes here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/04/25/blockchain-is-reestablishing-trust-in-nonp...

Africa is rarely mentioned among the largest markets for cryptocurrencies. But it may be set to steal a march over other markets. (See also: The Rise Of Africa.) The surge in popularity of cryptocurrencies spurred the opening of at least 15 trading venues there within the past year alone.

Peer-to-peer marketplaces also recorded a spike in trading volumes as bitcoin’s price skyrocketed last year. For example, trading volumes in Kenya on localbitcoins.com increased to $8.1 million in December 2017. Luno reported 2000 BTC worth of transactions in November 2017, when the cryptocurrency’s price was hovering in the $10,000 range. Approximately 37% of those transactions occurred in South Africa.         

Recently, the continent’s oldest exchange disclosed lofty ambitions. Luno is a cryptocurrency exchange based in South Africa. It started operations in 2013 and boasts 1.5 million users spread across 40 countries. By 2025, it plans to reach 1 billion customers. For context, North America’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase reported 11.7 million users last year.  (See also: Coinbase Has More Users Than  Schwab.) 


There are a couple of reasons why Africa might become the next big market for cryptocurrencies. First, local conditions in Africa are conducive to adoption of cryptocurrencies. Several countries in the continent suffer from rampant inflation. For example, Zimbabwe and South Sudan both have runaway inflation rates. (See also: Worst Hyperinflations In History.) 


With their paradigm of decentralization, cryptocurrencies offer an alternative to disastrous central bank policies. In fact, South Africa’s central bank recently announced a pilot test using ethereum’s blockchain for smart contracts. Second, the penetration of mobiles within the continent has helped its population become comfortable with cryptocurrency technology.

In the evolution of its financial services ecosystem, Africa skipped step involving the setup of physical banking infrastructure to a decentralized mobile money platform.  New businesses that use blockchain have emerged. Kenya-based BitPesa, a payment platform and money transfer service, works with 60 banks around Africa and has seven mobile wallets on its platform.

Third, the threat of government regulation, which has roiled cryptocurrency markets recently, is currently fairly low in Africa. While they have warned about the dangers of investing in cryptocurrencies, regulators in African countries have taken a hands-off approach to trading at exchanges.  But Africa is susceptible to the same pressures as other cryptocurrency markets. Cryptocurrency traders in Africa were paying a premium of as much as 40 percent in 2017 as bitcoin’s price reached new records.

According to some reports, the premium occurred due to a shortage of liquidity, meaning sellers were able to command unrealistically high prices due to high demand from buyers.Investing in cryptocurrencies and other Initial Coin Offerings ("ICOs") is highly risky and speculative, and this article is not a recommendation by Investopedia or the writer to invest in cryptocurrencies or other ICOs.

Since each individual's situation is unique, a qualified professional should always be consulted before making any financial decisions. Investopedia makes no representations or warranties as to the accuracy or timeliness of the information contained herein. As of the date this article was written, the author owns small amounts of bitcoin.

Read more: Is Africa The Next Big Market For Cryptocurrencies? | Investopedia https://www.investopedia.com/news/africa-next-big-market-cryptocurrencies/#ixzz57VGXF8mU 

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Most of the attention, flurry and investment around blockchain technology is in the West, where people are investing in cryptocurrencies and focused on a slew of novel applications, like using a blockchain to track vegetables from the field to store shelves.


But the greatest impact of blockchain technology will be in developing countries, such as Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

  
At least, that is the view of David Crosbie, a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. He thinks blockchain technology will bring the same everyday levels of convenience and automation to the developing world that we take for granted in places like the U.S., and he is convinced it all comes down to a notion of moving trust away from society.

A Matter of Trust

Trust is essential to how society functions.“Many years ago, we used to run around on the savanna, and we only trusted our blood kin,” Crosbie said in an interview with Bitcoin Magazine. He explained that we went on to put our trust in the church, which used ideas like hell and damnation to get people to follow the the rules, and then, for better or worse, we put our trust in government.


The problem is we have handed governments the ability to lock us up, take away our belongings and even kill us, in exchange for a reliable and predictable legal structure, he says. Blockchain technology is the first real effort to expand on that trust model with any success.


“Because it is so effective in providing trust, blockchain is most effective in environments where there is no competition,” said Crosbie. In other words, in places where the state does not provide a good trust model, blockchain technology can step in and provide a way around existing rules and regulations.  


That is not to say there is no need for blockchain technology in the developed world, says Crosbie; it’s just that the use cases in the West are not as compelling. We already have good banking and court systems in the U.S., for example, that support most people’s needs.

 Life With Blockchain Technology


If blockchain technology does establish itself in the developing world, life there would look a lot more like life in the Western world, says Crosbie.


As an example, he tells how he recently had to file a renewal for a limited liability company. He was able to do his research, collect details and fill out the forms online. “I did it all from my chair,” he said.In a lesser-developed country, a similar task would have required a lot more exertion.


In most places in Africa and India, for instance, state organizations are inefficient and poorly run, and record keeping is predominantly paper-based. Renewing a business license would likely require getting on a bus, going into town and standing in a queue for hours. And since computers are too costly in those areas, official documents are often typed by hand.  


While record-keeping systems in the West have steadily evolved from paper to computer to online and, as a next step, maybe blockchain technology or “maybe not,” says Crosbie, blockchain technology may be a way for lesser-developed countries to jump those intermediate stages.


“Blockchain provides something fundamentally funded by the end user who provides access, and that enables [documents] to be computerized without the government having to spend the money,” he said.


Efficiency improvements in developing countries would open roads to productivity because people would have more time, says Crosbie. Ownership would be easier to establish. If you wanted to show someone you owned a piece a land, rather than investing a day in chasing down a paper document, you could simply show them a link on the blockchain.


Crosbie says chain of custody is another use case. Blockchain technology would enable someone to figure out if the brake padsthey were buying for a car were real, so they would not run the risk of a serious accident.


Or it could help ensure the vaccines received in a small village had been handled properly.


Smart contracts (applications that run on the blockchain and control the transfer of digital assets between parties) could also provide value in areas where the legal system is too expensive, slow or untrustworthy. And establishing an identity on the blockchain would be a core part of giving people access to services.  


As far as banking goes, mobile banking already exists in Kenya with M-Pesa and other mobile phone–related services. “Whether blockchain can compete depends entirely on whether it can be done in a cost-effective and quick and reliable way. And I actually think that blockchain is not there yet,” Crosbie cautioned. 
 Deployment

Getting blockchain technology deployed in developing areas around the world requires a different technology mindset, however.


Right now, most of the technology is targeted to areas like the U.S., where infrastructure and connectivity are good and computer systems are affordable.In many developing areas, people do not have access to computers or laptops or even Wi-Fi, but they do have access to smartphones and cellular connectivity.


“We need to move our technology focus from desktop and servers and high-speed networks to smartphones on 3G networks,” Crosbie said.That requires being smart not only about how we write data to the blockchain, he says, but also how we read data from it.


Smartphones, for example, don’t have the capacity to download an entire blockchain, and that means finding new workarounds.“If it has been tracked on the blockchain, how do I know the vaccine I have received in rural Kenya is good if I can’t read it from my smartphone while standing in the hospital?” he said.


He points out the importance of looking at alternatives to move large amounts of data without relying on networks.


One idea is to ship a USB device with the physical goods and then to use the blockchain to validate the authenticity of that data.  “Those are the areas I’m looking at,” he said.


“And I think that is what is going to allow people to expand from blockchain being a few thousand to millions and billions of nodes.


”Crosbie will be discussing the social impact of blockchain technology on a panel at the Blockchain Economic Forum in Singapore, February 4–6, 2018.


This has been a publication of BitcoinMagazine.com. You can discover an learn more from our article and reports covering Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies here: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/blockchains-greatest-impact-will-be-developing-countries-says-u... 

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On the 22nd of January, the UN released a blog post announcing the creation of the Climate Change Coalition (CCC). The CCC’s purpose is to research use cases for blockchain technology and how it can help fight climate change. 


The UN believes that blockchain technology can strengthen monitoring, reporting, and verification of the impacts of climate change by improving “transparency, traceability, and cost-effectiveness of climate action.” Blockchain technology can also build trust among climate actors and ensure that even the poorest can access incentive mechanisms for climate action. 


The CCC will research blockchain technology and rollout pilot projects to test its viability. The global initiative currently has 32 members and 25 organizations involved in the research and implementation of blockchain technology. 

The Climate Chain Coalition and its membership charter

On the 12th of December, 2017 during the One Planet Summit, a multi-stakeholder group of 25 organizations working on blockchain technology, held a meeting and decided to establish a global initiative called the Climate Chain Coalition (CCC). 


The CCC’s mission is to, “advance collaboration among members…to help enhance the environmental integrity and results of DLT [distributed ledger technology] applications for the climate.” Massamba Thioye, a member, leading the UN Climate Change’s blockchain network agreed and stated that “the UN Climate Change secretariat recognizes the potential of blockchain technology to contribute to enhanced climate action and sustainability.”


 Blockchain technology will, therefore, help mobilize climate finance to increase climate actions. To move forward, the CCC members agreed on shared principles and values to facilitate and guide activities for networking, research, governance, demonstrations and pilot projects.

Using blockchain technology to tackle climate change

Although the UN recently launched the CCC, the UN had raised the idea of blockchain technology to tackle climate change in June 2017. The blog post mentioned that blockchain technology could be used to improve carbon emission trading, facilitate clean energy trading, enhance climate finance flows, and improve tracking and reporting of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. 


Alexandre Gellert, Paris Associate Programme Officer at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), supported this statement as he mentioned that “blockchain could contribute to greater stakeholder involvement, transparency, and engagement and help bring trust and further innovative solutions in the fight against climate change, leading to enhanced climate actions.”

Risks with blockchain technology

The UN previously used the ethereum network to help Syrian refugees in 2017, so the CCC would not be the first use case of blockchain in the UN. Further, a press release in November 2017 announced that the UN had partnered with the World Identity Network (WIN) to develop a blockchain identity pilot aimed to help curb child trafficking. However, with any new technology and venture, there are risks. 


Thioye stated that “to fully and promptly mobilize this potential, broad collaboration among stakeholders is needed to direct resources to priority areas, avoid duplication of effort, and avoid the pitfalls of working on a new technology with countless unknowns.” There are currently 32 members in the  Coalition. 


The initiative remains open and welcomes new members that want to fight climate change.

Discover more from Coinsquare here: https://discover.coinsquare.io/government/un-blockchain-climate-change/

The tale of the Trojan Horse first told in Homer’s Odyssey, explains how the Greeks were able to defeat the armies of Troy through a simple trick.


Having failed to conquer the walls of Troy through a 10-year siege, Odysseus decides to build a giant wooden horse as a tribute to the goddess Athena, fill it with soldiers in secret and pretend to leave.


The Trojans think they have won the war and bring the horse inside, only to be defeated in the night by the hidden soldiers.The story has come to represent anything that allows entry by strategy or cunning.


Similarly, Blockchain has been waging war with mainstream adoption on the Internet of Things(IoT) for years. Use cases abound, but real adoption has remained low. Blockchain technology needs its own Trojan Horse, of sorts.

Disrupting electricity

Grid+, a spinoff from ConsenSys, aims to leverage the decentralizing power of Blockchain technology in order to allow consumers to access wholesale electricity markets.


The goal for the company is to decrease costs, increase efficiency in markets and reduces pollutants caused during surge electrical use times.Currently, consumers buy electricity from electricity retailers (a.k.a. utilities), and as much as 50 percent of the end user’s energy bill goes toward covering the retailer’s marketing, admin and bad debt costs.


Grid+ has developed and tested a hardware device dubbed a “smart energy agent” that automates much of this work, allowing consumers to buy and sell energy at near wholesale cost.


The system would allow users the ability to monetize their wholesale electricity from external sources like solar panels, while at the same time, purchasing power from third party sources as well. Together, the overall savings would be substantial. However, electrical autonomy is just the first step in a larger plan.

Electrical horses

The Grid+ system is simple and user-friendly with an attractive and easy to use hardware component. Users will be able to use and store Blockchain assets including cryptocurrencies without ever knowing that Blockchain technology is at the root of the system.


Users will not need to know or keep track of their private keys since Grid+ is using a novel system called 2-of-3 Blind-Key Multi-signature Security.Like the Odysseus’ ancient wooden horse, the Grid+ platform acts as a simple and easy access point for Blockchain technology to find its way into consumers homes.ConsenSys Enterprise Managing Partner Mark D’Agostino says:

“The Grid+ Agent is a cryptocurrency enabled general-purpose IoT device.  We are using it in the electricity markets first, but as we move forward it has many potential applications in IoT as well as in distributed ledger systems.  Electricity is really just the first application that will enable use to bring Blockchain to the masses.”

The Grid+ client can provide access for users to a potentially huge number of other applications and passive income streams by having the smart energy agent act as a Blockchain enabled IoT device. 


Some of the near-term non-electricity use cases of the Grid+ smart energy agent include secure in-home crypto banking and running nodes for other Blockchain services such as IPFS or INFURA.


Once the Grid+ smart energy agent is inside millions of customer homes, Blockchain technology can reshape the way consumers think about and exchange value.

Join the Greeks

The Greeks under Odysseus’ leadership ultimately won the war. The same will be true of Blockchain technology. Eventually, the better system will prevail.


A huge number of users have been interested in joining the winning side and participating in the Blockchain revolution - so much so, that the Grid+ token sale has already sold more than $31 mln in tokens. The sale is continuing for those interested in tasting victory.

For even more reports like this, Cointelegraph is a great resource of crypto news and blockchain. Discover them here: https://cointelegraph.com/news/decentralized-electricity-could-be-blockchains-trojan-horse

Blockchain technology will be used for the first time this December in an attempt to protect Indonesia’s rainforests and prevent the peatland haze fires that blight the region on a regular basis.

Spearheaded by industry group Carbon Conservation, the Smart Contract for Good programme will automatically distribute funding to villages in Aceh when they successfully reduce incidences of fire, in a pilot project beginning next month.

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This is done through what is known as a smart contract, a computer protocol or set of rules used to verify or enforce the terms of a contract on the blockchain. 

 Rewards will be drawn down from a warchest, or “bounty”, of US$100,000 that has been pledged to the project by Indonesian corporate sponsors, and will go towards building infrastructure such as schools and hospitals to benefit the community.

Organisers are still working out the details of the payouts but say they are likely to be capped at $10,000 per village with the size of the reward depending on the results achieved.The release of funds is expected to take place on an annual basis, in parallel with Indonesia’s annual dry season between May and September when fires are the most prevalent. 


Sun added that mechanisms for running the scheme will eventually be put in place to ensure the proper distribution of funds.Carbon Conservation will unveil the project on Monday at COP 23, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Bonn, Germany. Members of the group include agribusiness giants APRIL, Wilmar and IOI Group, as well as non-governmental organisations such as IDH - The Sustainable Trade Initiative, and PM.Haze.

Australia-based Dorjee Sun, chief executive officer of Carbon Conservation, told Eco-Business via email: “We want to give communities tangible rewards to support their efforts when they protect their forests.”  

“The irreversible damage inflicted on environments will only further impoverish those communities as the natural resources they rely on literally go up in smoke,” said Sun, whose organisation Carbon Conservation also acts as the secretariat of the Fire Free Alliance, which works with communities in Indonesia on ways to cultivate land without burning it.

Because of the blockchain technology underpinning the smart contract, the release of funds is automatic and the data logged is permanently documented in a shared, transparent and unchangeable record.



The Smart Contract for Good will determine the release of funding using data from remote sensory or satellite imaging technology that can monitor forest fires or ground site inspections. Smart contracting platform Dappbase is the key technology partner in the project.

Chief executive Zhang Taiyang said smart contracting technology can circumvent potential issues of red tape and corruption that would stall the distribution of aid money to communities on the frontline of forest protection.The decentralised nature of blockchain technologies allows potential partners or donors to inspect the exchanges made through the smart contract and verify it for themselves, he added.

The forest is best protected by those who live in the forest, not by those who have big pens and big mouths.Yusuf Irwandi, Governor of Aceh

This is not Sun’s first venture when it comes to protecting Aceh’s forests. In 2007, he partnered then-governor Yusuf Irwandi to run a carbon credit programme to help local people and conserve forests, though “the subsequent collapse of the carbon credit market made this unfeasible”, according to Sun.

The production of commodities such as paper and palm oil is an important source of income and employment in Indonesia.

But the unfettered pace of forest clearing to make way for farmland combined with poor farming practices has resulted in environmental degradation, the exacerbation of climate change and a thick, acrid smog that drifts as far as Malaysia and Singapore when farmers clear their land by burning. 

Hundreds in Aceh alone have suffered from respiratory illness as a result of the haze.The reconstruction of Aceh after the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 has sped up the deforestation of a habitat that is home to orangutans, elephants and tigers.




Carbon Conservation chief executive officer, Dorjee Sun, at a proposed conservation site in Aceh. Image: Carbon Conservation


Yusuf, who was re-elected as governor of Aceh earlier this year, said: “After announcing a forest-clearing moratorium 10 years ago, we in Aceh still protect the forest with no financial help from the international community.“Maybe finally with satellite proof and smart contracts the villagers who conserve the forest of Aceh can be rewarded.

The forest is best protected by those who live in the forest, not by those who have big pens and big mouths.” Dappbase and Carbon Conservation have said they will launch crowdfunding portals on their respective websites to allow individual and corporate donors to contribute.

They also plan to scale up Smart Contract for Good for use around the country and potentially overseas.Zhang said:

 “Aceh will be the first Smart Contract for Good project deployed, but we hope that other social or environmental activists will use the Dappbase platform and underlying technology to develop and deploy other similar projects globally for the causes they care about.”

Discover even more environmental initiatives and solutions on Eco Business here: http://www.eco-business.com/news/can-blockchain-save-indonesias-forests/

It would perhaps be fickle to be too critical of the global economic system given the tremendous progress made towards so many of the Millennium Development Goals.


Indeed, the goal of halving the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day was achieved seven years earlier than planned.

Despite this apparent success, there is a tangible sense of unease at the way the global economy functions, and particularly how wealth is distributed. It led to Thomas Picketty’s 2014 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century topping the New York times best seller list for non-fiction.


It and other works have prompted a renewed exploration of the global economic system, and how inclusive it is. Indeed, that year the World Economic Forum cited global inequality as the biggest risk the world faced.

Financial exclusion


Central to this inequality is access, or lack thereof, to the banking system. A whopping 3.5bn people around the world lack access to a bank, with an astonishing 37 million Americans estimated to be ‘unbanked’ at the current time. It’s resulted in a clear and distinct divide between the financial haves and have nots.

Largely this is down to the business model of the banks that rely heavily on the network effect. This sees every new customer (and of course every dollar they deposit/borrow) increasing the value of the network the bank has. The problem is that building such a network can be costly, especially for customers with little to deposit and borrow.

Serving the bottom of the pyramid

It’s resulted in various projects to provide access to finance for the worlds poorest, from mobile banking to microfinance, and whilst the work of people like Muhammad Yunus have been tremendously important, I believe that the blockchain could be even more powerful.

Companies such as Wala are leading this charge. They’re a mobile financial platform, not dissimilar to the hugely successful M-Pesa, but the difference is that the platform is built on the blockchain.


The company has announced a partnership with M-vendr, the provider of mobile Point of Sale (PoS) apps for small retailers and informal traders.


The deal is a significant step for digital currencies in emerging markets, combining free banking services with a simple and accessible way to purchase goods within over 30,000 merchants across 15 countries.

“Our companies are built on the same foundation; a belief that new technologies should take the complexity out of financial services in emerging markets.


We’re thrilled to partner with Wala, and the 1,000’s of merchants utilising the M-vendr powered PoS are really excited to start Wala financial services and accepting Dala tokens as it will add immense value to their customers,” M-vendr say.

A major facet of traditional banks is the way they process our identity, with many banks less interested in understanding your character as they are complying with regulations.


By using blockchain, many of these challenges evaporate as a consistent digital ID follows each individual around.

Avoiding a traditional bank-led approach means not having to replicate legacy banking systems that bring large transaction costs with them.


In a stroke, the partners will be able to use the distributed ledger technology of the blockchain to make the process and recording of transactions simple and efficient. Not only that, because they’ll be integrating it with existing microfinance networks it will be designed around the consumer from the start.


While zero-fee financial services are the immediate goal, the trust and transparency brought about by the blockchain could also lay the foundations of a modern infrastructure that solves other problems for the unbanked, such as credit scoring.

The progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goal on poverty so quickly is considerable, but ledger technology such as that provided by the likes of Wala provide a glimpse into a possible future where the unbanked and underbanked are increasingly enfranchised and empowered to become active participants in the global economy.

Have you enjoyed reading this article? If yes, discover even more on Huffpost here: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/can-blockchain-solve-the-prosperity-paradox_us_59edfa93e4b092f9...

In an electricity grid, electrons generated from the sun, wind, or other renewable sources are indistinguishable from those generated by fossil fuels. To keep track of how much clean energy is produced, governments around the world have created systems based on tradable certificates.


Problem is, the way we manage these certificates “sucks,” and it’s holding up investment in renewable power, says Jesse Morris, an energy expert at the Rocky Mountain Institute. A new system based on blockchain, the technology at the heart of Bitcoin and other digital currencies, could fix this, he says.


Keeping track of renewable-energy certificates is one of dozens of potential applications of blockchain technology that could solve data management challenges in the electricity sector without disrupting business as usual, according to Morris. He and many others believe that in the long term, the technology could help transform the very architecture of the grid itself.


A blockchain is a shared, encrypted ledger that is maintained by a network of computers. These computers verify transactions—in the case of Bitcoin, the transfer of cryptocurrency between individual users. Each user can access the ledger, and there is no single authority (see “Why Bitcoin Could Be Much More Than a Currency”). Advocates say the technology could be especially promising in industries where networks of peers—electricity producers and consumers, connected via the grid, for instance—depend on shared sets of data.



Learn more about blockchain and what it's used for.


When a renewable-power plant generates a unit of electricity today, a meter spits out data that gets logged in a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is then sent to a registry provider, where the data gets entered into a new system and a certificate is created. A second set of intermediaries brokers deals between buyers and sellers of these certificates, and yet another party verifies the certificates after they are purchased.


Such a byzantine system racks up transaction costs, while leaving plenty of room for accounting errors that can range from honest mistakes to outright fraud. The lack of transparency also scares many people off entirely.



What if the meter wrote the data directly to a blockchain instead? Most of these problems would vanish at a stroke, says Morris.


And that’s just the beginning—many energy experts are convinced that blockchain technology has the potential to touch off a fundamental transformation of modern energy grids.


The electricity sector is, for the most part, still based on massive, centralized power plants that generate power sent long distances over transmission and distribution lines. In recent years, though, a growing number of smaller “distributed” power generators and storage systems, like rooftop solar panels and electric-vehicle batteries, have been connecting to the grid.


The owners of these systems struggle to maximize their value because the system is so inefficient, says Jemma Green, cofounder and chair of Power Ledger, an Australia-based startup developing a blockchain-based platform that allows producers to trade energy peer-to-peer with consumers. For instance, it generally takes 60 to 80 days for an electricity producer to get paid. With a blockchain-based system, Green says, producers can get paid immediately, so they need less capital to start and run a generating business.


In such a system, neighbors could simply trade energy with one another—a far more efficient process than selling electrons back to the grid first. Power Ledger has demonstrated a product that can turn an apartment building into a microgrid based on a shared system of solar panels and battery storage, for example. Another company, called LO3 Energy, set up a neighborhood microgrid in Brooklyn.



But the traditional system “hasn’t yet figured out how to deal with” this kind of local trading, Green says. “How much should you pay for using a discrete part of the network?” She says her company’s platform—and blockchain technology in general—can “add a level of sophistication to the market by enabling those more granular transactions.”


To unleash the potential of blockchain in the energy sector, Jesse Morris’s team at RMI has joined with Austria-based blockchain startup Grid Singularity to create a new nonprofit called the Energy Web Foundation. Earlier this month, the EWF launched its own blockchain, which Morris says is “purpose-built for the energy sector.” Based on Ethereum, the network will be a test bed for promising use cases. To validate transactions during the test, EWF will rely on 10 major energy companies that have signed on as affiliates.


The team will begin with applications like tracking renewable-energy certificates. In the longer term, though, Morris envisions a world in which homes and buildings are equipped with software that automatically sells and buys power to and from the grid on the basis of real-time price signals.


To learn more about what MIT is doing and thinking on the blockchain, click here to discover more of our publications: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609077/how-blockchain-could-give-us-a-smarter-energy-grid/

Beyond the hype of Bitcoin in the financial world is a growing movement in the social sector to leverage digital currencies and their underlying technology (called blockchain) for social impact.

An Overview of Bitcoin and Digital Currencies

What is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is an online currency which can be used for payments and as a store of value, but that operates outside of existing monetary and financial systems. One way to think of it is as a virtual alternative to dollars or gold which individuals, and not the banks or Federal Reserve, control.

With only minimal transaction fees and complete security, the currency can be used for direct transactions between individuals, exchanged for dollars, or utilized for purchases at a growing number of companies like Overstock.com, Dell, Expedia, Dish TV, and Intuit. In some places you can buy a Burger King hamburger or Subway sandwich with Bitcoin, and there are even Bitcoin ATMs.

Bitcoin is also the darling of an increasing number of individual and institutional investors. This is due to the fact that the virtual currency has risen in value by over 300% this year, and a single Bitcoin is currently valued at more than three times the price of one ounce of gold.

Not only is the interest in and demand for Bitcoin growing, but also for the other more than 2,000 digital currencies now in existence. Bitcoin’s currency cousins have allowed startups in the blockchain technology space to raise billions of dollars through Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs).

An ICO is a company’s direct issuance of its own branded digital token, which can then be purchased and exchanged for the issuer’s services or for other currencies, including fiat currencies like the dollar or yen. These “cryptocurrencies” are traded through online exchanges and appreciate or depreciate in value like stocks.

Digital Currency and Fundraising

Sensing an opportunity to leverage these new currencies for fundraising, a number of nonprofits and foundations now accept Bitcoin donations, which they can later exchange for dollars. The Red Cross, United Way, Greanpeace and Save the Children all accept bitcoin donations, as do the Wikimedia and other Foundations.

There is even a new crowdfunding site for social and political causes, called Bithope, which hosts fundraising campaigns that only accept donations in Bitcoin.

In addition, a handful of digital currency projects have been launched which generate their own “charity coins” to support specific nonprofits or charity work. The Clean Water Coin, for example, was created specifically to help fund the work of the NGO Charity:Water.

So far Cleanwater coin, has raised over $2,000 through the “mining” and sales of the Clean Water Coin.

Another initiative, the RootPoject, is soon to launch an official Initial Coin Offering to support anti-poverty work. Their new digital currency, called Roots tokens, will be sold and exchanged for dollars to fund community projects targeting the poor.

Some Roots tokens will even be reserved to support a pension fund for individual project workers. The RootsProject’s presale of Root coins alone generated well over $200,000 for the organization.

One incentive for nonprofits to accept Bitcoin is that premier digital currency payment processors and “wallets,” like Coinbase, do not charge processing fees for digital currency donations to 501(c)(3) nonprofits. If a donor wishes to donate Bitcoin, for example, the organization receives the entire donation.

By comparison, Paypal, which has among the lowest transaction fees for nonprofit donations, charges 2.2% plus $.30 per donation. Also, Bitcoin donations are tax deductible and treated by the IRS in the same manner as stock and bond donations to charity.

Transparency in charity giving is another way in which Bitcoin and blockchain are being tested in the donations space. For example, the BitGive Foundation has launched an initiative called GiveTrack, which they call the “Bitcoin charity 2.0 initiative.

” According to Bitgive, the system will “allow donors and the public to trace nonprofit transactions on a public platform in real time to see how funds are spent, ensure they reach their final destination, and track the results generated from contributions.”

Blockchain in the Social Sector

The technology which supports many cryptocurrencies, known as blockchain, holds even greater promise for advancing social sector work. Blockchain is being explored and experimented with by a number of international aid agencies and foundations, such as Unicef, the World Bank, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Projects cover a variety of areas such as transparency of aid, international and local remittances, the protection of property rights, secure voting, and environmental protection. The technology itself is complex (and geeky), but at its core blockchain provides a digital mechanism for transparently recording and viewing any transaction ever.

It operates through a decentralized computing network over which a record of transactions cannot be hacked or altered. While the Internet serves as an information exchange, Blockchain offers a “value exchange.”

One specific example of how blockchain is used in the social sector is a pilot recently conducted by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) that provided Syrian refugees based in Jordan with cryptocurrency vouchers to trade at selected markets. The platform was successfully used to record and authenticate transfers for about 10,000 individuals.

Another example is a just announced “liquid democracy” experiment which allows users of an encrypted, blockchain-based app called Sovereign to vote peer-to-peer (not through governments) on any issue, or to transfer their vote to another trusted party anywhere.

The creators of the tool, Democracy Earth, wish to enable a new form of global governance which transcends national borders and to fully establish democracy as a universal human right.

In the environmental arena, powerful new blockchain-supported supply chain management systems, which are transparent but cannot be tampered with, can be employed to determine if a food product is organic or fair trade - from producer to table. (see Provenance)

This May 2017 report from Mercy Corps describes many of the other innovative projects aimed at transforming international development and NGO work through digital currencies and blockchain.

Challenges and Possibilities

Digital currency and blockchain projects are still new and yet uproven in many cases, and the cryptocurrency market is still largely unregulated and extremely volatile. Blockchain is not a silver bullet for addressing social challenges, but the technology will continue revolutionize how individuals and systems interact across sectors.

Financial institutions, corporations, and governments around the world are already actively utilizing or planning to adopt digital currencies and blockchain technologies in new and innovative ways.

In the social sector we can see a growing number of possible use cases, even to help address the needs of those now being effected by the devastating hurricanes in the Caribbean and southern United States.

The blockchain could potentially support the immediate and direct transfer of financial support to hurricane victims for when banks are inaccessible or aid agencies and the government are too slow to respond, and for the tracking of donations to make sure they are received by the intended recipients.

Philanthropies might eventually benefit from automated “smart contracts” with their grant recipients, which only receive funds when grant conditions are met. Blockchain could also provide foundations and social impact investors with more robust and transparent impact tracking and measurement systems.

Foundations could even issue their own digital currencies or operate charity-specific cryptocurrency exchanges? Some are suggesting that philanthropies and charities could be overstepped or removed altogether, leveraging blockchain’s core capability as an “intermediary killer.”

The possibilities for cryptocurrencies and blockchain for good are unlimited. As Kavita Gupta, who is managing a new $50 Million venture fund to support new companies addressing global challenges through blockchain says, “We haven’t even begun to tap the depth of its social impact potential.”

The future is now for digital currencies and blockchain in the social sector. The question is not “when will these tools transform the space?” In fact, they already are.

Note: For a listing of resources on Digital Currencies and Blockchain in the social sector see here.

Discover even more stories like this from HuffPost here: 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/transforming-the-social-sector-bitcoin-and-blockchain_us_59c169e...

Blockchain technologies have already irrevocably changed many industries, with the most obvious example being finance. Fortunes are both made and lost with cryptocurrencies, but the blockchain itself acts as a constant and new force in the finance sector.

However, the blockchain is about far more than money, and many governments and organizations have started looking at what else it can do. A new project in Finland utilizes the blockchain to help refugees adjust to their new lives.

BLOCKCHAIN FOR THE UNBANKED

Given the devastating conflicts arising in the Middle East and appalling economic conditions elsewhere in the world, many refugees have sought asylum and safety in European and Scandinavian nations.

Many of these people do not have much, and making sure that they have identifying documents is the last thing on anyone’s mind when seeking to escape death. This presents a huge problem in the traditional banking model we have set up today.

As many of us know, it can be incredibly frustrating to set up a bank account. Doing so requires countless documents and time even for settled members of society. 

Unbanked individuals have a much harder time getting settled anywhere, since employers require that one have a bank account into which to send wages, landlords far prefer bank transfers to cash, and there is a certain level of security a bank provides that hiding spaces in homes do not.

Finland has come up with a pretty interesting solution to combat these problems with the help of the blockchain. In a partnership with a company called MONI, the Finnish government has provided prepaid Mastercard debit cards to those refugees who do not have bank accounts.

This is a sharp break from the past, when cash was simply dispersed.Each card has a unique identifier that is stored on the blockchain. This immediately eliminates the need for a third party bank or other financial institution to require verifying identities.

The card and cardholder are given that identity, it is stored on an immutable blockchain, and the account’s private keys can only be associated with the cardholder.

Advantages for the cardholders are incredible. These individuals went from barely being able to live a safe life to not having to worry about whether they are employable given their unbanked status. This is because the card acts like a bank account and can receive direct deposits from users’ employers.

Since only cardholders would have access to the private keys associated with the card, positively identifying individuals is both easy and secure. In fact, it seems the identities of...continue reading: 
https://themerkle.com/finland-uses-the-blockchain-to-help-refugees/

Blockchain, meet the 2030 global goals.ConsenSys, an ambitious Bushwick, Brooklyn software company founded by blockchain tech guru Joseph Lubin, has launched a $50 million in-house venture capital fund to back startups turning the distributed-ledger technology on global challenges like refugee assistance, distributed energy, and supply-chain tracing.

The firm employs more than 150 former bankers, management consultants, mathematics, engineers and techies to build and support ventures developing new services and business models built on the blockchain.

The new venture fund signals the firm’s intention to demonstrate the potential of the emerging digital transaction architecture to transform the lives of world’s poor.“I believe resolutely in the 100-year mission of blockchain: to completely change the way society functions through decentralized technologies,” says Kavita Gupta, who was tapped to head the fund.

A former World Banker and previously an impact investor at the Schmidt Family Foundation of Alphabet’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt, Gupta told ImpactAlpha, “Blockchain is going to revolutionize the way we do business and use and share data.”Blockchain already is opening up entire new avenues for social and environmental impact, says Gupta.

Think about a Syrian family preparing to flee their home as war approaches. They’d have little time to collect their birth certificates and IDs, property deeds, education credentials and financial accounts.

“If you lived in a country that used blockchain from birth, you’d have all of that information accessible and instantly verifiable when needed,” Gupta said.Gupta says there are blockchain applications for nearly all of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations, which aim to end poverty, guarantee universal education and much more, by 2030.

“I’m a huge believer in the SDGs and have worked with the U.N. to boost them,” Gupta told me. “Blockchain is an architecture. It can enable solutions to almost any SDG.”The potential of blockchain for good, and Gupta, will be center stage at the TBLI, for Triple Bottom Line Investing, conference in Stockholm September 28–29.

Distributed ledgers

Blockchain allows two parties to make safe and transparent digital transactions, without the need for a middleman. It’s often described as “a digital ledger” or decentralized database that records exchanges of digital assets like money, goods or property.

Just as email is one particular use of the internet, currency, Bitcoin for example, is one particular use of blockchain. Other applications developers are building for blockchain include digital identifications such as birth certificates, property records, education documents, electronic voting and a range of financial services including remittances.

 Roughly $20 billion, or 0.025% of global GDP, is held in blockchain. Blockchain-enabled transactions reduce time and costs, ensure accountability and reduce fraud. Where distrust of governments, banks and companies is real and founded, and people in transit, Blockchain can be revolutionary.

“When I speak about it in the West, people say they trust Google, Facebook, or their banks,” says Vitalik Buterin, a Russian-Canadian programmer and co-founder of Ethereum, an open software platform that has allowed developers to build applications beyond currencies on blockchain.

“But the rest of the world doesn’t trust organizations and corporations that much — I mean Africa, India, the Eastern Europe, or Russia.”It’s not about the places where people are really rich, he says. “Blockchain’s opportunities are the highest in the countries that haven’t reached that level yet.”

Finance idealists

Lubin, a Goldman Sachs alum, has “a particular talent for peeling idealists away from their jobs in traditional finance,” according to Wired’s Morgen Peck.

The Consensys team page includes talent from Bank of America and Capital One, UBS, Deutsche Bank and JPMorganChase and other venture capital and hedge funds....continue reading: http://www.blockchaincompany.info/post/6524552/use-case-blockchain-voting-app-puts-democracy-in-the-...

With Bitcoin shrugging off a “civil war” to surge almost 400 percent in 12 months while giant cryptocurrency crowd-sales are creating instant millionaires almost daily, it’s tempting to think that blockchain technology’s only contribution to society is as a dubious get-rich-quick tool.

But this misses the great potential that blockchains and digital assets pose for social good. Undaunted by humanity’s past failures to resolve some of history’s thorniest problems, numerous blockchain and cryptocurrency projects — some led by large international agencies, others by tiny startups – hope to tackle issues like poverty and environmental degradation and spread democracy.

There is undoubtedly a heavy dose of idealistic utopianism around these efforts. And the tech is far from being sufficiently developed to operate at the global scale needed – it may never be. Yet there’s no end of outside-the-box ideas from people who foresee a better way of doing things. Just as important, these efforts are founded on something quite real: blockchain technology’s capacity to improve transparency and address the perennial problem of social mistrust.

The tech’s sweeping potential lies in its ability to assure the integrity of valuable data even when that information is derived from multiple sources with potentially conflicting interests. The result is a decentralized, common record of truth, one that is highly secure and resistant to tampering — a centuries-in-the-making breakthrough in the all-important function of record-keeping on which civilization has been built.

Blockchains point to new possibilities for gathering, recording, and using information and for exchanging money and tokens of value in ways that help communities achieve common goals in an automated fashion.In Jordan’s Azraq refugee camp, 10,000 refugees are involved in a World Food Program project that uses retina scans and blockchain-based transacation logs to track food distributions in multiple locations, boosting efficiency, preventing fraud, and ensuring everyone gets fed.

It sits alongside a range of projects coordinated by a New York-based ad-hoc intra-agency group of UN blockchain enthusiasts who took it upon themselves to get dozens of like-minded people in the UN system involved. One outcome: UN Women is partnering with Norway’s government to explore a blockchain system for women in developing countries like Rwanda to transfer digital assets without relying on potentially abusive intermediaries. Not to be outdone, the World Bank is getting in on the act, too.

It launched its new Blockchain Lab in June.One hoped-for benefit is that of more accountability in developing-country governments, which could help them secure more investment and foreign aid on better terms. E-government startup NeoCapita is talking to the governments of Afghanistan, Armenia and Papua New Guinea, about potentially using blockchain-based tracking of donor funds to prove they aren’t being misappropriated.

The greater promise, however, may lie beyond governments, in solutions that empower civil society. At the Digital Currency Initiative at MIT Media Lab, a team led by my colleague Mark Weber is developing the technological foundation for an open-source public asset registry that would record people’s claims and transfers of rights to different forms of property in the Bitcoin blockchain. In offering a superior record-keeping function to centrally managed registries, the team hopes to give lenders confidence that, in the event of default, they can seize clean collateral without fear of unknown competing claims arising.

With a first application aimed at providing poor farmers in developing countries an immutable receipt for crops deposited at a warehouse, the goal is to unlock affordable finance for small businesses and individuals.Social-impact projects were also in focus at last week’s third annual Blockchain Summit on Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Island, sponsored by blockchain services provider BitFury.

I was lucky enough to attend, along with the likes of the Peruvian economist and anti-poverty campaigner Hernando de Soto, European Parliament member Eva Kaili, and groundbreaking Afghani entrepreneur and women’s rights advocate Roya Mahboob. Understandably, the image of a few dozen privileged people discussing plans to save the world on a luxurious tropical island raises eyebrows.

But a carefully selected cross-section of influential and committed people from governments, not-for-profits, the creative industry, venture-capital firms, academia, and blockchain startups, ensured that – as with the past two years – a serious action agenda emerged.Among the many projects floated at the event was Mahboob’s proposal for a decentralized e-marketplace so that Afghan women can trade goods and services, sidestepping male-led institutions that would otherwise prevent them from engaging in commercial activity.

Venture capitalist and summit co-host Bill Tai announced a blockchain project to incentivize the collation of powerful, reliable data from coral reefs that could help scientists learn how to protect them. And Mariana Dahan, formerly of the World Bank, launched the World Identity Network to explore blockchain technology’s potential to provide secure, safe forms of identification for the 2 billion who lack such documentation.

It’s a difficult problem, in part because of the privacy challenges of potentially recording personal identifying information in public databases and in part because “identity” can mean many different things in different contexts. But Dahan, who speaks from personal experience about the harm done to those who have no way to prove they even exist, is determined to get the best minds in and outside the tech world to resolve this dilemma.

Many challenges remain to attaining these progressive visions. Vastly more development work is needed to make sure that blockchains scale to ..... continue reading: https://venturebeat.com/2017/08/05/social-good-innovators-bet-on-blockchains-to-solve-big-problems/

Back in 2015, Forbes featured an interview with William Blair partner Brian Singer on how bitcoin will end world poverty. According to Singer, the growing access to the internet through affordable devices could enable particularly those from emerging markets to use a cheaper payment system with a transparent means of recording transactions.

Many scoffed at the idea back then. Indeed, cryptocurrencies and blockchain had yet to reach the same level of popularity they enjoy today. But what a difference a couple of years make.

Despite some recent shakiness, cryptocurrencies have increased ten times in value since. We’re also seeing more organizations and governments recognize the value in blockchain as a transactional platform and new platforms such as Ethereum can now even facilitate smart contracts using the technology.But how does blockchain shape up in relation to Singer’s thesis today?

Can blockchain and cryptocurrencies now become the technology that truly levels the playing field for humanity and help continue the reduction of poverty?


Could Blockchain based technology and smart contracts be the game changer in the battle against poverty?

Financial inclusionAccording to the World Bank, in 2013,10.7 percent of the global population lived on less than $1.90 a day. While these figures have been in decline over the last few years, that percentage still equates to around 750 million people.Financial inclusion is considered a key factor to poverty reduction. It refers to the access of people to a formal financial system.

In the status quo, it’s the access to financial services such as banking that accounts for financial inclusion. Unfortunately, over 2 billion adults remain unbanked. In many of these developing regions, mobile money has taken the place of most financial services.

Blockchain’s disruption of the financial services sector supposedly changes this. Blockchain overcomes many of banking’s current limitations. Unlike banks, no physical branch presence is needed for blockchain to work. Since blockchain operates on a distributed network, there’s no need for a complex and expensive private infrastructure to run.

This saves on the costs that banks and telecom companies pass on to users through fees and other charges when using bank accounts or performing mobile transactions.

Blockchain startup Everex , which launched its ICO only a few hours ago and has already raised over 6 million USD (Roughly 27,000 Ethereum), considers financial inclusion as part of its mission. The company seeks to provide remittance services, microfinance, and fiat currency conversion through blockchain to the world’s unbanked population.

“The lesson learned from the previous decade, however, is that the real needs of the world’s unbanked population comprise inclusion, empowerment and easy access to the same financial instruments that allow industrial nations to provide their denizens with the social mobility they enjoy,” a recent Everex blog post said.

This material should not be construed as an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security in any jurisdiction. I have no positions in any of the securities mentioned above....continue reading: 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nikolaikuznetsov/2017/07/24/how-emerging-markets-and-blockchain-can-bri...

On May 30, the United Nations (UN) World Food Programme (WFP) announced that 10,000 individuals had taken advantage of its trial to deliver food to Syrian refugees in Jordan using the Ethereum blockchain. The WFP’s platform was implemented by Parity Technologies, a startup lead by Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum, as well as blockchain big data firm Datarella.



Click to View Full Infographic The operation allowed Syrian refugees to collect food paid for by the WFP from participating markets in the refugee camp in Jordan.

Individuals had their eyes scanned to confirm they were one of the more than half a million refugees cleared to receive aid, after which they could receive their food.This project could be a model for feeding refugees worldwide. Five million people have fled Syria alone, and many now live in poverty in nearby Jordan.

The country is dealing with a major refugee crisis — in 2016, the UN estimated it is now home to 630,000 Syrian refugees, two million Palestinian refugees, and an ever-increasing number of asylum-seekers fleeing conflicts in Yemen, Somalia, and Iraq.

IS BLOCKCHAIN THE FUTURE?

Blockchain could provide help on a much larger scale, and the WFP has an ambitious goal: to expand to 100,000 individuals by August, help the entire Jordanian refugee population by 2018, and eliminate hunger worldwide by 2030.

The project’s success supports claims that blockchain could be used to transform the humanitarian and sustainability sectors.

“Through blockchain, we aim to cut payment costs, better protect beneficiary data, control financial risks, and respond more... continue reading: https://futurism.com/a-new-trial-proves-that-blockchain-could-help-us-feed-the-world/