Blockchain has become one of the most talked about technologies in recent times. Some argue that it has the potential to comprehensively change how our world works and interacts. Whereas there are others who have taken a much more sceptical stance and have declared that blockchain is nothing more than 21st-century digital snake oil. It is important — as it is when weighing up value and usefulness of any new technology- to take a step back and to have a look at the more rational potential applications of the technology. This is exactly what I tend to do in what follows.
As most who have been avidly watching the space will know, there has been an explosion of interest in blockchain technology over the last few years. Although the manic price rise of Bitcoin and the entire cryptocurrency market from mid-2017 and into the first months of 2018, turned heads worldwide, it most likely would have turned them for the wrong reasons.
Incidentally, this may have helped the world learn about blockchain from the proliferation of articles in the mainstream media, yet rather than focus on price, what needs to be focused on now is the actual application of blockchain technology to real-world use cases.
As such, one area in which we can potentially see the fruitful and beneficial application of blockchain technology is in the social impact sphere. Indeed, some of the most fertile areas in which blockchain can be implemented are in enhancing people’s lives by making existing structures and social impact projects more accountable.
There can be no denying that with the breakneck rise in the value of the whole blockchain space, we have witnessed a tremendous amount of money flowing into projects with extremely questionable quality. Indeed, some projects have managed to raise tens of millions of dollars on the back of a white paper, promising some abstract concept which being honest will have very little chance (if any at all) to change society for the better. Not taking into account a large number of scams which have stolen money from unwitting investors, there are a high number of projects that still proliferate which offer very little substance for the betterment of society.
Therefore, it is at this juncture we need to be asking ourselves: where should the focus be?
Now, I am a realist and understand that what should happen, hardly ever immediately takes shape. However, I want to take this opportunity to a step back and address certain issues associated with how blockchain presents a serious opportunity for social impact projects to become more accountable and as a result of this greater accountability, actually be able to produce better results for those who are at the receiving end of a project’s goals.
There has been a severe lack of focus on what blockchain will be able to achieve in a social impact setting. This is to the detriment of all not least those who would benefit from its implementation and these would usually be the least privileged in society.
Social Impact projects are potentially one of the most fruitful grounds for disruption by blockchain. Indeed, this fecundity emanates from the fact that the inherent qualities of the blockchain. As a rule, the benefits of blockchain have been lauded as transparency, immutability, decentralisation, permissionlessness, trustlessness — these multiple attractive qualities are able to enable more open, inclusive and accountable models out of which social impact projects can be ideal beneficiaries.
We only have to imagine a few scenarios for us to see the true possibilities open up in front of us. Let us imagine a situation as an example: a large multinational NGO raises money for a new educational project in West Africa. One of the major issues we face is: how can we be sure that the money which has been raised will actually go to the educational project? Well, under the current infrastructure we can’t. Yes, there are the NGOs accounts and bank accounts but these are not open to the public. Transparency requires much more trust in individuals and in organisations, as we need to trust the organisations to be open and honest about their audit trail. Blockchain presents an opportunity where this can be transparent — in the public domain — from donor to recipient. Just for qualification here I also don’t necessarily mean Bitcoin. There are various ledgers which have the capacity to do this and some would be far more suited to this practice than Bitcoin’s.
Another potential application which — it is hoped — will be able to demonstrate the social good of blockchains is its application to audit the supply chain of pharmaceuticals. Now, those who live in the most infrastructurally developed countries in the world, rarely need to question the provenance of the medicines they use. However, across the world, large swathes of the population suffer adverse health effects from the inability to trust the source of the medicines they are using. Indeed, just recently China faced an unprecedented vaccine scandal.
Furthermore, another application of a blockchain based social impact project could be the direct funding of athletes from less economically developed countries which suffer from high levels of corruption and opaque financial structures. Imagine a scenario in which talented athletes would be able to fund directly to help them train and prepare with the correct equipment rather than relying on corrupt national sporting bodies who barely distribute the funds and instead send their children to expensive private schools in Europe.
However, it must be stressed at this juncture that there is a long way to go before the successful application of blockchain is able to change practices and improve social impact models. This is because there are too many uncertainties at this current time which are currently inhibiting such a pervasive change. For example, secure custodianship is not entirely feasible at the current levels of development. This will change with time however and it is expected that in the coming few years custodianship solutions will be more advanced meaning that end users who have no idea about blockchain will be able to benefit from distributed ledger technology.
Another aspect which might hinder the adoption of blockchain across social impact projects is that we still need to know and trust the entity that will actually make the transactions across the network. For example, an aid agency wants to distribute funds to the leaders of the project who will then have to distribute the funds further down the ladder of responsibility. How are we to trust these people? The issue here is that there still remains an element of trust in the whole process and that might also slow the impact which blockchain can have. Nonetheless, although there maybe some sticking points which will need to be ironed out of the coming years, we can be confident that blockchain has the capability to make processes more efficient and more transparent. However, this gets implemented and integrated into to the model
In closing, it is important to stress and remind readers that the real-life application of this technology has the ability to help many people who come from underprivileged backgrounds. As space matures it is hoped that the fecund environment of social impact will give rise to numerous projects that aim to improve lives rather than trying to make the rich even richer. The beautiful thing about this is that it is already underway. Work is being done across multiple sectors hoping to implement blockchain for these beneficent purposes (UN refugees). The opportunity is there, we just need the will.
