Mesh Spotlight: Recharged on Blockchain
Valeria Kholostenko tells the story of why she came to ConsenSys and how blockchain is powering social impact.
“Blockchain helps vulnerable people reestablish themselves in a world where they don’t have anything.”
Recently named one of Lattice 80’s Top 100 Women in Fintech, Valeria Kholostenko is routinely crossing time zones, helping organizations across the world and from all sectors understand how blockchain is lifting up the hood on our outdated systems and signaling a way forward. But don’t mistake her for mere financier or technologist. Valeria is one of the talented and driven minds and voices behind our Blockchain for Social Impact Coalition, an initiative to incubate, develop, and implement blockchain solutions that address social and environmental challenges across the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
Silicon Valley startup vet turned impact poster girl, Valeria is always one half heads-down, forming partnerships and deploying blockchain projects, other half heads-up, educating the public, fielding questions, and looking for vulnerable communities and inspiring organizations that stand to benefit most from blockchain technology. We spoke shortly before she crossed the Atlantic to tell developers in Kyiv about the Ethereum ecosystem’s exponential growth and how the Coalition is using blockchain to develop a wide range of social impact solutions.
How’d you get into social impact?
Immediately after college, I got a job in San Francisco at a large investment bank. It was appealing to my parents and to the people in my network, because of the brand name. But it wasn’t really my cup of tea. I’m very much a figure-it-out kind of person rather than follow-these-rules and stay-in-your box, so I transitioned into working with startups. I was the person setting up processes, discovering customers, building pitch decks, figuring out the story to tell.
For several years, I was in that super highly competitive software sales scene in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. There were two issues that I saw with it: 1) venture capitalists with unrealistic expectations were putting tremendous pressure on founders to produce. And 2) every founder thinks that their idea and their company is innovative, but a lot of times, the innovation was incremental. There’s a difference between creating a product with extra features that’s slightly better than the one before, and creating a solution.
Every time I would launch a new startup, it was like “oh, this is interesting,” but then when I left it, it was like well… and then you start another one. That feeling compounded, and after several of them, I wondered if the whole scene was really for me. I came to a moment in my life, where I didn’t really identify with the whole rat race.
I went to school for International Relations, and I’ve always had a part of me that wanted to solve global problems. In Silicon Valley, I was investing a lot of my time and energy, and I wanted that energy to blossom into something important. I wanted to do something bigger, something I could stand behind. I wanted to do something meaningful with my life. So I started looking around.
What drew you to ConsenSys?
It just so happened that John Wolpert, one of my former bosses — and probably the best boss I’ve ever had — was with ConsenSys, and he actually knew Joe. I said “Hey, introduce me.” At that point, I had only touched the tip of the iceberg when I started looking into ConsenSys and the Ethereum blockchain, but I immediately knew, this was different. Very different. As I moved through the interview process, the more I realized this is ultimately all I wanted to do.
I actually had another job lined up in the travel industry. Travel to me was the lesser evil out of all the different verticals out there. But I started reading the different use cases and applications for the Ethereum blockchain, and I fell down the rabbit hole, as they say. All the volunteer and humanitarian work I had done before was on a local, sometimes national scale. But ConsenSys is thinking and acting globally.
What are the blockchain use cases that inspire you most?
There is a ton of different applications in the financial spectrum — a lot of the organizations in the Blockchain for Social Impact Coalition work on the transfer and distribution of money, and allow people who don’t have bank accounts to use crypto. Dether, for example. But what’s most compelling to me are the different use cases in supply chain, education, and identity — the cases that are confronting the world’s most challenging social problems.
I’ve been inspired by the work that Viant is doing with the World Wildlife Fund to track the supply of fish — not only to guarantee that the fish that is harvested is indeed the fish that is served, but more importantly, to ensure that no slave labor is involved in the process of harvesting, preparing, and transporting food supply. The prospect of a transparent supply chain really hits a note for me, because I try my best to be a conscious consumer, and knowing the atrocities of food production in America, a rigorously documented, auditable supply chain is something that I want to advocate for.
Education is a another space that stands to benefit greatly from blockchain solutions. There has been ongoing debate about whether a college degree is the only adequate measure of knowledge. On the blockchain, there are all kinds of ways that you can get educational attestations beyond a bachelor of arts or science. Personally, I feel that my learning at different internships and companies in my early career back was never quantified in any kind of constructive way. Instead, I only have lines on my resume that say I worked with so and so. This model is bound to change, and ConsenSys Academy is doing great work to revolutionize education through blockchain.
Identity is at the center of all conversations when it comes to the application of blockchain. I’m not just talking about protecting your digital identity from hackers, but about giving digital identities to lost citizens who have no documented identity whatsoever.
Imagine you’re a refugee and you have to flee from another country. You may not have access to your passport or any other documents when you leave. Having an established identity on the blockchain allows you to transact with different entities along the way. Wherever you’re going, you can access services, attest to your educational level, confirm different accomplishments, verify family connections. Blockchain gives you the capability to have all these different attributions to your identity. It allows you to reestablish yourself in a world where you don’t have anything.
This is what ultimately attracted me to the Social Impact Team at ConsenSys and to ConsenSys in general. Global challenges are staring us in the face, but sometimes it feels like there’s no solution to them because so much happens behind hidden doors. You want to donate 100 dollars and make sure it gets to the person who needs it, but most of the time, 30% is lost to administrative and processing fees. You want to clean up supply chains but there is too much paperwork, too many checkpoints and crossings where data can get mixed up, manipulated.
Ethereum is the paradigm shift, and a real solution. Transparency is at the core of it, and it can’t be cheated. Blockchain is lifting up the hood on our systems, and allowing everyone to see what’s under it.
How is the Blockchain for Social Impact Coalition different from traditional think tanks and impact groups?
The Coalition was formed a year ago. The reason it was started was that some of us at ConsenSys went to a few NGOs and were looking to discuss Ethereum applications, since it’s a very natural fit for a lot of the problems that they’re looking to solve. What we realized — and this is before the summer when blockchain exploded on the scene — was that organizations didn’t really understand blockchain. Like the rest of the world, they only heard about Bitcoin. It wasn’t clear to them how blockchain might apply to their work. We realized there was a need for a consortium so organizations could share knowledge in a non-competitive way and experiment with different blockchain applications.
From talking to different stakeholders within the Coalition, I’ve actually learned that, in order for a project to be successful, you need more than a software solution. You need a community, and you need a number of supporting organizations that will help you move the testing of the product on the ground. You need an NGO. You need a social impact investor. It’s not enough to have a good idea and a potential MVP or even a couple clients. You really need the whole ecosystem to support you along the way. That’s essentially what we’re trying to foster with the Coalition.
What’s nice about the Coalition is you have access to every member. ConsenSys is not the central point. The Coalition has an internal platform where members can access anyone else on the platform. We have impact investors, we have global foundations, and we have a number of blockchain project teams that are looking to partner up. The Coalition is currently made up of 53 different organizations, and we’re very excited to have the Human Rights Foundation as our most recent member.
Have any particular projects or moments stuck out to you in your work with the Coalition?
The White Helmets were with us at our biannual impact conference last year. They presented on the atrocities of the Assad Regime and the Russian government, and also discussed their emergency relief work in areas ravaged by the war. White Helmets is a volunteer organization, made up of everyday guys and gals that used to be bakers, hair stylists, construction workers, and now they’re rescuing people out of the rubble. They’ve saved over a hundred thousand lives to date. When the White Helmets go in to evacuate and rescue civilians, they are targeted. It’s called a “secondary attack.” Combatants aim to bomb the humanitarian organizations. The White Helmets’ courage to me is absolutely remarkable.
Another project that stands out to me is our work with Miracle Messages. They help homeless people record short video messages, and then place that video strategically within social media networks. A lot of times they reunite families, and they are actually becoming the US’s largest database of missing people. Miracle Messages is a humanitarian solution that’s not yet using blockchain, but would like to. We’re very eager to support them.
What about blockchain and social impact gets you up in the morning?
What really gets me excited is when I go to, say, a financial inclusion meetup and blockchain is not a topic, and immediately I can see how blockchain would help these organizations. So I reach out to them. I try to get them involved. I try to get them to understand how much more efficient and impactful their organization can be. If someone is already doing something incredible for others, I love showing them how blockchain can help them deliver their gift to the world.
Join us in Washington, DC on June 1 for a day of learning and discovery at our Blockchain for Social Impact Conference, and follow us at @ethereum4impact to stay updated on our impact projects and initiatives around the globe.
Disclaimer: The views expressed by the author above do not necessarily represent the views of Consensys AG. ConsenSys is a decentralized community with ConsenSys Media being a platform for members to freely express their diverse ideas and perspectives. To learn more about ConsenSys and Ethereum, please visit our website.
