Why We’ve Created the Blockchain Impact Ledger
The conversation about blockchain is evolving rapidly. A couple of years ago, the driving question was “what is blockchain?” Now, the questions are, “what are the best use cases for blockchain?” Or “what are some real world examples of blockchain in action?”
Social impact may not be the first application that comes to mind for many who think about blockchain, but it is perhaps one of the most promising. While blockchain’s origins were as the underpinning of cryptocurrencies, it has evolved to address challenges in a wide variety of industries. Blockchain is already being deployed in the financial sector, with over $1 billion invested in potential FinTech applications. The shipping industry is attempting to use blockchain to improve global trade. Organizations committed to social impact are developing blockchain solutions from managing identity to improving the efficacy of relief efforts, from increasing the speed and reducing the cost of remittances to providing pricing transparency to smallholder farmers to increase income and improve access to capital. However, the technology is still in the earliest stages of use to deliver social impact.
Googling “blockchain and impact” brings up many articles about the potential for blockchain to address important social issues. But what is really happening? Without a trustworthy source of aggregated information about blockchain for social impact projects, it is difficult for organizations interested in leveraging this powerful technology to learn of — and potentially coordinate with — organizations and projects with aligned pursuits. With increasing interest in understanding the lay of the blockchain-for-social-impact land, the absence of consolidated information about the growing number of projects has made research and analysis challenging. The state of play is changing rapidly — with new projects both coming and going — which has made gaining a thorough understanding of the developments and opportunities in the space hard to come by.
Until now. The Blockchain Trust Accelerator at New America is creating the Impact Ledger, an online registry of social impact blockchain projects, spanning the nonprofit, public, and for-profit sectors.
The Blockchain Impact Ledger is rooted in the thought leadership assembled at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center for a Blockchain for Good Summit in May 2018. The group highlighted the need for a system to independently track and verify the status of blockchain for social good projects that included the following key features:
- Easy to access and navigate
- Projects are vetted prior to inclusion
- The process for vetting is transparent
- Information is updated regularly
Despite the relative nascence of blockchain applications for social impact, there has been a significant proliferation of projects. The potential of these projects is substantial, and information about them is highly varied in both quantity and quality. The Impact Ledger will weed through the white papers and the hype to offer an independent look into the state of the tech and social impact.
The Blockchain Impact Ledger aims to create a go-to resource for information about blockchain for social impact projects. For social impact organizations interested in how blockchain can support their work, the Blockchain Impact Ledger will provide real-world use cases of applications aligned with the 17 UN Social Development Goals (SDGs). Organizations will be able to find detailed, vetted information about blockchain projects working on the issues of interest to them, in the geographies in which they operate. Funders and investors will be able to survey the field and learn about both nonprofit and for-profit projects addressing both issue areas and geographies of interest. Academics and media will similarly be able to explore the greater field of blockchain for social impact as well as delve into specific areas of impact.
And the projects listed on the Blockchain Impact Ledger will gain exposure to social impact organizations, funders, investors, academics and media.
A beta version of the Blockchain Impact Ledger is scheduled to launch in May 2019. We are in the process of researching an initial batch of projects, and designing the initial version of the resource with an eye to user interface and how to scale the project effectively while managing the data.
Upon launch of the beta, we will be soliciting feedback from the greater blockchain and social good communities about how to make the resource as useful as possible.
As part of our mandate and commitment to transparency, we will continue to share information in this Medium publication about the research methodology and process. We plan to conduct additional research from within the Blockchain Impact Ledger’s dataset to extrapolate information about different sectors within the social impact space as it relates to blockchain, any trends we see developing in the data, and other learnings we feel will be of value to the broader blockchain and social impact community. Watch this space for updates.
The Blockchain Impact Ledger is a research project managed by the Blockchain Trust Accelerator at New America and made possible by support from Social Alpha Foundation.
The Blockchain Trust Accelerator (BTA): The Blockchain Trust Accelerator was created in 2017 to harness blockchain technology to address social and governance challenges. Together with a coalition of technologists, government institutions, civil society organizations, and private sector partners, the BTA is developing and deploying pilots that deliver positive social impact alongside insights into how blockchain can enhance communities’ resilience, accountability, efficiency, and transparency.
Social Alpha Foundation (SAF): Social Alpha Foundation is a not-for-profit, grant-making platform which focuses on supporting blockchain education and outreach to empower communities to utilize blockchain technology for social good. Founded in Hong Kong in 2017 by Nydia Zhang and Jehan Chu, SAF provides no-strings funding to companies and projects that educate communities on blockchain for social change. SAF also gives grants to non-commercial blockchain applications that focus on improving public health, education and the environment.
