42 projects trying to change the world using blockchain
Organisations making use of blockchain technology to create a positive social impact
With the hype around blockchain steadily increasing, it’s no surprise that people have found increasingly innovative ways to use it for social good. There is a strong ideological incentive to use cryptocurrencies and blockchain that goes beyond making a profit; many people believe that their decentralised, accessible nature is a stepping stone towards global financial equality. Below I have compiled a list of social blockchain projects which excited me. This is just a taster of the more than 800 listed at Positive Blockchain (see here)
Blockchain for Development, Community and Financial Inclusion
Multiple organisations have clocked onto the fact that cryptocurrencies are an excellent means of donating to charity. Unlike bank transfers, blockchain transfers are instant and don’t incur punitive fees when sending money to developing countries. They are also transparent and secure, making it easy to check whether the donation has gone to the intended cause.
The following platforms allow people to donate to various charity projects using cryptocurrencies: Helperbit, Binance Charity, BitGive (GiveTrack), Bithope, WeTrust Spring, Alice.si, AIDChain, Humaniq, OxChain, Promise
Check out WeTrust Spring’s infographic about the crypto community’s attitude to giving.
The following are some of the charities accepting donations in at least one form of cryptocurrency: UNICEF, Save the Children, Wikimedia Foundation, The Water Project, Charity Navigator, Against Malaria, The Salvation Army, Human Rights Foundation, English Heritage
A list of many more can be found here.
Notable and creative startups include GoodDollar, a new cryptocurrency which is evenly distributed to all its users according to the principles of Universal Basic Income.
Grassroots Economics is a platform for building community cryptocurrencies, which can be used as a medium of exchange in times of financial insecurity.
Social Coin uses AI and user feedback to identify the most important issues within a community, then pays users in Social Coin (a cryptocurrency) to do tasks which address those issues. The number of Social Coins earned per task is calculated according to the importance of the task to the community.
BitPesa is an African company using blockchain to allow transfer of funds across the continent “within minutes, not days”. It currently operates in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Bounties Network is an online platform for outsourcing tasks, where freelance work is paid for in cryptocurrency. Its aim is to make employment internationally accessible by paying for completed work instantly in the form of online currencies which have globally-recognised value. The company has also invested in various social impact projects, such as paying people in Ethereum or DAI to clean up plastic in their local area.
Finally, GiveBytes lets people give to charity not with money, but with an internet connection. The website runs in the background, using the visitor’s computer power to mine the cryptocurrency Monero, which is then donated to a cause of the user’s choice.
Blockchain for the Environment
The following startups are incentivising people to pick up and/or report the litter they come across by paying them in cryptocurrency: CleanApp, Littercoin, Plastx, empower.eco, PlasticBank
Power Ledger began as a way for people to trade their excess energy generated from solar panels on the blockchain, and evolved into a trading platform for all renewable energy and environmental commodities.
Veridium is an organisation making it easier for companies to reduce their carbon footprint by recording Carbon Credit transactions on the blockchain. When a company buys a Carbon Credit, the money is used to fund enough reforestation, forest management or conservation to offset that company’s carbon emissions by one tonne. Businesses can use Carbon Credits to prove they have met their Corporate Social Responsibility Objectives — but although the credits are valuable, they are difficult to verify and trade. Veridium aims to make the process of buying and trading Carbon Credits smoother and more transparent, while also calculating how many Credits a company would need to purchase to become carbon neutral.
Blockchain for Democracy and Freedom
Online voting could make democracy accessible for those living rurally, with disabilities or in situations where it is difficult or dangerous to reach a polling station. But key security issues have stopped internet voting becoming commonplace; how do you make sure each person only votes once and how do you prevent results from being hacked? Transactions on the blockchain are highly transparent, being visible to anyone who wants to download them; yet they are also anonymous, each one identified only by a unique string of numbers. Additionally, they can’t be reversed or changed. Because of this, ‘transacting’ votes from citizens to a central authority like a government via blockchain technology might be a good way to publicly yet securely record the results of an election.
The following organisations provide blockchain voting software: Democracy Earth, Voatz, Follow My Vote
Estonia, West Virginia and Colombia have all successfully implemented blockchain voting in official elections or referendums, while South Korea and Scotland are both considering introducing blockchain to the democratic process.
Orchid is an open-source marketplace built on the blockchain, for trading and communally developing internet services such as WiFi, bandwidth and VPN. It allows users to collaborate on building the kind of internet they want to use; which might preserve net neutrality, prevent censorship and allow more data privacy.
The Pangea Blockchain Jurisdiction (run by Bitnation) is a social experiment which describes itself as “the world’s first Decentralised Borderless Voluntary Nation”. People can apply for citizenship to the online community and even build their own ‘nations’ which use blockchain contracts to set laws and solve legal and economic disputes. The idea of an online sovereign nation may seem far-fetched and any decision reached via the platform will of course hold little weight with offline national governments. However, the project aims to demonstrate that in the future, those who are stateless (such as refugees) or who have few legal rights in their own country, might still access necessary government services through some form of online global citizenship.
Blockchain for Healthcare
Blockchain in the healthcare sector has primarily been used as a method of securely and privately storing medical records. Most of the startups listed below are for-profit and it seems that overall, the medical sector has been quick to get excited about blockchain but slow to implement it. There is still room in the future for much more innovation on the social and non-profit front.
The Blockchain Healthcare Review is an excellent resource documenting new advancements in medical blockchain technology.
The following companies use blockchain to securely store and transfer medical records (including genomic data): TrustedHealth (by Trustedoctor), MedicalChain, Iryo, Encrypgen, Nebula Genomics, dClinic
Clinicall designs technology for patients, such as apps and in-ward machines which provide both entertainment and secure access to medical information and records. They recently created and started accepting payments in a new cryptocurrency, the Clinicall Health Token. The token has a stable value based on the US dollar and ensures that patients can always pay for services, even if the currency in their own country is unstable.
Luna DNA pays people in cryptocurrency to share their genomic data for medical research.
Universal Healthcoin is an ICO which was created as a direct method of payment from patients to doctors within the US. The company argues that by putting patients in direct contact with medical professionals and cutting out administration in between, health care costs could be reduced by 40%.
Although no organisations seem to be publicly working on it yet, Charity Digital News pointed out that blockchain could potentially be used to keep track of pharmaceuticals as they are shipped from labs to patients. Proof of whether a given medical drug comes from a verified source would help reduce the number of fraudulent medical products available in developing countries.
Blockchain for Education
The Social Alpha Foundation provides grants and learning resources about blockchain for projects which could potentially use blockchain to create positive social impact.
In 2017, Akshaya Patra (a South Asian charity which provides free meals to school children) collaborated with Accenture Labs to introduce blockchain and AI technology and boost the efficiency of their meal delivery program.
Other Social Blockchain Projects
Space Decentral is a platform for proposing, debating, organising and funding space missions. Set up by a team of space engineers and scientists, it uses blockchain to direct missions according to consensus of the people working on them, rather than according to government targets.
Cellarius is a communal online storytelling project. People can contribute art and writing to the science fiction story and their contributions are recorded on the blockchain, making the ‘history’ of the Cellarius world immutable.
Decentraland is an online game/virtual world where areas of the world can actually be owned and customised by players. Ownership is established on the blockchain.
