The Landscape of Impact Blockchain Projects

Hi there, welcome!

We, the Revision team, believe blockchain technology has the potential to create a positive impact on human-kind by enabling a truly global and more inclusive economy. However, to unleash this paradigm-shifting technology we need to step away from the “quick-money hype” and explore how to allocate our resources towards sustainable projects that are building the infrastructure for a meaningful and better future.

Revision is a network of purpose-driven entrepreneurs and organizations that unite to explore the long-term impact of emerging technologies on society. In November we connect leading decision-makers, entrepreneurs and developers to showcase, discuss and collaborate on impactful projects that will advance a truly democratic internet and a more purpose-driven economy.

Rocinha is Rio’s largest Favela. Rio de Janeiro has huge social problems due to income inequalities. Corruption might the biggest.

The aim of this article is to shine the light on entrepreneurs that use blockchain technology to solve pressing social issues. Our mission is to inspire more people to join the movement from a profit-centered economy towards a purpose-driven economy. Please help us discover missing projects that you think are worthy to be featured here.

Financial Infrastructure

1. Ixo foundation—A blockchain protocol for collecting, verifying, tokenizing and trading impact data. A ton of interesting projects will be build on top of their “Proof of Impact” protocol that is planned to go live in Q4 of 2018.
2. iO2 Foundation — A decentralized autonomous NGO creating the governance, infrastructure, utilities, and community to measure and collect impact data.
3. Kora Network — A blockchain-based infrastructure for inclusive capital systems with the goal to unlock economic growth in emerging markets.
4. Alice — A social funding and impact management platform built on the Ethereum blockchain. The performance of each project is publicly available, making it easier for funders to identify and help scale social projects.
5. EthicHub — A transnational peer-to-peer crowdlending platform that globally connects investors (lenders) with small unbanked producers (borrowers).
6. BABB — A decentralised platform leveraging blockchain and biometrics technology, and aim to provide peer-to-peer banking services to the global microeconomy.

Impact Investing

1. Topl — A blockchain protocol enabling impact investments into developing regions.
2. Wadappt — A blockchain-based smart contract platform focusing on channeling vast sums of impact investment into conservation in Africa.
3. Sela Labs — Sela builds communities of transparency by connecting capital to trusted individuals in the emerging markets. Sela Citizens comprise the platform and range from impact investors to farmers in Africa. Blockchain helps to track resource flows and reward trustworthy behavior.
4. Proof of Impact — A global service that allows anyone to prove their impact without distracting them from their core business. It allows you to create your own impact token and store events on the ethereum blockchain.

Decentralized Governance

1. Civil — The decentralized marketplace for sustainable journalism.
2. Handshake — Handshake is a decentralized, permissionless naming protocol compatible with DNS where every peer is validating and in charge of managing the root zone with the goal of creating an alternative to existing Certificate Authorities.
3. Democray.earth —
   Democracy Earth
   are building Sovereign, an open source and decentralized democratic governance protocol for any kind of organization. Their vision is that open source software and peer to peer networks will make political intermediation no longer necessary.

The Future of Monetary Policy

1. MakerDAO — Dai is a stable coin pegged to the US Dollar. It is created by the Dai Stablecoin System, a decentralized platform that runs on the Ethereum blockchain.

Digital Identity

1. Building Blocks by the
   World Food Programme
   — A permissioned blockchain as a means of making cash transfers more efficient, transparent and secure. The project has been successfully tested in Refugee Camps in Jordan.
2. Civic — Decentralized infrastructure that enables people to take control and protect their identity.
3. Sovrin — Permanent digital identities that don’t require a central authority.
4. Jolocom — A user-owned and controlled self-sovereign digital identity solution based on blockchain technology.
5. Consent — A trust protocol to independently authenticate identity and selectively exchange personal information.
6. uPort —
   uPort
   ‘s open identity system allows users to register their own identity on Ethereum, send and request credentials, sign transactions, and securely manage keys & data. Therewith returning ownership of identity from governments, corporates and institutions back to the individual.

Work & Collaboration

1. Suppoyo — A collaborative incentive program in which peers invest a small part of their incomes, as well as support and time in one another, thereby providing a mutually beneficial arrangement for both parties involved.
2. DAOstack — An operating system that enables the effective governance of self-organizing collectives.
3. Way Network — Way uses the latest generation of scalable, privacy-preserving blockchain technology combined with crypto-economic relevance protocols to enable valuable real-world interaction between strangers.

Healthcare

1. Breakthrough Health — A company building privacy-focused applications that empower people living with chronic diseases to securely store their data, learn from it, and give back to research.
2. Shivom—
   Project Shivom
   is building a genomic and health data hub by combining blockchain technology with genomic DNA sequencing to power a secure and personalised medical data ecosystem.

Supply Chain

1. Provenance — A blockchain where every physical product has a digital history, allowing buyers to trace and verify its origins, attributes and ownership.
2. Chronicled — With
   Chronicled
   trade partners in fragmented supply chain ecosystems can passively cooperate on a decentralized, blockchain-backbone without loss of sensitive information.
3. Sweetbridge —
   Sweetbridge
   is an open-source and member-run project that builds a network for real-world trade that is simple, secure, fast, inexpensive, and designed for compliance with regulations in each region organisations or individuals operate.

Energy & Climate Change

1. IBM — Using IBM Blockchain technology, Energy Blockchain Labs created an efficient, transparent platform that allows high-emission organizations to meet quotas by buying carbon credits from low emitters.
2. Climate Coin — A technology infrastructure that allows individuals and corporations to compensate their CO2 offsets by buying and trading carbon credits.
3. Power Ledger — An energy trading platform that allows people and businesses to sell their surplus solar power to their neighbours without an intermediary.
4. Energy Web Foundation —Energy web is the foundational, shared, digital infrastructure for the energy and blockchain community to build and run their solutions on top of. The foundation’s goal is to unleash blockchain’s potential to accelerate the transition to a decentralized, democratized, decarbonized, and resilient energy system.
5. Agriledger — A distributed ledger (in the making) to provide benefits for farmers and suppliers including efficiency and traceability — two elements which are presently lacking. The aims to move towards assuring food safety and security.
6. Chooose — A climate action platform that enables companies to buy carbon credits equivalent to the tons of CO2 they release into the atmosphere. The money paid for carbon credits goes to UN-certified clean energy projects in developing countries.

For-profit impact funds

1. Ausum Ventures —Investing in early-stage blockchain startups and crypto-assets for social good.
2. L4 Ventures —
   L4
   focuses on building a decentralised web that removes middlemen and incentivises users to contribute.
3. Binance Labs —
   Binance
   ’s social impact fund is an initiative to incubate, invest, and empower blockchain entrepreneurs.
4. VC4A & Afrolynk — The Venture Capital for Africa supports, connects and brings together african entrepreneurs with investors, and cooperation organisations that are connected to the EU — African market.
5. Ezra — The Ezra New Economy Fund is an impact investment fund focused on the people, companies and decentralized networks it sees transforming financial and energy markets through use of blockchain technology.

Non-profit accelerators & initiatives

1. GIZ Blockchain Lab — The government funded accelerator focuses on blockchain applications, which outline clear added value in terms of societal benefit as expressed by the SDGs.
2. Katapult Accelerator — Impact accelerator for technologies such as AI and Blockchain to help impact focused startups scale faster.
3. Techruption by Brightlands — Incubator for innovations in blockchain, artificial intelligence and climate change.
4. Grassroots Economics — Focus on community development through economic empowerment and community currency programs.
5. Bundesblock — The
   Bundesblock
   (German Blockchain Bundesverband) is a federation which has been formed in 2017 to promote DLT technologies in the public and private sectors in Germany.
6. Revision — The Revision network is a non-profit organisation with members from politics, business and research and takes a multidisciplinary look at the question of “what does ‘being human’ mean in an increasingly technological future?”
7. Blockchain Charity Foundation — Blockchain Charity Foundation (BCF) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to conducting crypto-based charitable donations and supporting the development of decentralized technologies to solve the world’s most pressing problems. The foundation is initiated by Binance.

If you know or run an impactful project that needs to be on this list, please comment.

If you want to learn more about Revision, drop me an email: ludolf@revision.io.