On blockchain & social impact
Reflections from the MDC Blockchain and the Future of the For-Purpose sector event
On Tuesday night (10-July-2018) I had the pleasure of sharing a panel with Prof Ellie Rennie, Amanda Robinson, and Prof Jason Potts at the Melbourne Development Circle’s event entitled Blockchain and the Future of the For-Purpose Sector. You can view the recorded video of the talk here.
My motivation for joining the panel comes from a growing sense of urgency to pay attention to the biggest global challenges we as humanity have faced so far: climate change, populism, and forced displacement. The tech sector has not positively impacted these issues, and in many cases even inflamed them. So, instead of accelerating this process, technology needs to align itself with a deeper appreciation of how it can inform and reinforce our collective vision of a ‘good sustainable society.’ Technology needs to help people have a voice, and strengthen how we organise society.
“In the wake of some historic whistle blows, breaches, and let downs, it’s high time that the tech community wins back public favour and proves it can build something truly global that doesn’t surveil, commodify, or marginalise users, but that aligns, enables, and ennobles them.[1]”
The only argument that outweighs this sense of urgency is the fact that we have never been more empowered to take action and positively transform the world. Blockchain technology, for instance shifts power to the hands of individuals that has been historically limited to large institutions such as banks, and governments. Citizens can now take action where our institutions have failed.
We have an opportunity to reset the trajectory of our technology and digital world is taking us. Those working in the social impact sector are best placed to bring attention to the most pressing issues we, the block chain community, need to acknowledge and work through. The blockchain community has arguably established the most traction against two global issues of financial inclusion, and identification.
Financial inclusion and the global unbanked and underbanked
There are two billion people worldwide who do not have a bank account or access to a financial institution via a mobile phone or any other device.[2]
The inability to access the worlds financial system limits economic participation, and hence people’s ability to escape the poverty trap. But banking is not necessarily the answer to expanding one’s ability to participate in economic life either. There’s an assumption here that banking services are critical. People do need financial security, convenience, and potentially access to credit. Blockchain projects are starting to demonstrate that we can offer individuals these services outside of the traditional banking paradigm.
Example projects include OmiseGo, who are looking to “unbank the banked” by providing more accessible and efficient means for individuals to store and transfer value globally. And Maker DAO has introduced us to collateralised debt positions, which allows an individual to be loaned Dai (their native currency)[4] — a very early form of lending outside of the present day centralised banking system.
Identification and the undocumented
“Identity is foundational for political, economic, and social opportunity, yet the World Bank estimates that over 1 billion people are unable to prove who they are. A digital identity that puts the individual at the centre can provide political, economic, and social opportunity.” ID2020[5]
Identity is the building block by which individuals can claim rights, protection, participate in economic life, and participate politically. And it’s importance is reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals (16.9), which states everyone have legal identity including free birth registrations by 2030[6].
The provision and ongoing access to identification services has been historically limited to governments. However, blockchain technology is opening up the opportunity to offer individuals identity that is:
- Personal: unique to you and only you.
- Persistent: lives with you from life to death.
- Portable: accessible anywhere you happen to be.
- Private: only you can permit to use or view data.[7]
There is a great deal of work being done in identity and identification technology. Prior to blockchain, a lot of the identity platforms were being built as ‘platforms’, meaning the design goal of persistent becomes difficult to achieve as data is silo’d with platform owners and vendors. Blockchain technology (along with other technologies such as decentralised file storage) presents the opportunity for users to truly own and control their data. The digital products of the future will merely offer users a window into their data, and not being able to lock users into their platform or ecosystem as a result of data monopolies.
ID2020 is an alliance focusing on the provision of identification services to the worlds undocumented. Projects like Civic and uPort are working on blockchain identity solutions, as is BlockCerts and Learning Machine out of MIT. The blockchain and W3C community are progressing open standards that will enable and protect the user experience requirements of a robust identity scheme (personal, persistent, portable, and private). These standards include Ethereum standards ERC1056 (lightweight identity), ERC725 (identity), and ERC735 (claims). While it is early days, these standards should be viewed as innovation building blocks. We can expect exponential innovation and results to occur once these foundations are in place.
What now?
Blockchain technology will allow us to innovate where our institutions have failed, as it removes the need for the ‘trust’ that our institutions have previously offered us. So for those in the world currently denied access to financial services or identity, we can expect and are already seeing blockchain technology being deployed to meet their needs.
The blockchain community needs to be more intentional about the change we seek in the world. Blockchain won’t necessarily be a positive technological development unless we work hard to make it so. And that the community sector needs to be more open minded towards the potential of this disruptive technology. By bringing the social sector and the blockchain community together we have the potential to create a true step-change in human dignity a human prosperity. This is why Typehuman exists.
References
[1] Erwin, Avery How Blockchain Is Helping Technology Get Its Soul Backaccessed from: https://media.consensys.net/how-blockchain-is-helping-technology-get-its-soul-back-a2d6cf96a272 on 10-July-2018
[2] Hodgson, Camilla The world’s 2 billion unbanked, in 6 chartsaccessed from http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-unbanked-population-in-6-charts-2017-8/?r=AU&IR=Tviewed 12 July 2018
[3] Wikipedia Unbankedaccessed from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbankedon 12 July 2018
[4] https://crypviz.io/knowledge-database/collateralized-debt-position/
[5] ID2020 Why digital identity?accessed from https://id2020.org/digital-identity-1/on 12 July 2018
[6] SDG target 16.9 on legal identity accessed from http://getinthepicture.org/news/sdg-target-169-legal-identityon 12 July 2018
[7] ID2020 why an allianceaccessed from https://id2020.org/partnership/on 12 July 2018
