Zippie accelerator’s first project: AirImpact — A crowd donation platform on the blockchain, and its first campaign: Fantti, a digital charity elephant.

Heikki Vänttinen
Zippie
Published in
5 min readDec 22, 2018
AirImpact is a blockchain-powered crowd donation platform, and the first app in the Zippie ecosystem accelerator

You might have seen our October update, and wondered what the green elephant app was that we used to illustrate our new “Sign in with Zippie” onboarding product. Well wonder no more, because today we are publishing the biggest innovation in charitable giving since the inception of crowd donation platforms on the internet. The first Zippie ecosystem accelerator project, AirImpact, is taking the concept of crowd donations and pairing it with the instant and immutable qualities of the blockchain, creating a crowd charity donation platform that helps your charitable donations make an actual, immediate and measurable impact with charity and aid organizations across the globe.

Public distrust is hurting charities

While there is certainly no shortage of charities and charitable platforms that one can use to do their giving, what the world of charity lacks today is global transparency — the knowledge of where your donation goes, who benefits from it, and how much of the original donation actually even ends up where it should. Ambiguity around these questions has long been a problem for the charity industry the world over, and many reputable aid organizations have had to suffer for the misdeeds of other, less honest charities. With every reported wrongdoing, the public trust in charitable organizations has taken a hit, ultimately felt by the causes themselves in the form of reduced donations.

AirImpact’s blockchain-based solution to the rescue

So how can blockchain help? — Simply put, by providing trust. By utilizing the Ethereum blockchain, AirImpact users will be able to send donations directly to the causes that need support, bypassing fixed cost heavy middlemen and global remittance fees. The donated value arrives to the recipient in minutes instead of weeks and is immediately available to provide help where help is needed. All this happens with cryptographic proof that the value was sent by the donor and received by the recipient, which can be checked and confirmed by anyone with internet access. We believe all these factors put together will cause a paradigm shift in what is possible with charitable giving, as immediate, focused and transparent giving is enabled for the millions of people who would like to participate in making the world a better place.

Feeless donations with airtime

With charities all over the world needing our help, the question of how to transfer that help without facing humongous remittance fees. AirImpact’s solution to this problem looked at the emerging economies in the countries where most of the help was needed. What was seen was that a large part of these economies was running on airtime — internet data which is being used as a medium of exchange for goods and services in many emerging economies like Kenya and Tanzania. This is why with the AirImpact app, the donated sum is transferred into tokenized airtime, which means that 100% of the donation value reaches its target.

Simple and fun UX that rewards the user

Donating with AirImpact is as easy as swiping a cause in the home screen

Giving should be easy and enjoyable. However with many of the current blockchain powered solutions those would not be the two adjectives to describe the user experience. To make AirImpact fun to use for anyone, regardless of blockchain expertise, AirImpact runs on the Zippie platform, which allows the app to be used on any device, accessible through any browser without downloads. Simply onboard with the “Sign in with Zippie” solution in 10 seconds, and you have a digital wallet which works with the AirImpact app, and after topping it up with some Airo (AirImpact native airtime token), you’re ready to start donating. All the causes a user can support are listed on the main view, and a donation is sent simply by swiping the cause.

Join our campaign with PAMS to save the African elephant

PAMS’s introduction video

As AirImpact’s first campaign to raise awareness of the new platform and get started on its charitable mission, AirImpat has launched a campaign supporting the preservation of African elephants in Tanzania, called Fantti. You might be familiar with the majestic African elephant, but what you might not know, is that due to poaching this smart and social animal might go extinct in the next 15 to 20 years. AirImpact is carrying out the Fantti campaign in partnership with PAMS Foundation, one of the leading wildlife preservation organizations in all of Africa.

What is Fantti and how do I get one?

Fantti is a free collectible digital elephant

Fantti is a tokenized digital elephant on the Ethereum blockchain, that anyone can get free of charge, simply by clicking the “Get your free Fantti” button on the AirImpact website at www.airimpact.org/en. After clicking the button and signing up to the campaign, AirImpact will send you a unique link to your email, which will allow you to load your Zippie powered Fantti-wallet with your very own digital elephant. With each Fantti, AirImpact will donate one hour’s salary to an elephant guardian in Tanzania, tasked with preventing poaching and human-elephant conflict near villages neighboring the elephant roaming grounds. Every Fantti also works as a ticket to a raffle where AirImpact sends one lucky Fantti owner and their friend to Tanzania to see the elephants in their natural habitat. For every friend you refer to the campaign, you also get one additional Fantti. This means the more you spread the love for the African elephant, the better your chances of winning a trip to Tanzania!

Let’s make the world a better place with blockchain! As always, if you’ve got any questions, be sure to get in touch with the Zippie team via our Telegram channel. You can also follow AirImpact on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook with the username @airimpactapp. To support the cause and get your own free Fantti, visit www.airimpact.com/en.

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