Since 2019, we have now supported UNICEF’s CryptoFund with recurring contributions, and we’re enthusiastic about our most recent donation too. At present, I want to share the story of our journey collectively, to acknowledge a number of the achievements of our partnership, and to talk a bit extra about what’s subsequent.
Why and the way we began
In a previous blog post, I defined how rising economies signify an enormous alternative for Ethereum, and talked concerning the significance of asking ourselves “who would most profit from Ethereum?”
Individuals residing in rising economies signify billions of next-generation customers and builders of Ethereum. The following query ought to then be: “how can we attain the subsequent billion?”
The Ethereum venture began with a small group of individuals on a shared mission, and as we speak the venture has attracted tons of of 1000’s of like-minded builders and researchers. This like-mindedness was the facility that aligned the neighborhood, however we must always admit that it additionally created pure limitations to entry for individuals who weren’t related with somebody in the neighborhood. Due to this, I used to be at all times conscious that the Ethereum neighborhood was missing the true variety wanted to maximise the expertise’s actual potential, and to achieve the subsequent billion.
Across the finish of 2018, I used to be looking for alternatives to develop our attain after I met Chris Fabian from UNICEF Ventures (who now leads the Giga project, which we additionally help). To be sincere, forward of our first assembly, I had doubts about whether or not EF would work properly with a workforce from the United Nations. I felt they have been a really conventional, large group with typical methods of doing issues. However Chris shared a few lists of objectives that they needed to realize utilizing blockchain expertise, and that blew my thoughts.
He and his workforce understood the significance of public blockchains, in addition to the tradeoffs of assorted protocols. This was the second after I felt assured that there was a possibility for each teams to have an impactful partnership. UNICEF has a community, and assets that we didn’t have, with ongoing work in additional than 190 international locations, and collaboration with numerous stakeholders together with NGOs, companies, startups, and governments. They have been additionally searching for new methods to alter from the within, and to embrace innovation. That is how our collaboration began, and from there we started to help the UNICEF CryptoFund, which was announced and launched at Devcon 5 in October of 2019.
Chris Fabian and I at Devcon 5, which coincided with Halloween. The UNICEF Ventures workforce spent a sleepless evening coordinating with the Headquarters for the launch of the CryptoFund.
UNICEF CryptoFund
It was pure for the EF to turn out to be the founding donor to the UNICEF CryptoFund given our collaboration. The CryptoFund is the primary automobile in the whole UN ecosystem – and presumably the general public sector at massive – to obtain, maintain, and use crypto, and it makes investments in help of expertise startups inside creating international locations which can be geared toward bettering the lives of youngsters. These startups obtain tokens and use them with out changing to fiat currencies, throughout the aim of creating open-source, digital public items. To this point, 2,527 ETH and eight BTC have been contributed, and 18 investments have been made.
On the identical time, the CryptoFund is attempting to deal with a key problem for organizations like UNICEF – one in all transparency and accountability. Historically, donors and different stakeholders don’t have entry to a real-time, tamper-proof view of how a charity spends its cash. Within the case of the CryptoFund, each transaction the CryptoFund makes is seen on its website with a corresponding hyperlink containing immutable transaction particulars on blockchain explorers.
Within the picture above, you possibly can see the EF’s most up-to-date donation – acquired first by UNICEF France after which transferred to the UNICEF Headquarters.
The CryptoFund web site is powered by Juniper, an open-source set of instruments developed by UNICEF Ventures to assist handle digital property. Any public sector group that desires to leverage tokens in a user-friendly, clear manner, can experiment with Juniper as we speak.
Most of the 18 startups which have acquired a CryptoFund funding use blockchain-based expertise of their merchandise as properly, and we are going to proceed to help them by workshops, and by connecting them to fantastic abilities and initiatives within the Ethereum ecosystem. You possibly can learn extra about these startups creating open-source, digital public items here.
I can not emphasize sufficient how influential this venture has been — not just for the humanitarian sector and governments, however even to the world. It has raised consciousness and let the general public see how it’s potential for a big, established and worldwide group to undertake public blockchains in environment friendly and clear methods. I’ve heard a lot constructive suggestions and actually hope that different conventional organizations like UNICEF really feel extra assured making use of those public items too.
What’s subsequent?
Whereas we proceed our help for the CryptoFund and its portfolio firms creating digital public items in rising economies, EF’s collaboration with UNICEF is evolving. By the brand new EF Fellowship Program, we’re supporting two thrilling developments. One EF Fellow – who represents a CryptoFund portfolio firm – is working with many nationwide and municipal governments in Latin America to make use of blockchain in digital identification and verifiable credentials. One other EF Fellow is exploring the intersection of web connectivity and blockchain, working with Giga, which is a joint initiative by UNICEF and the Worldwide Telecommunications Union (ITU) geared toward offering web to each college on the planet.
I’m excited to share extra about their work within the coming months and stay up for increasing our attain to the subsequent billion by our continued partnership with UNICEF. Within the meantime, you could find them on Twitter: UNICEF Innovation (which manages the CryptoFund), UNICEF France (which was the primary nationwide committee to make use of crypto) , and Giga.
Lastly, I want to ship my deepest appreciation to Sunita Grote, who leads the UNICEF Enterprise Fund, Christina Rose Lomazzo, UNICEF’s blockchain lead (in addition to Mehran Hydary, Cecilia Chapiro, and others who have been a part of the journey collectively), and to Chris Fabian, for pushing the needle collectively for these necessary steps.
