73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something —―

3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something —―

73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something

By Jessica Klein

02.01.2019

https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 1/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something

his story is part of BREAKER’s Social Good Week, a series looking at ways T blockchain technology can engineer progress and help humanity.

As with any lofty idea that touts “blockchain” or accepts crypto, people likely will (and should) take promises of “blockchain for social good” with a grain of salt. “Blockchain” connotes hype-riding publicity plays. Crypto-acceptance screams “scammer.” Yet many seemingly genuine organizations claim blockchain technology as an integral part of their missions to save the world—from environmental perils, from poverty, and from its biggest threat of all, humanity.

At BREAKERMAG, we waded through numerous nonproﬁts, for proﬁts, startups, and established institutions to look for organizations that are using blockchain technology with deeply positive intentions. Among the many futuristic promo videos and do-gooder buzzwords, we found startups with smart, practical plans of action that happen to include distributed ledgers and state-independent currencies—not because those terms make bitcoin billionaire investors wiggle their ears, but because the technologies bolster the organizations’ goals. (Besides, crypto winter weeded out many of the purely ear-perking projects, anyway.)

The organizations we looked at are in varying stages of development. According to an April 2018 Stanford Graduate School of Business report that looked at 193 organizations using blockchain for social impact, 74 percent are still in “pilot” mode. The fact that so many of these projects are at such early stages of development made it very difﬁcult to come up with uniform criteria to judge which ones would make our list, so we kept it simple. Each organization had to have exhibited credibility in at least one of three categories—concrete action (have they done anything?), money (have they gotten or given any?), and/or big names (do we know and trust the people involved?).

https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 2/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something

It’s a low bar, sure, but remember that the organizations on our list are very young, as is blockchain technology in general. The bitcoin whitepaper was only released in 2008, and the technology described in it only really caught on with the 2017 crypto boom. That said, 55 percent of the organizations included in the Stanford study were expected to reach beneﬁciaries “early this year.” Several of them have.

We split the following organizations into eight categories: funding and donations, environment, food and agriculture, gender and sexuality, government, healthcare and medicine, identity and banking, and information and education. It’s possible that we missed some organizations doing great work in any of the above. Really, not all of blockchain is Lambos, $100,000 watches, and creepy cruises—there are a lot of people out there harnessing the power of distributed ledgers for good, and more are learning about the technology every day.

Funding and donations

The problem: Many people question whether donations are making it to their intended beneﬁciaries.

The blockchain solution: Transparency

The organizations: They range from homemade tip bots to one of the U.S.’s biggest banking establishments; some allow donors to send payments directly to the nonproﬁts

https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 3/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something of their choice, others focus on providing transparent funding mechanisms for larger organizations.

Atix Labs Founded: 2011 Mission: Helping small social good enterprises gain access to (transparent) funding Cred: UNICEF’s Innovation Fund invested time and money in this Singapore/Argentina- based company. (Read our story about the Atix Labs and ﬁve startups participating in the UNICEF Innovation Fund’s blockchain workshop in New York last week.)

Binance Charity Foundation Launched: 2018 Mission: Bringing accountability to charitable donations Cred: Its platform features only a small handful of charity projects, but one funded 20 beneﬁciaries affected by a landslide in Uganda’s Bududa District.

BitGive Foundation Founded: 2013 Mission: Letting donors follow their bitcoin donations step-by-step Cred: Its early partners included nonproﬁts like Save the Children and the Water Project, and the organization has worked with others across the globe since. (Read our interview with BitGive’s founder here.)

Blockchain4Humanity Founded: 2017 Mission: Acting as an accelerator for blockchain projects that aim to affect social change Cred: The organization has given out two rounds of awards in which they’ve helped facilitate funding for 41 blockchain social good platforms, including BitGive.

Disberse Founded: 2016 Mission: Making it more efﬁcient to send and receive funds between donors and aid organizations around the world Cred: Disberse has enacted pilot programs in Albania, Rwanda, and Ukraine and counts partners such as Oxfam, The Netherlands Red Cross, and Start Network.

Dogecoin Tip Bot Created: Very signature, much design Mission: Such tips Cred: This may sound like a joke, but using this tipbot, the Dogecoin community was able to hand out 156 pairs of socks to homeless people in Los Angeles this past November.

Fidelity Charitable Started accepting cryptocurrency: 2015 Mission: Letting people make charitable donations using bitcoin https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 4/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something Cred: Fidelity is one of the world’s largest asset managers, managing more than $2,459 billion worth of assets as of March 2018.

GiftCoin ICO started: March 2018 Mission: Letting charitable donors track how and when their money is spent Cred: GiftCoin is running two pilot programs, one with established charity payment processor Network For Good, another with an forthcoming platform called Charity Checkout. It’s been tested out by small charities like Ourmala, which offers yoga classes to refugees.

Giveth Founded: 2016 Mission: Removing intermediaries from charitable giving Cred: The Giveth decentralized app is currently live in beta and is running six campaigns, which have cumulatively received more than 644 ETH (more than $67,100 at time of writing).

Pineapple Fund Founded: 2017 (though it’s now defunct) Mission: Using bitcoin to fund multiple charitable organizations Cred: When live, the Pineapple Fund raised $55,750,000 across 60 charities listed on the project’s website. Charities spanned all sectors, including environmental conservation, The Internet Archive, the ACLU, and drug information website Erowid.

Ripple for Good Founded: 2018 Mission: Supporting organizations that increase global ﬁnancial inclusion Cred: It’s backed by Ripple, which has ample ﬁnancial resources and a robust team, and is partnered with DonorsChoose.org, an initiative that helps public schools. (Read our story about how Ripple’s charitable giving is also a savvy marketing play here.)

RootProject Founded: 2017 Mission: Creating a decentralized community around crowdfunding Cred: RootProject has raised modest funds for a few campaigns. One aims to aid Iraqi orphans, and another seeks to help homeless teens in the U.S.

Sustainability International/Sela Pilot launched: 2017 Mission: Fostering communication among stakeholders to keep track of project ﬁnances Cred: Sela launched a pilot program in Nigeria in November 2017 in which a group monitored an oil cleanup. Members used Sela to fact check information from contractors working on the cleanup in exchange for ﬁnancial compensation.

https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 5/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something The Giving Block Founded: 2018 Mission: Helping nonprofits receive cryptocurrency donations/working with blockchain- related nonprofits Cred: The Giving Block has worked directly with a number of nonprofits to help them set up cryptocurrency donations, including the Lupus Foundation. (We asked The Giving Block how to make sure you’re donating your crypto to a trustworthy cause here.)

XRP Tip Bot Launched: 2017 Mission: Rewarding content creators and commenters on social platforms Twitter, Reddit, and Discord Cred: Using the XRP Tip Bot, people have donated more than $11,800 to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital—a happily unintended consequence of a bot created so people could, in essence, ﬁnancially upvote comments they liked. (Read our story about the tip bot’s surprising success here.)

Environment

The problem: Maintaining sustainability in the face of the hulking pre-apocalyptic human- fueled very current danger we almost euphemistically call “climate change” feels genuinely impossible.

The blockchain solution: Incentivizing and tracking

The organizations: They’re actively rewarding people using solar power in Brooklyn and helping corporations reduce their carbon footprints…but tracking ﬁsh seems to be the ﬁrst universal test case.

Bitlumens Founded: 2017 Mission: Distributing solar power in areas without access to power grids Cred: It’s working on getting its pilots off the ground in Myanmar and Indonesia.

Blockchain Climate Institute Founded: 2016 Mission: Raising awareness of and developing blockchain solutions problems stemming from climate change Cred: Its network includes 80 blockchain experts from around the world. They’ve got a lot to talk about.

Brooklyn Microgrid (developed by LO3Energy) Microgrid Launched: 2016 Mission: Developing a locally powered clean energy microgrid in Brooklyn https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 6/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something Cred: LO3Energy’s Brooklyn Microgrid pilot has been running for almost two years and, as of July, had about 60 participants. (Read our story about the Brooklyn Microgrid here.)

Ecochain Founded: 2011 Mission: Helping companies track their environmental footprints Cred: Ecochain reports a user base of over 1,100 people spanning 14 industries.

Electron Founded: 2015 Mission: Using decentralized technologies to increase energy efﬁciency Cred: It received a grant from the UK-based Energy Entrepreneurs Fund in September 2017 and has carried out a simulated pilot test for its product.

Fishcoin Founded: 2018 Mission: Tracking the supply chain of caught fish; collecting data on ocean acidification Cred: Fishcoin has partnered with the Ocean Foundation, an organization aimed at protecting underwater environments, but those efforts are nascent. The company is much further along on the on the supply chain front, working with fisheries and even bringing “data-backed” seafood to the dinner table. (Read our Q&A with Fishcoin’s ocean acidification lead here.)

Grid Singularity Founded: 2016 Mission: Democratizing energy through an open source tech platform, incentivization system, and blockchain energy summit Cred: Grid Singularity has partnered with the Rocky Mountain Institute to create the Energy Web Foundation, which will work to move other blockchain energy startups forward.

Ixo Foundation Founded: ~2016 Mission: Tangibly and transparently measuring the impact of charitable donations Cred: Ixo is working with the New York-based Seneca Park Zoo to plant trees in Eastern Madagascar. It counts UNICEF as a founding partner.

M-PAYG Founded: 2013 Mission: Democratizing access to solar energy Cred: M-PAYG is working with the DCA to bring electricity to a refugee camp in Uganda.

Nori Founded: 2017 Mission: Reversing climate change by incentivizing carbon dioxide removal from the https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 7/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something atmosphere Cred: Nori’s exceeded its (modest) funding expectations on crowdfunding platform Republic while simultaneously receiving SAFT funding.

Power Ledger Founded: 2016 Mission: Providing low-cost, renewable energy worldwide Cred: Power Ledger has partnerships with energy retailers in Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand.

SOLShare Founded: 2013 Mission: Delivering solar power to low income rural communities, beginning in Bangladesh Cred: SOLShare was among the World Economic Forum’s Global Technical Pioneers 2018 cohort. Past members have included Airbnb, Dropbox, Kickstarter, Twitter, and Google. The company also received a UN Energy grant at the United Nations New York headquarters in 2017.

SolarCoin Founded: 2014 Mission: Incentivizing people to produce/use solar energy Cred: SolarCoin supports numerous major monitoring platforms that together monitor more than 4 million solar installations. Anyone monitored by those systems is eligible for SolarCoin rewards, though so far just between 3,500 and 4,500 use the product. (Read our full story on SolarCoin’s mission and origins here.)

Food and agriculture

The problem: Small farmers get left out of the market, food waste abounds, and sometimes we get poisoned by lettuce.

The blockchain solution: Supply chain tracking

The organizations: According to the Stanford Graduate School of Business report, they’re mostly headquartered in Europe, Australia, and U.S. but are aiming to aid people in places like sub-Saharan Africa; they’re small-scale but scrappy—maybe because most are working for proﬁt.

AgriDigital Founded: 2015 Mission: Facilitating supply chain management for farmers and storage operators Cred: AgriDigital’s executives have established networks in North America from previous

https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 8/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something businesses, and the company just released its platform to U.S. and Canadian markets this month.

Bext360 Founded: 2016 Mission: Bringing accountability to supply chains for coffee, seafood, timber, and cotton Cred: The company’s already partnered with several coffee makers, three of which— Moyee Coffee, Great Lakes Coffee, and Coda Coffee—have already used its services. Bext360 is also a ﬁnalist in this year’s SXSW Pitch blockchain category.

Coin22/Agri-Wallet Founded: ~2016 Mission: Helping smalltime farmers save, spend, and get paid responsibly and securely Cred: The Nairobi-based Agri-Wallet employs 45 people and has multiple local users. It was started by Coin22, a Netherlands-based company that works in blockchain ﬁnance.

Foodshed.io Founded: 2017 Mission: Connecting the growers of sustainable, local food to wider markets; monitoring food safety Cred: It has multiple local clients in New York, including Gramercy Tavern and Maison Premiere.

Grass Roots Farmers’ Cooperative Founded: 2014 Mission: Promoting small-scale, sustainable farmers and bringing transparency to the food supply chain Cred: Grass Roots Farmers’ Cooperative is supported (organizationally and ﬁnancially) by Heifer U.S.A., an established nonproﬁt that works with small-scale farmers. It’s been working actively with farmers in rural Arkansas since 2016.

Goodr Launched: January 2018 Mission: Getting surplus food from grocery stores and restaurants to people who need it Cred: As of November 2018, Goodr had diverted one million pounds of surplus food to the homes of families who didn’t know where they’d be getting their next meals.

Halotrade Founded: 2017 Mission: Bringing transparency to supply chains Cred: Halotrade’s founder Shona Tatchell was head of innovation, trade, and working capital at Barclays Bank for more than six years. The company’s in middle of a pilot tracking tea from farmers in Malawi.

https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 9/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something Viant Founded: 2017 Mission: Verifying assets in the following sectors: oil and gas, healthcare, transportation, real estate, and education Cred: Viant has successfully tracked a ﬁsh from Fiji to Brooklyn (where it wound up in a sushi roll). It’s a start.

Gender and sexuality

The problem: Reporting harassment and assault is extremely difﬁcult to begin with, and once reports are made, they can be easily lost or contested. Plus, gender inclusivity in the blockchain space is lacking.

The blockchain solution: Immutability and connectivity

The organizations: About half of the following organizations focus on reporting and recording gender-based violence incidents immutably, one focuses on LGBTQ+ inclusivity, and a few are aimed at providing more support for women in the blockchain industry.

Callisto Launched: 2015 Mission: Providing a way for survivors to create time-stamped records of their assaults and connecting them with legal services Cred: Callisto has been used on 13 different college campuses and by more than 149,000 students.

CryptoChicks Founded: 2017 Mission: Helping women get into more leadership roles in blockchain and AI Cred: The group has chapters in eight countries and organizes numerous hacakthons and workshops.

LGBT Token Founded: 2018 Mission: Creating an economic global community for people who identify as LGBTQ+ Cred: LGBT Token has partnered with Hornet, a gay social network with millions of users, and Revry, a “queer owned and operated” streaming service.

RTI Founded: 1958, blockchain project launched pilot in 2018 Mission: Fostering more timely, reliable, and secure reporting of domestic violence crimes Cred: RTI launched a pilot program with Collaborative Health Solutions last year. To https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 10/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something prepare, CHS carried out a non-blockchain electronic version of its reporting system, during which domestic violence reports “quadrupled.”

She(256) Founded: 2018 Mission: Making the blockchain space more gender-inclusive Cred: She(256) has organized conferences, offered mentorship, and appeared at a number of larger blockchain events to talk diversity.

Vault Launched: 2017 Mission: Making it easier for employees to report workplace misconduct and companies to track it Cred: In China, people have already taken to blockchain to permanently record instances of sexual assault, providing a proof of concept for Vault’s product, currently in beta. (Read our full story on Vault and other similar projects here.)

Women in Blockchain Founded: 2016 Mission: Providing a supportive space for women working in/learning about blockchain Cred: Women in Blockchain organizes regular events all over the world and makes appearances at numerous (male dominated) conferences.

Government

The problem: Governments can be corrupt, and voting fair isn’t easy.

The blockchain solution: Tracking, transparency, and accountability

The organizations: Though blockchain has frequently been ﬂoated as a way to stop voter fraud, few of these companies offer a viable ﬁx; instead, the focus of these organizations tends to be on government spending and community collaboration.

Democracy Earth Founded: 2012 Mission: Decentralizing democracy Cred: It had an engaged, if not huge, following and has a partnership with Blockstack, through which token holders are sending resources to developers. We wrote about the group’s founder Santiago Siri (skeptically) here.

OSCity (aka, OneSmart) Founded: 2016 Mission: Addressing misappropriation of government funds Cred: UNICEF’s Innovation Fund invested in this Mexico-based company. It’s already run https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 11/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something small tests and is in conversation with some governments (according to representative from UNICEF’s Innovation Fund).

UtoPixar/Coinsence Founded: 2013 Mission: Creating platforms where community members can collaborate and make group decisions Cred: UNICEF’s Innovation Fund invested time and money (through the aforementioned blockchain workshop) in this Tunisia-based company.

Votem Founded: 2016 Mission: Making voting transparent, accessible, secure, and veriﬁable Cred: The company posts some statistics on its site, including how many votes have been cast through the platform (8.2 million) and how many elections have been completed (11). It also acquired online Emmy voting platform Everyone Counts in October. (Read our story about Votem and blockchain voting here.)

Healthcare and medicine

The problem: There are a lot of regulations in healthcare and staying compliant can be tricky. So can getting vaccines and medications to developing countries.

The blockchain solution: Supply chain tracking, secure information sharing

The organizations: From Mongolia to Mexico, these organizations facilitate research, prescription pickups, and organ donation matches.

Geneyx Founded: ~2018 Mission: Providing a genetic data platform to aid in research and drug development Cred: The Israel-based company is currently in a funding round with contributions from Horizon 2020, a massive EU research and innovation program.

Kidner Launched: 2015 Mission: More effectively linking organ donors to patient matches Cred: CEO Sajida Zouarhi is currently a blockchain architect and the R&D lead at ConsenSys as well as the cofounder of a blockchain health think tank. Kidner has gotten media attention in France, where the company is based, but it isn’t operational yet.

MediLedger Founded: 2017 Mission: Using blockchain tech to comply with the Drug Supply Chain Security Act https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 12/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something (DSCSA) and bring secure interoperability to medicine tracking Cred: It completed a successful pilot program in 2017, and pharma giant Pﬁzer is one of its group members.

Prescrypto Founded: 2016 Mission: Providing a secure prescription platform for developing countries that consolidates users’ medical histories Cred: Its website reports that more than 145,000 prescriptions have been issued via the platform. Prescrypto is also one of six blockchain startups funded by UNICEF’s Innovation Fund this year, where cohort manager Cecilia Chapiro called it the most “advanced” startup in the group.

Rymedi Founded: 2017 Mission: Compliantly distributing vaccinations Cred: Rymedi has helped administer Hepatitis C vaccines in Mongolia, and JP Morgan blockchain spinoff Kadena is going to manage Rymedi’s data in the U.S.

Simply Vital Health Founded: 2016 Mission: Brings together disparate patient information in a single, secure platform Cred: One of the company’s products, ConnectingCare, helps healthcare providers manage patient data. It’s been proﬁtable since a few months after its launch in 2017, when client Hartford Healthcare Bone & Joint Institute started using it.

Statwig Founded: 2016 Mission: Using supply-chain tracking to monitor food and vaccines Cred: Statwig has yet to roll out its vaccine-tracking product, but so far has tested its technology by “tracking ﬁsh [you guessed it] from coastal India to different countries,” says founder and CEO Sid Chakravarthy.

Identity and banking

The problem: There are many problems—refugees and people in developing nations don’t have access to ofﬁcial identities, bank accounts, and property deeds. Sending international payments is slow and expensive. Overall, ﬁnancial inclusion simply isn’t there yet.

The blockchain solution: Cheap, bank-free digital payments and immutable records

The organizations: This is the largest category for blockchain social good applications because it’s where blockchain’s main functions (keeping records and moving around https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 13/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something money) are most readily applicable.

AID:Tech Founded: 2016 Mission: Bringing transparency to payments—including donations, remittances, welfare, and aid funding Cred: Aid:Tech has worked on two projects aimed at helping Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Refugees redeemed 500 food vouchers as a result of the projects, and $10,000 was distributed across 100 refugee families.

BanQu Founded: 2015 Mission: Providing the unbanked (often refugees and the extremely impoverished) with an economic identity (like a credit history) Cred: BanQu has partnered with an eclectic mix of multi-million-dollar businesses all over the world—including Shell, the Dell Medical School, and Japan Tobacco International.

BitLand Founded: 2016 Mission: Offering a blockchain-based land registry to those who don’t have ofﬁcial deeds to their land Cred: People in Ghana, where the company is based and reportedly 80 percent of landowners don’t have titles, have been using BitLand to register their property.

BitPesa Founded: 2013 Mission: Making business transactions cheaper, faster, and simpler between countries in Africa and markets in the rest of the world Cred: BitPesa charges between one and three percent on business transactions in developing markets, compared to much higher rates billed by other money-sending solutions. So far, the company is operational in Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

ChromaWay/Postchain Founded: 2012 Mission: Providing smart contracts for land registration Cred: Advisors include Charlie Lee, founder of Litecoin, and Vinny Lingham, CEO and founder of Civic (see below). Based in Sweden, Chromaway received $15 million in funding in October.

Circles Launched: 2017 Mission: Creating and distributing a global Universal Basic Income Cred: Right now, Circles is in the research and experimental phase, including a test it’s

https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 14/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something carried out at a small café in Berlin. (We covered several crypto-funded basic income projects here).

Civic Founded: 2016 Mission: Verifying identities and preventing ID theft Cred: Run by Vinny Lingham, a “bitcoin oracle” and cast member of “Dragon’s Den South Africa” (it’s like “Shark Tank”), Civic got people to sign up for its app by making it the barrier to buying beer from a vending machine at the Consensus Summit last year. Civic raised $33 million in a 2017 ICO.

Diwala Founded: 2017 Mission: Verifying displaced people’s skills with blockchain-based certiﬁcates and records Cred: It’s been doing user testing with its partner school, Clarke University, in Uganda.

Emerge/Homeward Founded: 2017 Mission: Helping ﬁnd homes for displaced people/refugees and providing them with legal identities Cred: Emerge recently partnered with Distilled Identity, a predictive identity machine learning company that came out of MIT research, to improve its platform.

GiveCrypto Founded: 2018 Mission: Facilitating cryptocurrency donation to nonproﬁts that work directly with impoverished communities; giving unbanked communities access to non-state-backed currencies Cred: GiveCrypto’s donors so far are a who’s who of crypto elite. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong (also GiveCrypto’s founder), Ripple executive chair Chris Larsen, and CEO of the Zcash Company Zooko Wilcox have all donated upwards of $1 million, while Brock Pierce, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and Roger Ver have all donated at least $100,000. (Read our interview with GiveCrypto’s executive director, Joe Waltman, here.)

Mojaloop Launched: 2017 Mission: Promoting ﬁnancial inclusion by letting poor and unbanked people send and receive payments Cred: Mojaloop was created via a partnership between Ripple and The Gates Foundation. A bootcamp in Tanzania this spring will build on the open source software.

NALA Founded: 2017 Mission: Providing a secure way to make payments in Tanzania

https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 15/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something Cred: NALA won Ecobank Africa’s ﬁntech challenge, which granted them $10,000 in prize money and a six-month fellowship with the EcoBank Group.

SecureKey Founded: 2008 Mission: Increasing privacy and accessibility to online services by letting users take control of their personal data Cred: The company is already working with IBM to build a “digital identity network” in Canada.

WeTrust Founded: 2016 Mission: Providing a mechanism for trusted lending circles, especially among the unbanked Cred: According to its website, WeTrust currently has more than 2,000 users (which, compared to many of the others on this list, is something). Its advisors include Vitalik Buterin and Emin Gun Sirer, an associate professor at Cornell and blockchain expert.

Information and education

The problem: There’s a lot of information ﬂoating around out there, and not a lot of it is readily veriﬁable—including kids’ attendance records.

The blockchain solution: Immutable records

The organizations: While a few are struggling to ﬁght the spread of false information, a couple want to ensure access to education.

Amply First pilot: 2016 Mission: Making better education more accessible to children by tracking information like school attendance records Cred: South Africa-based Amply reports that it has recorded the attendance of 3,327 children and is operational at 87 different education centers.

BitDegree Launched: April 2018 Mission: Incentivizing students to learn, giving them tokens in exchange for completing online courses Cred: Lithuania-based BitDegree is actively hiring and has a self-reported user base of more than 275,000.

Factom Founded: 2014 https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 16/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something Mission: Ensuring veracity of historical information by encoding data, documents, etc. into a blockchain Cred: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security gave Factom a $192,380 grant to fund beta testing for applying its technology to border patrol cameras (whether this will be for better or for worse is TBD).

TruePic Founded: 2014 Mission: Authenticating images for a range of purposes, from preventing insurance fraud to backing up journalism Cred: While it can be used to ﬁght fraud on Airbnb, the most compelling use case came from a trapped civilian in Syria’s Idlib Province. (For more on that, read our story on how TruePic and similar tech can combat “fake news.”)

Tor Project Founded: 2006 Mission: Making internet communication and activity more secure Cred: It has an extremely active user base that includes journalists, activist groups, and a branch of the U.S. Navy (and sure, it’s not a blockchain project in itself, but it’s adjacent and was an early acceptor of cryptocurrency donations).

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I Yelled at Strangers About M&Ms Because a Token Told Me To

By Jessica Klein

03.11.2019

https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 18/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something

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or anybody who’s gone to an arena, you know what’s going on here. You buy the “F box of M&Ms, you bring it back to your seat, you open the box of M&Ms, and there’s a bag of M&Ms inside the box of M&Ms. It’s an empty box with a bag of M&Ms in it!” I found myself yelling this to a couple of strangers on Sunday with a phone pressed to my ear. One of the strangers smiled at me, confused but being a good sport in the face of this unwelcome diatribe. The other shufﬂed her feet and pleaded with her eyes for me to get away.

“So then you’ve got a big choice to make,” I continued. “Do you eat them out of the bag, or do you pour them into the box? Because the bag is ﬂimsy!”

At this point, a man with headphones in his ears had walked up next to me, repeating exactly what I’d just said. “The bag is ﬂimsy!” The strangers looked at each other, then back at us.

A gray-haired woman wearing pointy sunglasses, apparently listening to someone on her phone, all of a sudden also became very impassioned about M&Ms. “I don’t want to lose an M&M, not one!” she insisted. “This is not that hard to understand.”

The strangers looked at all three of us, smiled politely, and turned around.

My time spent covering blockchain and crypto has led me to plenty of gatherings I might otherwise not attend. They usually consist of rooms full of white men wearing varying degrees of business casual, talking about the upsides of proof-of-stake, and telling me it’s “cool” I drink whiskey. But this event is different. It’s an art show full of interactive booths, many of which feature increasingly edgy ways to depict male genitalia.

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I’m there because I have a token. The token certiﬁes that I’m a performer in a piece called “…And All the Reporters Laughed and Took Pictures,” directed by Jack and Leigh Ruby live at the Spring/Break Art Show at 866 UN Plaza in midtown Manhattan. I don’t know any of the other performers involved in the show—we haven’t met before, and there’s been no advance coordination other than the instructions I received when I claimed my token last week. The tokenized part of the performance was implemented by Snark.art, a group that helps artists experiment with using blockchain as a medium.

My ERC-721 token is currently sitting in my Trust Wallet, a crypto wallet app I was instructed to download upon conﬁrming my performer status in “…And All the Reporters.” https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 19/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something In preparation, I tapped the token in my wallet and read through a set of instructions for the Sunday performance, which assured me that a “Snark representative” would be waiting at the entrance of 866 UN Plaza, wearing a Snark.art hat. They would direct me to a particular location where I’d have to dial a speciﬁc phone number, which would deliver “spoken word audio” I’d have to repeat immediately upon hearing. I’d have to say the words like I was having a normal conversation with whomever I approached.

Supposedly, I’d hear other people having the same phone conversations around me. I would have to “start to gravitate toward” those people. Additional “choreography” instructions would be told to me over the phone throughout the course of the 45-minute performance.

To mentally steel myself for this performance, I spoke to the organizers—Snark.art’s Andrey Alekhin and Misha Libman, along with the artist, Jack Ruby. I wanted a better idea of what I was getting into.

“We’ve talked about how to connect the physical and digital worlds,” Alekhin told me. “… And All the Reporters” would be “maybe one step towards this idea of a decentralized performance.” I would be “asked to engage random people, or not—it’s up to each performer to do what they’re asked.”

I got more specific information from Ruby, the puppet master behind this flash-mob- esque spectacle, which I learned has been going on all week at the Spring/Break Art Show, though in a centralized fashion (as in, all of the performers were aware of each other rather than coming together only after receiving matching blockchain-based tokens). Participating performers have been accosting strangers for days, approaching them with lines from a speech Bill Clinton made about his legume-focused diet, a talk Gwyneth Paltrow gave about founding her now-burgeoning Goop business, an apology from an author who plagiarized, and a rant Chris Christie once went on about opening a box of M&Ms only to find inside of it a bag of M&Ms—a rant I ended up repeating with gusto.

Ruby picked these monologues based on a single criterion. “The general idea is people that are not really lying, exactly, but they’re bullshitting you in a way,” he said. “They’re not being authentic—it’s hard to describe.” Ultimately, the aim is to “break through the artiﬁciality of having conversations with strangers.”

Always up for a disaster, I headed to Spring/Break Art Show on Sunday ready and unwilling to engage in some very awkward shared moments with strangers.

I asked Ruby if he had any advice for me, a future performer in his live, somewhat decentralized sketch. “I’ve worked with Misha on [the blockchain] part of it, and I’m not https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 20/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something exactly sure how it’s going to work,” he said. “None of us really knows what’s going to happen. It could be a complete disaster.”

Always up for a disaster, I headed to Spring/Break Art Show on Sunday ready and unwilling to engage in some very awkward shared moments with strangers. There was no “Snark.art representative” waiting to greet me at the entrance, but ﬁnding their booth wasn’t difﬁcult. As I approached, a woman in a red sweater came up to me. She was wearing headphones.

“Do you think that this is the appropriate way to do this?” she said to me. “No matter where you go, you’re going to have to get your laundry done.”

Related: How CryptoPunks’ Creators Charmed the Art World and Paved the Way for Blockchain Art

It was the performance. I wished I hadn’t known, because I might have been more amused than bored when a glasses-wearing man joined us to repeat the woman’s speech, an older man eventually coming up behind him to do the same. Because I was one of the token-holding, “decentralized” performers, they didn’t know that soon enough I’d be joining them in this strange game. As I stood there, stupid smile plastered to my face, I felt like I was being disingenuous by not telling the performers this—but I also didn’t want to interrupt their groove. Walking away felt impossible, but I did it when a fourth person started giving me a hard time about where I was going to do my laundry if I ran away from home.

As I peeled away from the group, I noticed another woman similarly extricating herself. Her name was Anna, I learned, and she’d lost her friends somewhere in this maze of an art show. She’d been approached with a monologue about a car. “I know nothing about cars, so for the sake of just playing along I nodded,” she said. “Then a few other people started saying the same thing to me. It was kind of a surreal experience, but I caught myself responding to it and nodding.”

After I called the number and began participating myself, I found a lot of people responded that way. They nodded along with my thoughts on M&M boxes and car registrations while I received verbal instructions from artist Eve Sussman on where to go to bother strangers next. (Sussman previously collaborated with Snark.art on a project called “89 Seconds Atomized.”) The words sounded like they were coming from me, even though they weren’t. I was “channeling” someone else’s speech.

So why blockchain? “The ‘channeling’ is in many ways about anonymity of the speaker,” said Libman, “and sourcing the anonymous performers through the blockchain seemed like an ideal way to further this distance between the performer and the director.” There could have more decentralized aspects to the performance, Libman added, but this was their ﬁrst attempt at a live, blockchain-assisted show. They were just dipping their toes in. https://breakermag.com/73-blockchain-social-good-organizations-that-are-actually-doing-something/ 21/25 3/12/2019 73 Blockchain Social Good Organizations That Are Actually Doing Something Over the course of the weekend, two different performances involving 41 token holders took place. When I’d asked artist Ruby what he ultimately hoped to get out of the experience, he said, “Misha has this idea that art can be made using blockchain somehow, and I don’t think anybody knows how that’s going to work yet.”

He paused for a second. “It’s like when movie cameras were ﬁrst made, and they’d have things like a train pointing straight at the camera and people watching in the theater… they jumped out of their seats because they thought it was a real train and they thought they were going to die. I think we’re at that stage with blockchain now.”

At the time, I was puzzled by that comparison, but during my performance in “…And All the Reporters,” it started to make sense. Except I didn’t feel like the theatergoers; I felt like the train.

This article has been updated to reﬂect that the token for the performance was an ERC- 721, not an ERC-20, token.

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