Introduction
Social impact solutions power our societies. They drive the work of government and civil society leaders around the world. But the field of public problem-solving is plagued by unnecessary duplication, complication, and frustration due to the scarcity of reliable information on what works and what doesn’t. The same knowledge deficit often prevents successful pilot projects from achieving the scale required to benefit entire populations.
Over the last three years, the Blockchain Trust Accelerator has received countless requests for examples of projects that harness blockchain for social impact. Unlike fintech and commercial applications where there is a clear financial imperative to catalogue different use cases, solutions that benefit society are often understudied. Perhaps ironically for a technology grounded in the idea of decentralization, the absence of a central, curated repository of reliable information has slowed the adoption of blockchain in use cases like digital identity, humanitarian relief, remittances, agriculture, and microlending.
The Blockchain Impact Ledger was created to fill an information gap in the blockchain for social impact space. Without a trustworthy source of aggregated data about how blockchain is used in social impact projects, it is difficult for organizations interested in leveraging this powerful tool to learn from, and potentially coordinate with, other aligned initiatives.
Given the rapid pace of change and varying definitions of terms in the blockchain and social impact spaces, we expect the ledger to be a living document that will evolve as the landscape changes. We have published our methodology to ensure users of our research have a clear understanding of the basis for including information in the ledger. The methodology addresses both why we selected specific data points to include and how we define key elements. For example, since “social impact” can be challenging to assess, each listed project is tagged with one or more of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The Blockchain Impact Ledger complements research released by the Blockchain Trust Accelerator in the Blueprint for Blockchain and Social Innovation. Together, these two resources will help organizations and social impact leaders think through how to address global challenges with the support of frontier technology.
The Blockchain Impact Ledger is a research project managed by the Blockchain Trust Accelerator at New America and made possible by support from Social Alpha Foundation. The Blockchain Impact Ledger (BIL) is designed to be an informational tool, and neither BIL nor any output derived from BIL constitute investment advice.
This initial version of the Blockchain Impact Ledger is a deliberately early iteration, or a minimum viable product (MVP). It is not yet a comprehensive list of projects, nor has the categorization been completely finalized. We invite your feedback via these linked Google Forms on both the categorizations and other projects to evaluate for inclusion as we inform the next version of this resource, scheduled to be released in the fall.