Blockchain for Proof of Impact and Transparency
Nowhere in the world is there an agreed standard for the measurement of social impact. Why are we not using blockchain to affirm the humanity of all people in a sustainable way?
We started Choice with the aim to create and give tangible value to social impact. Choice is a blockchain-based payments gateway that greatly reduces transaction fees by introducing a direct transfer infrastructure between customers and merchants. We take half of those merchant savings and donate them to registered charities of the consumers’ choice.
On the way to our goal of building a liberated payments ecosystem we aim to create a way to measure the social impact generated by the network, utilising the transparent blockchain ledger to track where these funds are going and what impact they are creating.
Blockchain networks produce a fully auditable and valid ledger of transactions, maintained by distributed nodes. The ledger is indelible, immutable and sometimes public. Security and transparency working side by side — a scalable platform on which to create widespread disintermediation.
By turning systemic security into a trust currency, value flows freely without the need for third parties to verify when or where. No need for banks or insurance companies, even Uber or Airbnb to exist in their current forms — and they disintermediated their own industries just a few short years ago.
Blockchains are a perfect environment for value to exist and move. But what kinds of value are we putting on them?
Traditional capital has reached the point where its appropriations have enabled us to enslave others and hurt our humanity and environment.
And as you would expect, most are using blockchain technology to shift, measure, and secure what they perceive is value — ultimately boiling down to the form of traditional fiat currency. This will accentuate the problems created by our traditional economic models.
I argue that this is not sustainable due to the very fact that trust and transparency are built in to blockchains.
On the flip side some are focusing on value that is inherent and unique to us, establishing foundations to create open technology that will store value like our own identities and the data we generate, giving us sovereign control over where and when this is accessed. This marks an evolution for currency and we are in the midst of the beginnings of it. When myself, Alex and Fraser first got together to talk about blockchain, we started by looking at other types of values that are inherent and unique to human beings — like the ability to choose to make positive impact on each other and our environment.
And so Choice was born to marry social enterprise with blockchain and create tangible good. We are well aware of the challenges associated with developing blockchain networks and creating decentralised organisations, so we have given ourselves a mandate to serve our stakeholders — the charities and the people ultimately benefitting from this redistribution. This makes governance decisions clearer for Choice, and we will be sharing how we utilise and combine innovative decentralised structures that other organisations are implementing all over the globe throughout our journey.
We are utilising the highly scalable and secure NEM.io blockchain to bring Choice to life, having recently secured grant funding for our community fund proposal with overwhelming support from the NEM Foundation and community.
Join us on our journey to liberate payments, starting with New Zealand. We are currently working with Kiwibank at their FinTech Accelerator 2.0 and in discussions with major partners all over the country.
