New initiative to fight corruption with blockchain

Rage Commentary : Blockchain technology can not only subvert financial institutions, but also change management methods and achieve more transparent management, which can effectively solve the corruption problems in the management of some countries without spending too much cost to replace its infrastructure. Current potential applications of blockchain in management include: ensuring citizens have the right to claim land ownership, tracking and managing the delivery of vaccines, protecting citizens' voting rights, and allowing people to obtain legal identities. The application of blockchain in management can not only make people make more money, but also improve people's lives.

Translation: Nicole

The potential of blockchain, the underlying technology of Bitcoin, to revolutionize financial services is well known. However, few people know that blockchain technology can also revolutionize management and make management more transparent.

Tomicah Tillemann, director of the Bretton Woods II Initiative at New America, a Washington think tank that aims to bridge the gap between technology and policy, said:

Tomicah Tillemann

“Blockchain has the potential to be the killer app to eliminate corruption.”

As such, New America, blockchain company Bitfury Group, and the nongovernmental organization National Democratic Institute announced today that they have formed the Blockchain Trust Accelerator Initiative, which aims to bring together governments and technologists and funders to advance the adoption of blockchain technology for better social welfare and governance.

Tillemann, co-founder of the initiative, said:

“It’s fantastic that there’s a lot of money being invested in blockchain applications in the fintech space, which shows the huge potential of blockchain technology. But Bitfury, New America, NDI and all of our partners want to make sure that the disruptive potential of blockchain not only enables people to make more money, but also improves people’s lives.” (To date, $1.2 billion in venture capital has been invested in blockchain startups, most of which are financial services companies.)

Bitfury co-founder and CEO Valery Vavilov said in the statement,

Valery Vavilov

“I grew up in Latvia, a small country of 2 million people that was part of the Soviet Union until 1991 and is now a proud member of the European Union. As a child, I felt like my family lost a lot — their pensions, their life savings, their dreams — because systems and institutions didn’t serve the people. Blockchain can change the world for the better, and the Bitfury Group is committed to making it a success — something we all want.”

The accelerator will select projects that "make the world a better place," and Tillemann and co-founder Jamie Smith, who is also global chief communications officer, said potential applications of blockchain in governance include ensuring citizens have the right to claim land ownership, tracking and managing vaccine deliveries, protecting citizens' voting rights and applications for people to obtain legal identity.

Tillemann said:

“The truth is that traditional technologies don’t bring the right solution to every challenge.”

For example, a blockchain-based voting system would solve the problem of the fact that finding a polling place is time-consuming. Tillemann said:

"At that time, if you were a working mother or an hourly worker, it was not realistic to easily sacrifice time to vote. In many cases, most people could not afford to waste time in time-consuming queues to vote, so these people were deprived of the right to vote."

Secondly, in previous votes, citizens in many countries did not trust the accuracy of voting records, or the central voting authorities did not take these votes seriously. But because blockchain technology creates a transparent and tamper-proof ledger. Tillemann said:

"No government can change the outcome of a vote without being transparent about what happened. This level of accountability and security in ensuring an election process has never been seen before."

Smith added,

Jamie Smith

"In the next few years, if we work towards achieving global wifi, no doubt most people will have access to some cheap mobile phones, and now that there are such secure systems to allow transactions to take place, the implications for the future of democratic governance are beyond words."

The initiative's first pilot project is a land titling system that Bitfury announced in April in the Republic of Georgia using blockchain technology. Starting in July, the accelerator will set up a board to solicit proposals through a portal and review them for feasibility and partnership opportunities, as well as the feasibility of scaling the pilot to wider application. The best proposals will be matched with governments and funders, and then implementation can begin.

Smith said they will "make the lessons we learn from our various projects available to the world so other institutions can learn from them."

The program has already attracted the attention of prominent institutions. About 50 organizations attended a roundtable on Monday, with representatives from the White House, the Omidyar Foundation, the AFL-CIO and the Sunlight Foundation. The accelerator will hold such roundtables every month, Smith said:

“We invite anyone who is interested in this work.”

The accelerator is the product of Smith and Tillemann’s 15 years of experience working in democracy and governance. Smith worked for former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, and Tillemann worked for Clinton and John Kerry. Tillemann, whose portfolio at the State Department included working with emerging democracies to help them build governance systems with good accountability, said:

“In many countries, the underlying infrastructure is not very good, the processes are very poor, and even if you have excellent officials, you can’t run efficient, corruption-free institutions. If you can provide a platform with the same level of efficiency and transparency without investing too much in infrastructure, you can change the world and change the way citizens participate in national decision-making. The more I learn about blockchain, the more I am sure that blockchain is such a system.”

The accelerator program concluded at the recent 2016 Blockchain Summit on Sir Richard Branson's Necker Island in the Caribbean.

Bitfuryz initially focused on bitcoin mining and chip manufacturing, but has recently expanded into blockchain services, first with a land titling project and now with an accelerator program. Smith said the company will use blockchain to study governance and social welfare.