UN-CHAINED:
EXPERIMENTS AND
LEARNINGS IN
CRYPTO AT UNICEF
CHRISTOPHER FABIAN
UNICEF has a 70-year history of investing in new solutions that benefit chil-
niños. Examples of such technologies over the past decade include feature
phone platforms like RapidPro, cual, with more than 4.5 million users in 50
countries, has allowed governments and their partners to hear from young peo-
ple via SMS about where diseases are spreading, what services they need most,
or where relief might be needed after a disaster.1. Smartphone app MobileVRS
has helped raise the birth registration rate in Uganda from 28 por ciento a 70 por-
cent.2. The mHero platform has provided real-time information that assists in
the fight against Ebola by connecting health workers who needed actionable
information.3. Now we are preparing for a change that may rival the shift
brought on by the exponential increase in mobile phone ownership and access
during the 2000s—the possibility of immutable, accessible, decentralized global
networks of information and data. This potential change is often described as
the era of blockchain for development.
WHAT IS UNICEF?
The United Nations Children’s Fund,
universally known as UNICEF, works to
protect the rights of children around the
world. Es un $5.5 billion agency with over 12,000 personnel working in more than 190 countries.4. In its efforts to provide opportunity and choice for the world’s most vulnerable children, UNICEF works with governments to build programs that ensure that every child has access to edu- catión, health care, personal identity, and other essential rights. The organization works in both emergency situations (344 emergencies in 2017 solo) and more tra- ditional development and non-emer- 30 innovaciones / Blockchain for Global Development Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/12/1-2/30/705253/inov_a_00265.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023 gency settings.5. The agency uses data from household surveys, tools like RapidPro, and science platforms like the Magic Box to identify where and how it can help children achieve their full poten- tial.6. UNICEF, like any organization that is 72 years old, needs to reinvent itself fre- quently and rethink the tools it uses in a world of rapid technological, political, and social change. To help the organiza- tion prepare for change, UNICEF’s Venture Fund invests in emerging tech- nologies and creates portfolios of prod- ucts and entrepreneurs that can benefit humanity.7. In so doing, the Fund team considers the size of a new industry and its potential to have a positive impact on a billion children. En 2017, no technology had a steeper “hype-curve” or greater promise for solving any conceivable problem than blockchains, digital-crypto assets, smart contracts, and distributed ledgers. technological progress, While the UNICEF Ventures team tracks rapidly accelerating areas of scien- tific and it adheres to a set of principles derived from years of failed attempts to build technolo- gy in some of the most challenging envi- ronments in the world.8. This article lays out three areas where UNICEF Ventures is using principle-based investment to explore the impact blockchain will have on UNICEF’s work. Desde 2015, UNICEF Ventures has been working to understand the role blockchain can play in a world now offer- ing increased transparency and connec- actividad. We on the Ventures team tend to follow a heuristic learn-by-doing model with any new technology, and the last two ABOUT THE AUTHOR Christopher Fabian (@hichrisfabian) is a technologist who co-founded UNICEF’s Innovation Unit in 2006. He currently leads UNICEF Ventures. Together with Sunita Grote, Chris led the launch of the $17M UNICEF Venture Fund in 2015, creating the first fund of its kind in the
United Nations. The Fund uses a venture capital approach to invest in startups working on
frontier technology like virtual reality, aprendizaje automático, and blockchain technology that can
have a positive impact on humanity.
The Ventures team also makes larger secondary investments in platforms like UNICEF’s drone
testing corridors in Malawi and Vanuatua, as well as the Magic Box, an open source analyt-
ics platform that combines data and engineering skills from companies like Amadeus, IBM,
Google, Redhat, and Telefonica to produce insights that help the organization make better
real-time decisions. Previously, Chris’s teams have built solutions for problems facing low
infrastructure environments including award-winning work on RapidPro, an SMS-based infor-
mation system with more than 4.5M active users in 50 countries.
Chris’s teaches at NYU, Universidad de Tsinghua, IIT Delhi, and Singularity University and is an
invited speaker at major technology companies, national government, and United Nations
senior leadership fora exploring how to create fairness in a world of rapid technological
cambiar. His holds fellowships from the Tribeca Disruptor Foundation and Edmund Hillary
Fellowship, both focusing on investments in a more equitable global future. En 2013 he was
recognized as one of TIME Magazine’s «100 Most Influential People.»
© 2018 Christopher Fabian
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Christopher Fabian
solve the question of identity? (probably
not by itself) Is a crypto-kitty similar to a
food voucher?10. (No, but it’s not entirely
different) Should we have a token for . . .?
(almost certainly not). This time with our
colleagues was invaluable, as it allowed us
to be playful while exploring a new tech-
nology and to ground that exploration in
the needs we had seen through our own
experimentation. Our partners in turn
helped us develop our first call for pro-
posals for a cohort of blockchain compa-
nies that the Venture Fund would invest
en.
Tercero, we develop a call for proposals to
find the companies the Venture Fund can
invest in. We have created portfolios
around data science, virtual and aug-
mented reality, and drones and UAVs.
Blockchain has been no different, and we
would not have been able to define the
parameters of this call or conduct credible
assessments of the companies that applied
if we hadn’t first built up our own internal
understanding.11.
resources
Además, we would not have received as
many diverse applications if we had not
built up a network of partners who could
a través de
compartir
hackathons, media, and personal connec-
ciones. These portfolios enable us to man-
age the risk of a new technology area and
to test multiple hypotheses simultaneous-
ly. This approach allows us to start with a
problem space without having to define
the solution so closely that we are stuck
with a specific blockchain, or with a par-
particular
tecnología
acercarse.
opportunities
exclusive
y
y
nuestro
We grounded our explorations in
three identified areas of need—resources,
efficiencies, and solutions—which we
examine below.
years have been no different. Tenemos
built prototypes and sample applications.
We have used the knowledge we gained to
create new partnerships. We have shared
our findings and failures with other
organizations that are similarly interest-
ed.
Our explorations have led us to see
three potential uses for blockchain:
1.
To focus more resources on prob-
lems that affect children
2.
To create greater efficiencies within
the public sector
3.
To fundamentally disrupt some
existing models for development and
social good
OUR PROCESS FOR
EXPLORING NEW
TECHNOLOGY
The process our team followed for
blockchain is similar to the one we fol-
lowed when exploring previous emerging
or frontier technologies. It goes like this.
Primero, we develop an understanding of
what the technology is. This involves ask-
ing simple questions such as, What is a
simbólico? What is a blockchain? What is a
smart contract? What do “permissions”
significar? Then we begin to build our own
products. We do this expecting failure
and are rarely disappointed. Our failures
thus far include an app to help register a
refugee on a blockchain and a system for
collaborative decisionmaking. After each
attempt, we record what we learned, qué
did and did not work.9. Our various failed
attempts gave us stories to tell and created
a framework within which to talk with
our partners.
Segundo, we seek to establish partner-
buques. While working with blockchain,
our teams spent several months with
friends and collaborators at conferences,
at workshops we hosted, and at events
that addressed questions stemming from
our initial applications: Can blockchain
32
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UN-chained: Experiments and Learnings in Crypto at UNICEF
OUR FIRST EXPERIMENT
En 2015 we conducted our first experiments with a blockchain—specifically, con el
Bitcoin blockchain. Our hypothesis was that we could take a photo of a person, link it
to their personal information (date of birth, name, etc.), encode those elements, y
publish a cryptographically secure link to the encoded information on the blockchain.
That link, because it would be on a public, permissionless network, would last “forever”
and would be an immutable identity. We further posited that, because a UNICEF
address would post that link to the blockchain as a microtransaction, it would be linked
to a credible organization. This would provide irrefutable provenance.
Our initial tests had positive results. We were able to register and encrypt photos of
our team members. We then were able to recover the photographs using the link posted
on the blockchain. Finalmente, we compared the photo to the actual team member, creating
a cycle of identity capture, management, and validation.
Pero, as with many early experiments, we built the technology prototype without having
any users and without the context of a larger system. For our prototype to work, gobierno-
ernment officials would have to be trained and would need devices on which the
UNICEF application was installed, and we would need to finance the cost of many
repeated transactions on a public ledger. Every user would have to be trained to mem-
orize their personal passcode (in a world where even sophisticated users have “pass-
word” as their password). Our first pilot failed quickly and taught us a great deal.
OUR FIRST PROBLEM AREA:
MORE RESOURCES TO HELP
CHILDREN
At the time of this writing, Junio 2018, el
market capitalization of all major cryp-
tocurrencies is around $250 billion.12. A quarter-trillion-dollar capitalization, tiene- ing grown from nothing, must certainly raise questions, including this one: Is this a pool of resources that can be tapped to increase funding for global development and humanitarian work? Looking at some of the most robust cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ether, we must ask if these relatively stable currencies offer an opportunity to finance the work of inter- national development in a different way. There seems to be such potential. In early 2018, the Pineapple Fund donated $55 million in Bitcoin to charities and
included the tagline, “Because once you
have enough money, money doesn’t mat-
ter.” Mexican crypto-exchange Bitso
offered to send donations to earthquake
survivors that were made in Bitcoin,
Ether, and XRP (three current major
cryptocurrencies). UNICEF France mobi-
lized the online gaming community to
“mine” Ether on their own computers and
send the newly minted digital coins to a
UNICEF account.13. This simple proto-
type ended up raising 84 Ether (más
than US $40,000 at the time of writing). Many of the organizations that accept cryptocurrency in the charitable and development space translate it directly into standard national fiat currency, as was the case with our Ether mining exper- mento. In such cases, when an amount of cryptocurrency (p.ej., 2 Bitcoin) is “sent” to a charity, it goes initially to an interme- diary NGO or company that translates it into fiat (usually dollars or euros), takes a commission, and passes the fiat currency along to the intended recipient. This is a mostly win-win-win approach, as it allows someone to give cryptocurrency in a form that is easy and comfortable for them, then allows that currency to be translated into the “normal” currency the receiving organization prefers. innovaciones / volumen 12, number 1/2 33 Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/12/1-2/30/705253/inov_a_00265.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023 Christopher Fabian This middleman approach, sin embargo, does not enjoy some of the main benefits of cryptocurrency. Because it gets exchanged for fiat quite quickly, the ben- efits stemming from that donation are not linked to the actual funder. The crypto- graphic provenance (“electronic finger- print”) that allows a recipient to identify the history of any Bitcoin or Ether it receives has been broken. In light of this, the Ventures team soon started to ask, what if we could hold crypto-assets on our books without exchanging them for dollars? That would enable UNICEF to receive, hold, and use a cryptocurrency in its original form. Efforts to ensure that cryptographic assets classifications follow the necessary laws and regulatory frameworks are occurring throughout the technology sec- colina, and within certain governments that see the potential. The recent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rul- ing that Bitcoin and Ether are assets, not securities, certainly helped point the field in a new direction.14. As more govern- ments and markets solidify their positions as the “grandparents” of cryptocurren- cíes, organizations will be increasingly interested in bringing these assets onto their own books. Being able to prove where donated money is going is important. To achieve that level of transparency with cryptocur- rencies, organizations will need to be able to receive, manage, and distribute crypto funds without converting them. En otras palabras, to track where your Bitcoin dona- tion went, it has to end up at the point of need still as Bitcoin. OUR SECOND CHALLENGE: INCREASED TRANSPARENCY MEANS OPERATING DIFFERENTLY An like international organization UNICEF moves a lot of money. En 2016, UNICEF procured $1.6 billion worth of
vaccines, paid the salaries of 12,000 global
staff and subcontractors, and in 2017
transferred $158 million in cash to more than 10 million people in need.15. The more we can reduce friction in these transactions, the more of each dollar can reach its intended recipient. In addition to the regulatory ques- tions surrounding cryptocurrency, there is a range of governance and security issues. Financial disbursement usually is done through an existing table of author- idad: one person makes a request for money to move, then someone above them in the accountability structure signs off on that request. Much of this functionality can be described in what is known as a smart contract (see “Blockchain for Global Development” in this issue), in particular a multisignature wallet (see “Blockchain and Property 2018” in this issue) that control access to an organization’s cryp- tocurrency. A multisignature wallet allows an organization the same functionality that exists in normal financial tables of authority, but it can write that functional- ity into code that is publicly viewable, auditable, and difficult to compromise. The following is an example of how a standard table of authority might be described in English: “In order to move X money, person a has to make a request, person b has to co-sign that request, and person c has to look at (a + b signatures) and authorize the movement of X money.” That same logic can be written into a smart contract, which will automat- ically check what has happened and who has agreed at various stages, and then 34 innovaciones / Blockchain for Global Development Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/12/1-2/30/705253/inov_a_00265.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023 UN-chained: Experiments and Learnings in Crypto at UNICEF WHY “KEEP CRYPTO CRYPTO” The approaches we consider most valuable are those that enable us to receive bitcoin, Por ejemplo, then to invest it without converting it into a fiat or sovereign currency. As Vitalik Buterin wrote recently on Twitter, “Reminder: cryptocurrencies are still a new and hyper-volatile asset class, and could drop to near-zero at any time. Don’t put in more money than you can afford to lose. If you’re trying to figure out where to store your life savings, traditional assets are still your safest bet.”1. Having a system that enables us to receive, almacenar, and distribute the cryp- tocurrency sent to us would keep its volatility firewalled from traditional orga- nizational resources. Practically speaking, that may mean having a separate sec- tion in a financial report for cryptocurrency. It will certainly mean considering what type of asset it is within the relevant jurisdiction of one’s organization or what the impact of dispensing it would be in the jurisdictions where it is being spent. This may seem like a lot of work, but we believe it has benefits. In initial analyses, crypto-donors’ expectations tend to differ from those of traditional donors. Por ejemplo, early investors in or architects of various blockchain-relat- ed systems are comfortable with a higher level of experimentation, failure, and risk than traditional development donors (p.ej., governments and foundations). This may create opportunities to develop funding proposals or programs that present greater risks in the early stages but potentially lead to greater innova- ciones. The transparency of those technologies may also create new expectations about how accountable organizations can be. As more of our partners offer serv- ices that can be paid for in cryptocurrency, the number of ways to disburse Bitcoin, Ether, or similar currencies will increase. One can imagine a world in which pharmaceutical companies or connectivity providers (p.ej., mobile net- work operators) accept payments in Bitcoin, which would enable international organizations holding these assets to invest them directly—and to enable their donors to see exactly where their resources are being used and how. If this type of radical transparency and traceability becomes an assumption for interna- tional development money from both individual donors and governments, large organizations that depend on voluntary funding would do well to start under- standing the intricacies of the new financial networks sooner rather than later. 1. Vitalik Buterin is a programmer/writer who was a cofounder of Ethereum and Bitcoin Magazine. implement the same checks and balances as a regular contract—but it will do so faster, more transparently, and in an easi- ly repeatable manner. This type of organi- zational security—essentially replicating existing processes but describing them in a new technology—can enable an organi- zation to start working with blockchains with the comfort of knowing that there is innovations / volumen 12, number 1/2 35 Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/12/1-2/30/705253/inov_a_00265.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023 Christopher Fabian both something new and something familiar at play. The ability to describe contractual logic on a public blockchain means that the author (or authors) of a contract can write stipulations into code; Por ejemplo, “Only pay the vendor when the goods have been received” or “When the vac- cines have arrived, create a new purchase order for one of the five delivery compa- nies on the following list.” This means that, once a certain contractual logic has been described, it can be replicated easily and at low cost. A second benefit of writ- ing contractual logic onto a public blockchain is that it becomes visible and immutable. A publicly visible, immutable con- tractual vehicle that can automatically check for certain conditions and carry out actions based on those conditions creates opportunities for an organization to be more efficient. We can imagine a future in which many human actions—verifying that a shipment has arrived by filling out a paper form, waiting for that form to be transformed into an electronic record, waiting for that record to go to a supervi- sor, and so on—can be done quickly and automatically, thereby saving a large organization and its partners time and money. A secondary effect is that, because an organization like UNICEF would describe its logic publicly, it could immediately begin to get advice and share best prac- tices with other public institutions and perhaps find new ways of doing their work because of sharing. Smart contracts can easily connect to other smart contracts. One could imagine UNICEF connecting its smart contracts to those of its partners, thereby creating logical pathways for sharing payments or deciding on actions jointly. Radical open- ness, sin embargo, is an imposing concept for any organization. Thus the Ventures team decided to start with a concrete problem and, most importantly, to work in a con- text where smart contracts could actually be used. UNICEF’s Kazakhstan country office, one of its 190 offices around the globe, is located in Astana. In the first half of 2017, the Kazakhstan team had been exploring faster and more agile ways to complete contracts. Through discussions with local startup incubators and accelerators, and with partners in the Kazakh financial sec- colina, the UNICEF office offered a chal- lenge: could local software developers, working in Solidity (the programming language used to create smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain), create an electronic version of a traditional UNICEF payment contract. In October 2017, UNICEF Kazakhstan invited more than 150 soft- ware engineers and developers from the Russian-speaking world to a hackathon in Astana. Our lead blockchain engineer came from New York to work with local technology experts, finalize the challenge, and launch the two-day workshop. During the hackathon, our team pre- sented the need for a smart contract that would enable transactions between two specific entities: UNICEF and a hypothet- ical software development consultancy. Our setup mirrored a typical UNICEF- vendor relationship: a service is desired; a contract is created to break that service into specific deliverables; deliverables are achieved (or not); payment is rendered; the contract is concluded. The challenge was to create the Solidity code that would automatically pay deliverables on their completion. The basic logic that would power the contract would be as follows: A service is desired, a contract is created, and Ether (cryptocur- rency) in the amount established in the contract is held in escrow. As each deliv- erable is marked complete, the smart con- tract checks the code the vendor pro- duced to confirm certain indicators of 36 innovaciones / Blockchain for Global Development Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/12/1-2/30/705253/inov_a_00265.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023 UN-chained: Experiments and Learnings in Crypto at UNICEF UNICEF Hackathon in Astana Kazakhstan, 2017 Fuente: The Astana Times. completion. When the smart contract confirms that each piece of the code meets certain requirements, it transfers a prede- termined portion of the Ether to the soft- ware developer. As with many early stage efforts, we learned more than we gained directly from the exercise. Primero, and not entirely surprisingly, UNICEF contractual logic is complicated and can be confusing to well- intentioned software developers. We spent a good portion of the time explain- ing our own procedures without even get- ting close to technical development. Key blockchain lesson learned— Simply saying blockchain does not fix a broken system. As with any technology, the foundation needs to be clean and solid before building something new. We must be able to express our problem statement clearly, including describing the need and the stakeholders, before we bring that problem into contact with new technolo- gy. lesson Second, we learned that, although Solidity is similar to existing languages, some of the fundamentals were missing for the software developers we brought together. We also spent a significant amount of time teaching the program- ming language rather than applying it to actual problems. Blockchain learned—The blockchain technology itself is moving quickly, and there may be fewer program- mers and developers who are familiar with the technology than are needed. We suggest that efforts to build capacity in key markets begin immediately by teach- ing fundamental skills and concepts of distributed networks, as there will be a learning curve, even for programmers who are used to corporate software devel- opment. innovaciones / volumen 12, number 1/2 37 Descargado de http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/12/1-2/30/705253/inov_a_00265.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023 Christopher Fabian Figure 1. Investment thesis for UNICEF’s Venture Fund www.unicefinnovationfund.org We will be running another set of hackathons in the second half of 2018. In these workshops, which will focus on operational applications of blockchain, our aim will be to use what we learned from our first attempt: • We have further articulated our challenges, with a view to making the problems clear and universal. We are focusing on issues that could apply to any supply or logistics context, which may include a specific example from a UNICEF contract or situation. We are working with local technol- • ogy advance to provide groups reading/pre-work to all participants to ensure that they have a common set of skills coming into the workshop. • We are offering the challenge through more internal channels, as it became clear that part of the benefit of the Kazakhstan workshop was involving our own staff and bringing the concepts of distributed ledgers and smart contracts into our office. This will be a main goal of the coming workshops, as we believe that having a basic understanding of this tech- nology permeate the organization will enhance its eventual uptake. These types of workshops, which involve framing an organizational chal- lenge, inviting external experts to partici- pate, and building internal understanding and acceptance of a new technology, are a valuable tool for scanning the horizon, as they provide a low-risk environment for experimentation and learning. The results must be captured and built on, as the value of a hackathon as a stand-alone, solution-oriented event is relatively low. Partners developed for one workshop must be involved in subsequent work; it must be noted that the effort that goes into building partnerships and collabora- tions is not small, and these relationships should be treated as valuable assets. While a two-day workshop cannot provide complete solutions or answers, it can encourage organizational learning and provide the scaffolding for later 38 innovaciones / Blockchain for Global Development Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/12/1-2/30/705253/inov_a_00265.pdf by guest on 08 Septiembre 2023 UN-chained: Experiments and Learnings in Crypto at UNICEF THE CONTENT OF THE UNICEF CALL FOR PROPOSALS When we posted our call for proposals through UNICEF’s Venture Fund, we focused on the four major areas presented here. Some will be familiar from the text of this arti- cle, others may provide ground for further exploration. En general, this list highlights our vision of where blockchain may take us. It will be as incorrect as was any list written in 1995 about the potential of the Internet. Here is the original text of the UNICEF call for proposals issued in April 2018: The UNICEF Innovation Fund is looking to make $50-90K equity-free investments to provide
early stage (seed) finance to for-profit technology start-ups that have the potential to benefit
humanity.
If you’ve got a start-up registered in one of UNICEF’s programme countries and have a work-
En g, open source prototype (or you are willing to make it open-source) showing promising
resultados, the UNICEF Innovation Fund is looking for you.
We are currently looking to invest in a group of companies developing software solutions on
open blockchains. Examples of these include, but are not limited to:
Smart Contracts
Using smart contracts to replicate and improve on existing organizational mechanisms
Efficiencies, transparencies, and accountabilities in contractual engagements (es decir. multi-sig
contracts that guarantee certain actors were involved)
Transparency in distribution of resources (can we better show where our money is going?)
Interactions across groups (what would a SWIFT code for development look like, if described
in Solidity?)
Increasing access and use of tokenized systems by creating more user friendly and more secure
interfaces
Analyzing data
Using machine learning to understand the activities on public blockchains.
Can we develop unicity from transactions on public blockchains?
Could we use crypto-flows to help organizations and governments do and understand their
transactions more efficiently? Can we use blockchain-derived data to solve humanitarian chal-
lentes?
Tokens
Can crypto tokens work to incentivize or support behavior that benefits humanity?
How could we connect various tokens to each other to maximize human potential?
How could we utilize digital scarcity, non-fungible tokens, or digital collectibles for social
bien?
Minería
Can we use passive distributed mining networks to create investment funding opportunities
for the UNICEF Venture Fund?
As noted in the main text, this call resulted in 100 applications from companies registered in
45 different countries. UNICEF Ventures will be announcing the complete portfolio of invest-
ments mid-Summer, 2018.
Fuente: UNICEF Original Text of UNICEF Call
http://unicefstories.org/blockchaincall/
for Proposals, Abril, 2018
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Christopher Fabian
acceptance and scale of a new technology,
such as distributed ledgers.
BLOCKCHAIN VENTURE
INVESTMENTS IN
TECHNOLOGY FOR SOCIAL
GOOD
Once an organization is comfortable with
the internal or operational ramifications
of working with distributed cryptograph-
ic technology, it can start to examine ways
to improve its programmatic functions.
While the application of blockchains for
transactions and accounting is quite clear,
the Ventures team has started to look at
what role this can play in some of
UNICEF’s external activities: Podría
blockchains be used to store education
records and identities? Is there a role for
this technology in paying teachers and
other frontline workers? Can blockchain
be used to create liquidity and build eco-
nomic potential in environments where
people are unbanked or traditional infra-
structure does not exist?
The third area of UNICEF Ventures’
approach to blockchain involves defining
these questions clearly and then investing
in several low-cost experiments and start-
ups to establish a portfolio of encouraging
soluciones. The portfolio
emergent
approach is important because we are still
at such an early stage with blockchain
technology that many of our investments
will fail. Having a cluster of approaches
will enable the team to learn from the fail-
ures and to share what it learns with the
organización; we believe this is the best
way to manage the early stage risk while
maintaining currency with the technolo-
gy itself.
In April 2018, UNICEF’s Venture
Fund opened up a specific call for compa-
nies in our 135 program countries that are
experimenting with blockchain to do
social good. This first public portfolio call
generated applications from more than
100 companies in 45 of UNICEF’s focus
countries.
AN ANALOGOUS EXAMPLE
OF PRIOR TECHNOLOGY:
MOBILE BIRTH
REGISTRATION
lecciones
Over the last decade, similar UNICEF-led
exploration into emerging technology has
that are directly
generated
informing our approach to finding where
blockchains can help UNICEF work more
effectively. Between 2009 y 2012,
innovation
UNICEF’s Uganda-based
team developed, probado, and began to scale
a system for mobile phone-based birth
certification. A 2016 UNICEF paper cap-
tures several of the reasons a birth certifi-
cate is vital:
Apart from being the first legal
acknowledgement of a child’s
existence, birth registration is
central to ensuring that children
are counted and have access to
basic services such as health,
social security and education.
Knowing the age of a child is cen-
tral to protecting them from
child labour, being arrested and
treated as adults in the justice
sistema, forcible conscription in
armed forces, child marriage,
trafficking and sexual exploita-
ción. A birth certificate as proof
of birth can support the trace-
ability of unaccompanied and
separated children and promote
safe migration. In effect, birth
registration is their “passport to
protection.” Despite the impor-
tance of obtaining official and
documented proof of registra-
ción, alrededor 290 million children
(o 45 per cent of all children
under age five worldwide), hacer
40
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UN-chained: Experiments and Learnings in Crypto at UNICEF
Cifra 2. Birth registration coverage for children in Uganda, 2000-2015
Fuente: UNICEF
not possess a birth certificate.16.
En 2009 in Uganda, the number of chil-
dren without birth certificates was even
más alto; 74 percent of young Ugandans
had no certification of their birth. Many
of the reasons for this had to do with the
difficulty new mothers had in accessing
the government personnel in charge of
registration services. If no one in a town
or village could provide a birth certificate,
a mother would have to travel for several
days to a large city to get one, at great per-
sonal expense. When interviewed in 2010,
UNICEF Uganda child protection spe-
cialist Augustine Wassago, one initiator
of the mobile registration project, noted
eso, in addition to the high cost and time
delays, “the paperwork [to get a certificate
had] to move through several overly
bureaucratic stages.”17.
En 2010, Augustine and the UNICEF
Uganda team looked at mobile technolo-
gy in the way many innovators are look-
ing at blockchain today. They thought
that the capacity smart phones provide
could create more accurate records,
increase the speed of service delivery, y
“leapfrog” over broken and distressed
infrastructure. After several years of
desarrollo, the MobileVRS system—
the platform they built for birth registra-
tion—was ready to deploy. Por 2015, birth
registration rates in Uganda were above
68 por ciento, well above the global average,
but it had taken six years for the system to
become functional on a national level.
The chart above shows the system’s
growth and compares it the projected
increases if there had been no technologi-
para
intervención. It took years
California
MobileVRS to prove its potential, y el
effort in Uganda will continue to scale.
Mientras tanto, a similar program is being
rolled out in neighboring Tanzania.
Two other relevant takeaways from
the figure above relate to timing.
Primero, MobileVRS runs on smart-
phones. En 2010, smartphone penetration
was minimal in Uganda. The initial ver-
sions of MobileVRS used a basic feature
phone (one that uses only SMS) y un
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Christopher Fabian
simple keypad for data entry. We were
building the system even when the tech-
nology was not fully in place.
Segundo, for the first three years
MobileVRS was in use (2009-2012) allá
was almost no difference between the rate
births registered on the new platform and
métodos tradicionales. The effort could have
been shut down at any point along the
way with the easy excuse that it was
adding little value. The steep rate of
growth did not begin until 2012-2013.
The takeaway? Building new things and
changing national systems takes time.
While we should be excited about the
promise of new technology, we should
not underestimate how impervious large
systems are to rapid change.
We learned many other lessons
through our work with MobileVRS,
RapidPro, and other large-scale use of
new technologies in the space of develop-
ment and social good. En 2017, UNICEF’s
Venture Fund invested in a South African
startup called Trustlab, which was build-
ing Amply, a solution to track attendance
in early childhood development centers.
Trustlab staff described Amply:
Amply is changing [children’s
lives] by giving every child a dig-
ital identity that proves who they
son. With Amply, children can
access benefits that they are enti-
tled to receive. For instance,
Amply is enabling children in
South Africa to get personalized
pre-school education, by proving
that they exist and that they are
attending class. This is a simple,
but important start to greater
possibilities.
Amply is designed to store a
child’s digital identity and per-
sonal information, privately—in
a way that is “self-sovereign” and
directly beneficial to them. Encima
tiempo, their records become a rich
source of data and value that can
be used to receive services. Su
gathered data will also generate
insights to tailor the service to be
more predictive, precise, persona-
alized, preventive, and participa-
conservador. Due to Amply’s flexibility,
one can create an entirely new
kind of services which can be
delivered locally or virtually.18.
What Trustlab was proposing, and what
interested the Venture Fund, was the abil-
ity to use a combination of blockchain
technology to both register children’s
attendance in South Africa’s early child-
hood development centers and use the
immutability of a blockchain to provide a
record for a teacher so they could be paid
for their work. Trustlab was part of the
Fund’s first portfolio of investments, y
it was funded long before we had under-
taken much of the workd described in this
artículo. Sin embargo, working closely with
a company that was applying blockchain
technology in a learning and experiment-
ing phase helped us develop our own
understanding and fluency with the tech-
nología.
By the end of its investment period,
Trustlab had made significant progress
with the Amply platform. Here is their
description from our end-of-investment
presentations:
Amply platform has field-tested
en 77 Centers with 2,700 niños
registered, and we’ve digitized
55,000 attendance records dur-
ing our pilot in South Africa.
Amply is a blockchain applica-
tion platform for digitizing serv-
ice-delivery claims. [Nota: el
ability to pay a teacher based on
attendance is a “claim” of a “ser-
vice” provided; it is verified by
the ongoing collection of atten-
dance data.]
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UN-chained: Experiments and Learnings in Crypto at UNICEF
A closer look: Teachers use the
Amply mobile app to register
niños. Each day they capture
and submit digitally signed serv-
ice-delivery claims. A software
protocol automatically processes
these claims and creates trust-
worthy accounting and perform-
ance
records, with verified
data—producing cryptographic
[records] that can be exchanged
for funding.
In South Africa, Trustlab has
succeeded in securing a revenue-
generating contract to customise
the Amply applications for the
Smartstart ECD Social Franchise
and to provide this platform as a
service to 3,000 comunidad-
based agents. The ambition of
Smartstart is to grow this agent
network to 100,000 agents by
2020.
Reflecting on the comparisons between
Amply and Uganda’s MobileVRS stories
can guide our early investments in
blockchain technology and how we might
apply distributed ledgers to resolve issues
with national-level systems gaps—like the
difficulty in capturing records accurately
or paying frontline workers like teachers
or health specialists—and create faster,
more responsive systems. The registra-
tion of 2,300 students and the resulting
55,000 records may not seem large com-
pared to the 800,000 students in South
Africa who are currently receiving subsi-
dies for part of their education, but it is a
beginning.
The cohort of blockchain companies
we are funding in the summer of 2018 will
vastly diversify our activities and give us a
range of other applications far beyond
education payments. It will also deepen
our technological understanding as we
select a subset of companies that are
pushing the current limits of crypto-
graphic technologies, our hope being that
they can give us a better sense of what lies
ahead.
Finalmente, this portfolio of investments
will make these lessons learned far more
available across the organization: cada
company can be connected with the
UNICEF office in its respective country of
registration, which will allow for sharing
conocimiento, critiques, and advice. Estos
connections will create a greater ability to
understand the needs of our global organ-
ization and build products to address
those needs.
CONCLUSIÓN
UNICEF is trying to be careful and hum-
ble about our work in the exciting and
often over-hyped world of cryptographic
technology because we believe that it can
give us tools to do our jobs better and to
serve the world’s most vulnerable chil-
dren more effectively. Sin embargo, in addi-
tion to providing opportunities for the
children of today, we need to understand
and be ready for the world of the children
of tomorrow. This includes considering
the following questions:
How will we work with cryptocurren-
cies in a way that fits our legal and regula-
tory frameworks?
How can we start building organiza-
tional efficiencies using smart contracts,
which we must do to keep pace with the
best practices of global businesses today?
What should we experiment with to
show future uses for blockchain technolo-
gies, and how can we support our portfo-
lio of startups so we will be ready for
where the technology may take us?
We are pursuing these areas in small
and iterative steps, and closely following
our principles of innovation.19. The jour-
ney thus far has enabled us to work with
gobiernos, major corporations, y
other international organizations, y
with the UN Innovation Network, a
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Christopher Fabian
share what we are learning and to build
collaboration around a quickly changing
set of technologies.20.
We know that if our technological
efforts do not respond to requests from
the people who most need positive change
in their lives, we will fail to construct
robusto, meaningful solutions. While tech-
nologies are so often built for the most
conectado, wealthiest consumers, tenemos
the potential to direct the positive, marco-
work-shifting energy of the cryptographic
community toward creating opportuni-
ties for the world’s most marginalized cit-
izen. We know that if we do not build
openly and collaboratively and create
pathways for other open-source projects,
empresarios, and organizations to par-
ticipate in developing new distributed
approaches to development, we will end
up replicating entrenched systems of con-
controlar, ambiguity, and isolation.
Finalmente, as with any new approach
that involves new actors, initiatives, lan-
calibres, and opportunities, there is enor-
mous pressure to deliver first and deliver
biggest. We in the international technolo-
gy community will have many failures as
we begin to translate the potential, y
limitations, of blockchains into accessible
principles and practice. We must share
our failures with the public and try not to
repeat them as we build new ways to
address some of the most pressing prob-
lems our planet faces.
Expresiones de gratitud
Sunita Grote
(@sunitagrote), OMS
cofounded the UNICEF Venture Fund
with me, has been the guiding force on
discussions within the organization that
have pushed forward questions around
crypto-asset classification and a new
breed of resources for UNICEF. She and
the Venture Fund team have also bravely
sorted through and supported the many
wonderful companies under manage-
mento. Qusai Jouda (@QusaiJouda) served
as our Blockchain Lead during 2017 y
helped us understand the potential with a
sense of humor and excitement. Miguel
Fabrikant
nuestro
Software Lead, built our first blockchain
application in 2015, named it “221 teddy-
bears,” and never looked back.
(@mikefabrikant),
1. See www.rapidpro.io.
2. Ver
https://blogs.unicef.org/innovation/innova-
tions-in-partnerships-and-technology-for-
birth-registration/.
3. See http://www.mhero.org/;
https://www.intrahealth.org/news/mhero-
updates-health-workers-on-ebola-in-real-
tiempo.
4. See www.unicef.org.
5. See https://www.unicefusa.org/about/publi-
cations/annual-report-2017.
6. Ver
https://www.unicef.org/statistics/index_2430
2.html;
https://community.rapidpro.io/blog/how-
use-rapidpro-collect-data-indicators/;
http://unicefstories.org/magicbox/.
7. See www.unicefinnovationfund.org.
8. Ver https://digitalprinciples.org/.
9. See www.unicefstories.org/blockchain.
10. Ver
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/style/c
ryptokitties-want-a-blockchain-snuggle.html.
11. See unicefstories.org/blockchaincall/.
12. Ver https://coinmarketcap.com/.
13. “Ethereum is a decentralized platform for
applications that run exactly as programmed
without any chance of fraud, censorship or
Ver
third-party
https://www.ethereum.org/.
también
https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/02/unicef
-game-chaingers-mining-for-charity/.
14. See https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/14/bit-
coin-and-ethereum-are-not-securities-but-
some-cryptocurrencies-may-be-sec-official-
says.html.
15. Ver
https://www.unicef.org/supply/index_immu-
interference.”
Ver
44
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UN-chained: Experiments and Learnings in Crypto at UNICEF
nization.html.
16. Ver
https://www.unicef.org/protection/57929_580
10.html.
17. See https://www.unicef.org/infobycoun-
try/uganda_57195.htm
18. Ver
http://unicefstories.org/2016/11/14/9needs-
connected-development-building-amply-a-
web-of-trust-for-children/.
19. Ver
https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_ethics_of_i
nnovation.
20. See www.uninnovation.network.
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