Problem

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) created by the United Nations General Assembly is the world’s best plan to build a better reality for everything and everyone on our planet by 2030. Adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, the SDGs are a call to action for all countries – poor, rich, and middle-income – to promote prosperity while protecting the environment. The SDGs recognize that ending poverty must go hand-in-hand with strategies that build economic growth and address a range of social needs, including education, health, equality, and job opportunities while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.

Currently, humanity faces a $2.5 trillion funding gap to achieve the SDGs by 2030. This gap is not due to a lack of capital, but rather, a misalignment between the funding available and sustainable projects that need financing. Blackrock Investments alone leverages $6 trillion to call for investable businesses to prove a positive social impact. According to the WWF, it would cost $3 trillion per year to achieve the SDGs, provided the pre-existing, annualized, global contributions of $140 billion in aid and the $7.8 billion in philanthropic donations are utilized for development projects.

How can we correct the capital imbalance between impactful projects in need and capable financiers looking for sustainable social impact projects?

Solution

ConsenSys and WWF teamed up to launch Impactio, a project curation and funding platform for the Sustainable Development Goals. Impactio utilizes blockchain technology and a tokenization framework to maximize collaboration between funders/investors, subject-matter experts, and organizations to bring social impact projects to life.

The platform uses a system inspired by ConsenSys’ research on Token Curated Registry (TCR) to curate a list of high-impact, high-potential projects to present to potential funders. Overall, Impactio creates a positive network effect through consensus objective-decision making, where experts perform due diligence collaboratively, and donors feel confident in supporting approved projects.

Impact

Impactio experimented for two years across multiple pilots to achieve what it has today. During this time, the platform established product-market fit and improved the state of the user experience. The first live pilot further validated our vision with significant engagement and results:

Projects submitted from 17 countries
70 curators across 20+ disciplines and areas of expertise
250+ hours of curation across the four phases of the application selection process
500+ curation actions completed by the curators to compile the curated list

During a seven-week pilot program from July 1 to August 21, Impactio attracted over 100 participants who approved 17 social and environmental projects through its token-based curation process.

34 projects submitted and reviewed
30 projects endorsed
21 projects challenged
195 votes on challenged projects
17 projects made it to the Impactio Curated List
During the review phase, there were over 220 value-adding interactions on the platform between curators and project leaders.

Learn More

You may learn more about the project here.

Role

Project Lead
Head Blockchain Architect & Blockchain Engineer

Impactio: Blockchain Case Study for Philanthropy & Sustainability