Examples of People Using Crypto For Good

Many in the crypto community are focused on using blockchain technology for social good. This article will introduce you to 18 projects in various stages of development, from ideas to ready-to-launch companies.

For each of the projects listed, I’ve included a short description of the project and its social impact provided by one of the principals involved in it. They are listed in alphabetical order. This should not be considered a comprehensive list—to the contrary, it is a non-scientific sample.

Inclusion on this list should not be viewed as a validation of the technology or the viability of the project. As discussed at length in the last article in this series, there are serious challenges to success in this still-developing industry. Furthermore, some of the projects can succeed only if their coins appreciate in value, either consistently over time or dramatically—or both—without creating tangible value for buyers of those tokens.

Now, here’s the list:

1LAW, Jason Velez

1LAW uses Artificial Intelligence to provide access to free legal documents and services. [This addresses a] lack of access to justice. Some 80% of civil cases involve a party without a lawyer. Leveraging AI and a decentralized marketplace, the unrepresented can obtain basic legal help for free. Lawyers benefit from participating in the platform’s communication and document sharing/storage features.

Agroplexi, Ogundele Olawumi Mayowa

Agroplexi is a decentralized blockchain platform for agriculture value chain for the emerging markets. Our secured automated technology is a hybrid architecture designed to adapt to the constantly growing class of blockchain assets. The system is designed such that, members with digital assets who have no immediate use of them can exchange them for the Agroplexi Token (XAG) and stake it on the network as an investor and allow cooperatives and farmers associations access it and use it for a period of time for reasonable returns, regardless of their credit history or geographic constraints.

BlockMedx, Michael J Brunner

We are building a comprehensive e-prescribing solution to combat the opioid crisis. Real-time distributed records on the blockchain allow providers to make more informed decisions about their prescribing practices. The native cryptocurrency allows us to build in incentives for patients to adopt healthy behaviors and increase their engagement in their own care.

Concentric Sky, Wayne Skipper

KidCoin ties a Blockchain-focused computer science curriculum to an in-browser cryptocurrency mining tool, all made available for free. Students learn about blockchain and related CS concepts and their instructors learn how to setup and run the KidCoin miner. Any type of organization that serves kids can make money for its programs by running the miner on lab computers while they are not in use (like the old SETI@Home project). The computing power of all computers across all participating schools is harnessed together to create a single, enormous cryptocurrency mining pool - the proceeds of which are split amongst the participating schools.

CULTU.RE, Toni Lane Casserly

CULTU.RE provides functional models for self-sovereignty through nations of agreements. Think: ‘quantified burning man’ + universal access to human rights. To give you an example of how our technology works, let's imagine you are a refugee. You could be a climate refugee or a political refugee, but in either case, you have no passport, no national identity, and you fear there may never be a nation who will host you. Does this mean you do not, or should not exist? Absolutely not. You should be given the right to own your identity as a universal citizen. The open source standard CULTU.RE uses for identity, built by the web-of-trust community, enables a transition from ownership, into community stewardship. In our model the world can see, publicly, that you are who you say you are. Your mother can verify you, she has known you since birth and came with you to seek refuge. Another man, who you have known for 7 months, can verify you because you built him a house. He can verify your identity and create a claim that you have skills as a carpenter. In addition, a family, who you have known for 3 years, can verify your identity because you have been teaching their daughters English. The entire family can verify your identity and create a series of claims to show you are proficient in the English language, have enough skills to teach others, and have worked well with children. If you, as a refugee, choose to apply for national identity, the world now has a global way to understand context surrounding who you are, your communities of reference, and what skills you have to contribute to society.

Guardian Circle, Mark Jeffrey

Global Decentralized Emergency Response (911). When you’re in trouble, push a button and we generate a flash-mob of qualified help from the people and resources already near you. Imagine 10 people arriving in three minutes, anywhere on earth.

Imaginit.TV, Joy Case [disclosure: I am an unpaid advisor to Imaginit.tv]:

We solve the problem of access to quality life-long education for all. We provide the context for teaching and learning in an interactive immersive environment using the latest MR: VR: AR technology. With ImaginitTV's UniverCity, individuals, companies and educational institutions can interact without cost or time limitations. Combined with blockchain technology, we offer security, privacy, protected data, AI algorithms for getting the right people in the portals at the right time and our own crypto for payments.

Injii, Justin Paul

Injii is the streaming platform for social good that engages content creators, charities and fans. Our mission is to empower people all over the world to affect positive change in areas including poverty, health, human rights and social justice. Raising money costs money. But it doesn’t have to. In 2016, millions of Americans donated a total of $344 billion dollars to public 501(c)(3) charities, up 4.2% from the year before. Startlingly, nearly 37% of these contributions were used to cover the cost to raise the donations. That means hundreds of billions of dollars that could be used for good are wasted on fundraising because raising money costs so much money.

Injii’s goal is to cut the cost of fundraising to $0, eliminating the barrier to entry for charities looking to raise money for good by connecting them with a built-in audience and live content creators. Integrating blockchain technology allows injii to decentralize creative content ratings and provide both transparency and cost efficiency to how charitable organizations raise donations.

InspirationCoin, Lance Allred

Problem: most schools can't afford to have speakers like me come and speak to kids. Solution: InspirationCoin- schools and small companies buy coins, speakers on the platform/digital speaker bureau, accept inspiration coin in exchange for services. The people/schools/governments that most need self-development, can't afford it. But now, they can.

MediChain, Raul van Riezen

Saving lives with blockchain MediChain gives patients ownership of their own medical data. MediChain is a Medical Big-Data Platform. It allows patients to store their own data in a secure way and gives access to specialists anywhere regardless of the payer network or EMR (electronic medical record) used.

Oryx, Rajesh Johnny

We are a startup ecosystem with ICO used to raise funds and further invest in startups. Our model is unique. The interesting drive is we have a direct focus on charity built into the fund. As startups identified from emerging economies are shortlisted for investment, there will be a focus on social impact. And for the others which are purely commercial there's the profit booking mechanism connected to charity. So, 2% of the profits are directly used for charity work and will be headed by a globally renowned entrepreneur cum author who will be heading the division, ensuring the good is indeed are given. Rotary Tanzania, the direct beneficiary, will be identifying and implementing projects that will utilize these charity coins or fiat for the global good. Oryx is good for Investors as their risk is spread and returns amplified, for startups it’s good as many startups get funded with one ICO and for the world as it wins by employability, enterprises and charity.

RoleCoin by STEAMRole, Clarence Wooten

RoleCoin is a crypto currency that tracks, measures and rewards the skill and career development progress of it recipient. RoleCoin's accompanying blockchain dashboard and proof-of-progress protocol bring transparency to the more than $100 billion given annually to STEM/STEAM-related education and training initiatives. With RoleCoin, foundations, impact investors, family offices and philanthropists are able to collect aggregate data on the skill development and career progress of RoleCoin recipients.

TOPL, Luc Lapointe and Christopher Georgen

The Topl protocol is both conceived and designed to be a technological infrastructure enabling socially-beneficial investment into any region in the world, and in particular into developing countries. The design of this infrastructure is driven at least in part by our belief that there are currently two serious shortcomings in development finance. First, the vast majorities of both attention and capital are focused on investing directly in individual projects or initiatives, resulting in an ecosystem of isolated silos, with participants failing to leverage shared knowledge and allow for sufficient specialization and proper resource allocation. Second, when taken in isolation, direct economic or social aid often work well for acute crises. However, these efforts falter at their transition; they fail to prepare an economy for actually being developed and create environments of sustained dependency, where crisis has been dealt with but advancement has stalled. We therefore present our proposal of an open blockchain protocol for continuous (or multi-stage) development, built to enable a system of actors and instruments that can be employed at every stage of development.

Transmute, Karyl Fowler

We are an enterprise software company, but we started out building an identity management system on Ethereum aimed at refugees' needs. Our team is bought into the socioeconomic implications of blockchain and it's potential to empower the user more broadly. One of our most proud projects is helping Habitat Texas to accept crypto-donations to help rebuild homes after Hurricane Harvey in fall of 2017. It was successful enough that Habitat is continuing to accept funds this way, embracing the benefits of crypto.

Uulala, Matthew Loughran

Uulala is a mission-driven organization to facilitate and accelerate the financial inclusion of the under-banked and unbanked population across the Americas. Uulala empowers the under-banked communities of the world through the Uulala platform by providing financial tools for them to build credit, send money, participate in ecommerce and elevate out of a cash only environment.

Headshot of a man Credit: Votem
Pete Martin

Votem, Pete Martin

When you take off work to go to a polling place to fill-in a paper ballot, how do you really know it was counted as you intended? In an era where you can track your package from the time you order to when it lands on your front-door step, and you can execute nearly any secure transaction from your mobile device, it's time for voting to come of age. We enable citizens around the world to verify that their vote was counted as intended without sacrificing anonymity, enable independent authorities to validate votes in real-time before tallying, and make voting much easier than current processes with a level of security and transparency that does not exist today.

Wemerge Ventures Ltd, George Wong

Wemerge is a Community Blockchain Incubator which is setup to solve 2 major pain points: the high failure rate of blockchain projects and the complexity of due diligence and validation of blockchain projects. A key element behind our project is the community where our Wemerge token holders are cultivated to be beta testers for blockchain projects in order to validate the utility of tokens issued by incubated blockchain projects in real-world applications.

ZipHub Inc., Joe Sanchez

There is no doubt that ZipHub has created a sea-change in how people give back to their world. ZipHub has developed a revolutionary free membership, global on-line retail/shopping platform for businesses and members that will direct a portion of every dollar earned to a Members selected school, church, or charity. As a unique hub for all online family friendly products, services, and information, ZipHub will be the premier search engine and business directory for users and advertisers. Exceeding other shopping and reservation networks, ZipHub serves all e-commerce, brick and mortar, professional, and information sources. ZipHub donates 10% of all its revenue to non-profit organizations selected by its members and users. This philanthropic philosophy creates ongoing streams of donations to our member charities.