Last summer, one of my sons suggested that we should use an impact lens and start paying attention to blockchain. He said there were important social and environmental use-cases coming, use-cases that could map to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations. Blockchain for social impact projects, he said, would be quite interesting for the current FARM network, and might also be attractive to new crypto-oriented donors.

He was curious about doing the work to invest for social and environmental good.

I have come to believe that blockchain leads to better, faster, cheaper records and information management. It leans on rules, rather than rulers.

A blockchain is an accessible and transparent digital record. Like a traditional ledger, it records transactions. Transaction intermediaries are removed, transaction time is reduced, record keeping costs are reduced, and records can’t be altered or deleted. It is efficient, secure, and decentralized. All this establishes trust and can change the way businesses, governments, organizations, and individuals work together.

Persuasion: The skeptic in me has been convinced that blockchain can actually work, by three key concepts that are marbled together and can be hard to grasp: consensus, decentralization, and incentives.

Read the full article on blockchain for impact investing by Thomas Bird at ImpactAlpha