Under the epidemic, how can blockchain make public welfare easier?

Nine years ago, a Guo Meimei incident immediately broke the image of a certain association.

In January this year, the death of Wu Yanhua, a college student in Guizhou, involved news that the 9958 rescue center was suspected of "delaying money" and "hoarding money in disguise."

And recently, an epidemic has once again plunged Mr. Hui into a crisis of trust. Because after donating hundreds of millions of donations and medical supplies to Wuhan across the country, even the face masks of first-line hospitals became urgent, and doctors made masks and protective clothing. Everyone was curious. Where did all the money and supplies go?

In fact, these are not impossible to be open and transparent, but "even a pack of instant noodles can be made public" . Openness and transparency are the dead spots of some charities and the trump card of some new charities. The openness and immutability of the blockchain are naturally in line with this trump card, which is why more and more institutions and enterprises have tried to use the blockchain technology to solve charity problems in recent years.

Today, Uncle Da Jian takes everyone to see how the blockchain can solve the trust crisis of charities.

 

First, the slot of traditional charity

 

▌1, the information transparency is too low, the donation destination is a mystery

The transparency of where funds go is the most important factor in determining whether people trust charities.

Han Hong once said in an interview: "I found out that I have made a foundation. The original whereabouts of a package of instant noodles can be made public. Why don't you blame society if you don't do it?

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To this end, we compared the information disclosure level of the official website of the next association and the official website of the Han Hong Charity Foundation. Compared with the information disclosure method of a certain account in Hubei Province, the official website of the Han Hong Charity Foundation provides a donation details query function. Donors can query by key information such as name and time, which is simple and straightforward.

To be honest, the website query function is no longer a technical barrier, and the function of the Han Hong Foundation website is also very basic, but it will be too bad when you compare it.

However, information disclosure is only a small part of the charity link, but have these materials been distributed to the corresponding people? We have not seen the corresponding purchase, logistics, management and final donations of these funds.

As in the Wu Huayan incident mentioned above, the donor's money was donated, but the recipient did not receive any money. In international charity events, fundraising is vigorous, but very limited things happen.

For example, after the Haiti earthquake in 2010, the United States raised $ 500 million, of which $ 170 million was special funds for post-disaster housing reconstruction. By the end of the 15 years, however, the United States had raised huge sums of money to build only six homes.

The picture shows the American Red Cross propaganda place

After Hurricane Maria in September 2017, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) planned to provide 30 million meals to hungry Puerto Rican victims, but only 50,000 were actually provided.

Fortunately, these incidents have been exposed, but who knows how many people are waiting under the iceberg is really scary.

▌2. The charity link is complicated and the management cost of the organization is too high

There is a total of 13 people in a Wuhan meeting in this vortex. According to the 2019 fund budget of a certain Wuhan official website, the annual salary and welfare expenditure is 3.35 million, and the average annual income per capita after discounting is 25.83. At around 107,000, a properly paid industry.

Image source: Wuhan Red Cross official website

Although many people believe that management costs are necessary, excessive management costs are a red flag. According to the Disruptordaily report, many charities spend far more on administrative expenses than their income. For example, the American Tractor Association ’s management costs are as high as 68%, the Harlem Boys Choir accounted for 66.3%, and the joint rescue group accounted for 62.1%.

At present, China's "Charity Law" stipulates that the management cost of public fundraising charities cannot exceed 10%, but for a large public fund such as a foundation, 10% is already a large cost.

▌3, information can be tampered with arbitrarily, how to avoid fraud?

On the evening of January 29, a certain Hubei Province issued a Weibo to announce a refund form for charity, but because the "sub-branch" was written as a "trip", netizens questioned the fraud and caused hot debate on the Internet. That night, some club deleted Weibo. On the morning of the 30th, a Weibo was posted, saying that yesterday, due to a staff member's mistaken typo, the communication has been resolved with the finance and bank.

It may be because of busy work, and then a certain Hubei Province Association wrote the wrong mask model and the number of issued again. However, in the correction description, the time was written again.

This. . .

Many platforms say that there is a complete Internet information disclosure platform, but in a centralized management mode, it is not difficult to tamper with the database. It can be said that the new interns are not familiar with the business.

What can the blockchain bring to charity?  

There are a lot of slots, so we will not expand them in order to prevent harmony. But it is useless to just scold. It is better to see with Jian Jian what the blockchain can do for public welfare?

▌1. More transparent, donation path can be traced

In order to let everyone feel the transparency and traceability of the blockchain more directly, we have analyzed several typical blockchain public welfare cases:

① Building Block Project of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP)

In the past two years, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has hatched a private project based on the PoA consensus algorithm, such as Building Block, to improve its aid capabilities through the use of innovative technologies such as blockchain.

What is PoA consensus algorithm? In simple terms, PoA is a consensus algorithm based on reputation. Participants must first verify their identity and pass the audit. Currently, PoA is mainly used in logistics scenarios. The transparency and speed of PoA algorithms enable logistics operators to track any product in real time to maximize delivery efficiency.

After a successful test in January 2017, the Building Block officially landed, providing assistance to 10,000 refugees in Jordan. Through blockchain and biometric identification management technology, you can ensure that donated funds can effectively help beneficiaries, as shown in the following figure:

Step 1: Create a virtual wallet on the blockchain and establish a virtual bank account identity for each beneficiary.

Step 2 : When the beneficiaries come to a supermarket, they can identify themselves through biometric iris scanning, and once the verification is successful, the beneficiaries can use the donation money to purchase the items they choose. The purchased information will be uploaded to the blockchain, and blocks will be generated by the nodes to keep records of the flow of funds.

Step 3: At the end of the month, WFP and suppliers will settle based on the blockchain ledger.

In this scenario, WFP does not need to go through complicated procurement and distribution procedures, and the beneficiaries do not need to receive the transfer funds. "Every transaction is stored in an unchangeable form," said Vaswani Jagtiani, a senior WFP official. "Blockchain provides this secure, verification-free, real-time transaction."

In addition to the Building Blocks project, WFP is also trying to continue to use the application of blockchain technology in areas such as supply chain operations and digital identity management. In addition, WFP invites other United Nations agencies and charities to work together to improve efficiency.

② Uganda-Pink Care Token

The issuance of traceability of assets on the chain by issuing stablecoins is also a relatively common blockchain solution.

For example , the Pink Care Token issued in Uganda. In underdeveloped areas, many girls are afraid of their menstrual period and ca n’t afford sanitary napkins. They ca n’t use menstrual products that are very ordinary to us, but use rags or even leaves. As a result, they suffer from serious gynecological diseases and their lives are threatened Girls are not in the minority.

The main purpose of the project is to provide sanitary napkins for women who are unable to obtain menstrual hygiene products due to poverty.

Currently, a Pink Care Token can provide a girl with a one-year sanitary pad. Donors can purchase Pink Care tokens at an anchor price. After bidding, the tokens are minted on the chain and distributed directly to the final beneficiary. The ultimate beneficiary can exchange corresponding equivalents directly from the Uganda Exchange with the help of volunteers.

Because each token has a unique identifier (a string of hash characters) that can track its whereabouts, which means that it can be easily tracked throughout the blockchain. This higher transparency can increase the number of donors. Trust also increases the reputation of charitable organizations.

▌2, Blockchain can bring more efficient donation methods

According to the above two cases, it can be clearly felt that the efficiency of blockchain donation is:

① Better administrative and financial costs

For traditional charities, management costs have been the subject of much debate. Because the donation process is trivial, traditional charities need to spend a lot of time dealing with regulatory supplies, documents, and financial and reporting issues, which has led to excessive funds being spent on administrative work.

And the blockchain's natural ledger model eliminates the need for staff to repeat the clearing of accounts, data entry, and the need to develop additional tools for information disclosure. According to Robert Opp, director of innovation and change management at the United Nations World Food Program, "Blockchain systems save us approximately $ 40,000 per month."

②   Better integration of material chain, increase efficiency with information sharing

The use of blockchain technology to build a material chain can integrate the data of materials available at each end, and understand the real-time amount of physical assets, inventory, and the actual needs of donors nationwide.

In terms of resource allocation, it can also realize comprehensive real-time information sharing and opening up across agencies, departments, and fields, which are difficult to achieve with traditional technology.

③ Better tax relief policy

In the United States, in order to better support cross-border donations, donors using bitcoin donations can also enjoy tax deduction policies, and charities will receive the full value of donations without being charged a capital gains tax.

▌3.Blockchain cannot be tampered with can bring greater trust

The immutability of the blockchain is mainly reflected in two aspects:

①   Changes to assets that cannot be tampered with during donation

Based on the characteristics of distributed accounting, decentralization, and tamper-resistance, the blockchain reconstructs the trust mechanism from the technical level. As long as the information can be fully chained, it can be fully exposed to everyone through the blockchain network. Information cannot be changed,

② Important documents or contracts cannot be modified without the approval of all relevant members

Blockchain makes it easier to share and store data, and also ensures that important contracts cannot be tampered with through smart contracts.

Assume that a foundation sponsors a donation of 10,000 yuan to student A in a poor area. Without the consent of relevant personnel (such as donors) and the confirmation of the blockchain system, it is impossible to donate to whom and how much information. Was changed.

This greatly guarantees the exclusive use of the special funds and increases the trust of the donors.

 

Third, the difficulty of public welfare reform does not lie in technology

All in all, blockchain technology can solve the trust issue of charities very well, but the reason why it has not been applied in the domestic public welfare field on a large scale is not because of technical difficulties.

Firstly, the traceability of the token circulation of the blockchain can solve the problem of information disclosure in many charitable acts, but currently domestic laws do not allow any tokens to be issued.

Uncle Jian hopes that the laws and regulations can be more bold, improve and use the reasonable part of the blockchain use scenario, rather than a mousetrap.

Secondly, whether it is the credibility of the asset on-chain or the subsequent maintenance and management, all parties need to coordinate and supervise, which is not something that an enterprise or institution can solve. Instead, it is necessary to promote management, systems and processes from the top down. It is impossible to do without certain determination.

But Uncle Jian is still looking forward to the transformation of traditional charities. Questioning will not be a reason for us to stop charity. On the contrary, we need to work together with better technology, because there are distant crying waiting for us to help. …..

Blockchain Inspection Institute

I'm Uncle Jian

A North American New Finance Researcher

Bitcoin sweat miner

Air currency high speed routine toll collector

Blockchain East Asian Non-official Anti-Counterfeiting Expert

I want to be a programmer

Fragmented various blockchain projects and showed them to you

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