To contribute to this work, visit https://github.com/EarthProgram/use-cases
Identity is the new currency and the youth need to have control over theirs.
Many people do not yet understand the power of their identity, especially the youth. Tsholofelo is a young, unemployed South African woman who is struggling to find a job because she doesn’t have any form of identification that her employers can use to run a background check on her. She signs up to Green Yoma on the advice of her friend, where she is able to create a self-attested identity for herself. Tsholofelo is now able to unlock opportunities to upskill herself, possible employment opportunities as well as opportunities to work for the betterment of her society and be rewarded for it, for example, participating in community upliftment programmes that are listed online.
Giving youth the agency and rewards to make a difference in their communities.
Musafa lives in a very dry and arid region of Egypt. Where he lives, the soil has been eroded and all that’s left is hard, sun-baked sand and dust. Musafa sees an opportunity on Green Yoma for him to be rewarded if he takes part in the “Reforestation Challenge.” Musafa takes a picture of his local village before he gets started and then works to turn the soil and plant some small, hardy shrubs. Once he is done he uploads a picture of his hard work to Green Yoma. From there, an independent verifier verifies that Musafa has successfully completed the challenge and is rewarded with a universal token, in this case, a carbon offset certificate, which he can use on various global marketplaces.
Tim is an impact investor. However, he finds the current process of sharing, managing, and verifying the completion of impact challenges to be arduous and complex. Beyond this, finding a relevant and up-to-date impact marketplace is proving difficult. Tim reads about Green Yoma, where he can choose to list his own impact opportunities, with their own set of completion criteria. Here he sets the parameters, the incentives and the timelines. By making use of an independent verifying tool, once users have completed the task and been verified, they will be rewarded automatically, which cuts out a lot of admin for Tim.
While browsing Green Yoma, Tim has come across a few impact opportunities that really appeal to him. Clicking through the various options, Tim is able to see all the details about the opportunities and decides that he would like to get involved in the reforestation challenge in Egypt. While he is not the creator or convener for this opportunity, Tim is able to contribute to the overall rewards and incentives of this opportunity as part of being an Impact Investor. Tim is able to track the progress of the opportunity to ensue that his investment has indeed made a difference.
Grace is an advisor to different community currency groups. She has a Circles and a SEEDS wallet and some Sarafu. While in Lisbon, she is looking for a restaurant that accepts community currencies. She uses the Open Street Maps to identify a restaurant which accepts community currency, in this case chiemgauer. Her wallet allows her to convert Circles to chiemgauer and buy a meal for herself and a colleague.
Nina owns a restaurant which accepts eusco in Basque country. Travellers from other countries have paid her in Circles. Nina has purchased a new coffee machine from a German manufacturer. A credit clearing house app allows her to simply debit those Circles and have the invoice from the manufacturer receive the payment for the purchase in Euros which are converted transparently through the Circles network.
Shang-Chi, a Hong Kong social enterprise manager needs an online platform for the purpose of broadcasting his social project’s impact to stakeholders (funders/investors/partners/beneficiaries), which includes sharing their success stories and promoting co-learning with their peers in the same sector. The manager creates an account and log-in the platform to create a project Impact Profile. He adds symbolic photos and texts to the profile to tell the impact story of the project, a diagram of Theory of Change, and then embeds an impact dashboard that shows real-time output/outcome data he collected through survey monkey over the course of the project. The impact profile is then shared with stakeholders for the purpose of communicating the project’s progress on making impact (based on a visualized and evidence-based impact story).
A Hong Kong social enterprise manager needs to ensure the organization’s impact accountability to its funder. The data (reported by the beneficiaries) against the intended outcomes need to be validated. The manager uses a platform that allows him to ensure the authenticity of the data submitted by the beneficiary and know the time and date of the data submission. The manager also validates the credibility of the outcome data based on external evidence (e.g. photos, documents). Having all this information associated with the data, the manager then approves each submission record by signing on it (digitally). These validated data are incorporated into the reports to funder, which are auditable, accountable, and traceable.
Record data on blockchain, including Carbon Source, Carbon Sink, calculations and listing price. Company A has more carbon sinks than itself needs. So Company A decided to see if any other companies need these “carbon emission rights”. Company A find a verifier to verifies theirs carbon sinks and record all the related data including the type, amount, etc.
Companies can buy carbon assets according to their requirements. Company A lists the carbon sink data on the marketplace with price. Company B is a manufacturer and estimated that it will emit more than its allocation by the end of the year. Company B looks for favorite counterparties on the marketplace and found that Company A’s carbon sink meet perfectly with their needs and they came into agreement by OTC on the carbon marketplace.
Carbon credit can be assessed based on the record on blockchain; companies can apply for financing based on carbon credit.
Rosemarie is the director of the International Climate Change Authority (UNFCCC)’s new 2022 Renewable Energy Certificate program. Rosemarie uses the Interchain Earth Program to operationalize a system for vetting and verifying the creation of new sources of renewable energy by semi-automating the creation of non-fungible tokens called REC2022 impact tokens. Working with her technical team, Rosemarie establishes a framework for renewable projects to first qualify for funding according to specific rules, then earn REC2022 tokens by getting their actual electrical production audited and verified. Rosemarie also recruits both funding sources and potential renewable energy producers to use the new framework. The result is a global system of highly scalable financing and realization of new renewable energy sources.
Nathan is a newly authorized project certifier for REC2022 proposals. He is randomly selected for the first opportunity to review a project proposal from HydroElec. He scans the proposal and accepts the opportunity, then begins his formal review. He checks that the proposal contains all of the required sections and that each section addresses all of the requirements of the REC2022 framework. Unfortunately, the first version of the proposal is missing a key section about the make and model of HydroElec’s smart meters. He reaches out to HydroElect, informs them of the problem and suggests they update the proposal and resubmit, with a reference to their first proposal to ensure that Nathan continues the certification. After HydroElect submits a new, signed proposal, Nathan repeats his review and finds the project satisfies all the criteria. He then issues a signed credential formally attesting to his findings and gives that to HydroElect. The credential references the original proposal using a machine-verifiable identifier to ensure the authenticity of the certification.
Helen is the CEO of HydroElec, a hydroelectric producer in Kenya building a new dam. As part of the financial planning for the project, she developed a formal proposal to use the UN’s new REC2022 standard for minting renewable energy certificate NFTs. After submitting the proposal to the UN, she worked with a certifier to demonstrate the project meets all of the goals of the program. With that certification, she was able to secure funding and built the project.
As the operation generates electricity, it’s smart meters automatically generate verifiable credentials attesting to the actual kWh produced every day.
Once operational, Helen finds a verification agent, Lynn, who was able to inspect the operations and verify that the new project is operating according to the proposal and UN guidelines, issuing a credential authorizing HydroElec to issue REC2022 tokens when providing evidence issued by their smart meters and attested to by HydroElect. Every day, upon production of the evidentiary verifiable credentials, Helen’s team triggers the minting of new NFTs by submitting a token mint transaction with all of the relevant information: the original proposal, its certification, the verification audit results, the smart meters’ production credentials, and HydroElects legal attestation that this evidence is accurate and meets the requirements of REC2022. Helen can now sell those REC2022 tokens on the market at the time of her choosing to any party interested in renewable energy certificates. Those buyers can retire those certificates to claim the environmental benefit of using renewable energy.
Lynn is a verification agent for REC2022. She is called by HydroElec to audit their new production facility. After reviewing the certified proposal, she visits the HydroElec site to inspect and verify both the capacity of the system under operating conditions and the security of the automated smart meters. She uses a standard set of criteria established by the UN to record her observations and make a determination about the project’s compliance with both its certified proposal and UN requirements. After finding everything in order, Lynn issues a verification credential with a six month expiry and a maximum capacity of 20 billion kWh, which she gives to HydroElec. The credential references both the original proposal and its certification using machine-verifiable identifiers to ensure the authenticity of the verification.
Contributed by Grace Rachmany
In the context of creating an alternative to the default economy, people want to be able to use and exchange alternative currencies, using their alternative currency wallets as easily as they use a credit card. When people use a credit card, neither the buyer nor the seller needs to worry about the exchange rate--the transaction happens seamlessly. The seller receives their local currency, and the buyer is debited in their local currency.
The vision of the ICF, and the cryptocurrency movement as a whole, is that people will be free to use whatever means of exchange they choose, and that communities will be free to create their own means of exchange.
Grace is an advisor to different community currency groups. She has a Circles and a SEEDS wallet and some Sarafu. While in Basque country, she is looking for a restaurant that accepts community currencies. She uses the Open Street Maps to identify a restaurant which accepts community currency, in this case Chiemgauer. Her wallet allows her to convert Circles to Eusko and buy a meal for herself and a colleague at Nina’s Cafe.
Nina and other businesspeople are able to use a debt clearing house to clear debts within the community currency framework, or to use an exchange to trade one currency for the other.
- Different currencies have different issuance mechanisms (mutual credit, reserve backing, airdrop, UBI, backing based on goods).
- Most community currencies can’t be exchanged directly for a fiat currency as a means of exchange.
- Generally community currencies have closed software systems, without interfaces to other currencies or exchanges.
- Multi-coin wallet for community currencies.
- Interchain currency exchange standard
- IID for local currencies -- IID uniquely identifies local currencies, providing a moniker that can be applied without ambiguity across any exchange. In other words, there’s no confusion about which chain gets to be called “BTC” or similar market problems. a. Circles UBI b. Sarafu c. SEEDS
- Nina needs to trust that Grace has a legitimate wallet.
- The Circles and chiemgauer networks need to trust one another to meet their financial obligations in case of trade imbalances.
- Nina needs to trust the chiemgauer network to honor their financial obligations.
- Grace needs to trust the Circles network to issue tokens that will have value in other locations.
- The clearing house has to honor its obligations.
Threat: Potential for currencies in the system to collapse or not have backings.
- Response: Monetary policies for being a part of the network.
- Response: Stop trading currencies if exchange of a particular currency is too volatile.
Threat: Trade imbalances.
- Response: Require some level of reserve in an agreed-upon currency.
- Response: Track history and have a warning system before imbalances get too great.
Threat: Potential to have fake wallets or fake credentials.
- Response: Check ID with payment
- Response: Use biometrics for authentic identification
- Response: Have insurance that covers the expected amount of faking in the system
Threat: Hacking and code bugs.
- Response: Test suites with thorough test coverage
- Response: Open issue tracking for public reporting of bugs and bug fixes
- Response: Open source software so more people can review the codebase and discuss potential problems and fixes.
Threat: Regulatory: local currencies may not be legal within a given jurisdiction.
- Response: ZKP options and invisibility of the network.
- Response: Lobbying for improved laws; invest percentage of reserve towards lobbying.
- Response: Legal council to keep things within the law until it’s too large to regulate away.
Local purchases with local currency helps reduce costs of transportation of goods, keeping purchasing local. Based on the values of these local communities, they can create currencies that reflect sustainable values, carbon-neutrality, circular economies, etc.
(can we tie this more clearly to a specific SDG?)
These currencies are open to different communities and are intrinsically both inclusive and exclusive. Communties retain their culture and values, while encouraging local economies, which is exclusive. They can now trade with one another, which is inclusive.
The Ndugu Vijana Chama’s CIC currency has reached 80 cents on the shilling for the third time this year. The other Chamas need to decide on whether to take disciplinary action, rehabilitative action, or to expel the group from the Sarafu Network. They have a deliberation. There are 2 proposals for rehabilitation, 1 proposal for disciplinary action, and 1 proposal to eject them. Each chama has a weighted vote based on the number of people in the chama, and based on the status of the chama (reputation) in the network. Each Chama receives 10 points to distribute among the 5 proposals on the table. They can give all votes to one or divide their points between the different proposals depending on the strength of each proposal.