Get the hottest Fintech Switzerland News once a month in your Inbox
Charitable donation is the lifeblood of global NGOs like WWF, yet the good intentions of donation come hand-in-hand with issues of their own.
Accountability for the donation, the transaction costs of processing so many individual contributions, and confirmation of the donation for tax purposes are just a few of the challenges that Proxeus and WWF aim to overcome with this test case.
Starting with a prototype blockchain-powered donation confirmation engine, this project aims to empower consumers to donate more easily while reducing administration costs associated with processing these donations, ensuring more of the donation goes to its intended purpose. For the prototype, no real donor data was used.
Antoine Verdon
“This is a real opportunity to use our technology for social good,”
said Antoine Verdon, co-founder of Proxeus.
“We are helping ensure that the donations go where they have to. By minimizing the system complexity we’ve maximized the benefit for WWF Switzerland’s projects.”
The first step in this process is the donation confirmation engine, which uses the Ethereum blockchain to confirm receipt of the donation(s) from the donor and issue a confirmation of donation at the end of the year for tax purposes, all while maintaining full GDPR-compliant privacy protection. The vision for this project goes much further, for example enabling donation targeting, micro-donations at points of sale, and aggregated cross-platform donation acknowledgement.
In real terms, this could allow donations to be made as micro-donations at points of sale – currently not efficient due to transaction cost – and at the end of the year have the full sum of the donations aggregated and acknowledged for tax purposes.
Thomas Vellacott
“Blockchain will affect many aspects of our life and work. Even though issues remain to be resolved, the technology has considerable potential to streamline processes in fundraising and administration, and to scale up our conservation impact. Hence, WWF is motivated to test real-life applications of blockchain in different areas of our work,”
said Thomas Vellacott, CEO of WWF Switzerland.
“We are currently running several initiatives worldwide to test the application of blockchain. WWF Switzerland works with other WWF offices on these initiatives. We will analyze the results and decide how to use blockchain going forward.”
Despite fears to the contrary, blockchain-based donation processes will not lead to unsustainable use of resources. By replacing paper, blockchain not only consumes power at a comparable or lesser rate (7,000-14,000kWh/kg for paper, 70kWh/transaction for Ethereum, with that consumption rate diminishing significantly as the verification mechanism in the Ethereum network is switched from a “proof of work” to a “proof of stake” mechanism by an upgrade to the Casper protocol), blockchain does not have any of the undesirable impacts of paper production such as deforestation and pollution of water and air.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.