# 'Highlights of Blockchain @ UNICEF' - Cecilia Chapiro, Christina Lomazzo & Jesús Cepeda

- Channel: [ETHGlobal](https://streameth.org/ethglobal)
- Date: 2021-10-09
- Duration: 54:28
- Topics: Cecilia Chapiro, Christina Lomazzo, Jesús Cepeda, ethereum, unicef, blockchain
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-_GLPQy40x54
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GLPQy40x54

## Description

Cecilia Chapiro & Christina Lomazzo & Jesús Cepeda host a panel discussing how they are reimagining social systems through blockchain applications.

## Transcript

uh three amazing people in this space we have Cecilia Christina and chewy and uh they're going to be talking about how UNICEF innovate has been able to sort of manage and help increase the impact of the ethereum ecosystem throughout their efforts and kind of how they've seen ethereum being used by stust all around the world so we have uh the team here on on the call and uh I'd like to welcome all of them here and kick us off with the their chat so please welcome Christina and team hi everyone thanks so much for having us today I'm just going to start sharing my screen and can someone confirm they can see it we can see it perfect over to you CeCe hi everyone um so my name is Cecilia and together with Christina and Chey we will today talk about systems that have been reimagined with blockchain um or more specifically about how can blockchain help us reimagine systems for the future we want to live in and I think it's just a good timing to have these discussions in the context of the many big challenges that we're um facing today um starting with displacement so just for you to know there are today 80 million people around the world that have been forced out of their homes this is people that may not be able to go to school uh may not be able ble to see or be with their extended families or even their immediate families and may not even have of course food as a given 40% of these people are children and questions that we have are how do we secure safe and healthy um a safe and healthy environment for for the displaced children and how do how do we can um how can we enable medical records um for them to be transfer transferable across borders um or what kind of education credentials can be Universal accepted another challenge is about the training for tomorrow so did you know that actually 65% of the children entering primary schools today will ultimately work in new job types and functions that today do not exist uh this is just crazy in terms of um how slowly is the education system picking up on many of the leads um of what are the what's the future of education so how can we how can we do this how can we design appropriate curriculums to give children a chance to have um opportunities in the future and of course you know emergencies we are today living in an unreal situation covid-19 happened and it was a catastrophe uh globally in different Industries like healthcare uh for education for the delivery of food um so amongst many many sectors and put the world in some sort of test so um not only we need the processes and mechanisms to now react at into what is left out of covid but also um how can we respond to these emergencies that will you know keep coming uh to the world so UNICEF but UNICEF Innovation um a lot of you here probably know what we do at UNICEF and you know that we are um an agency within the United Nations that works towards the care and the development of the children in the places with the highest needs uh probably not a lot of you know that there's a team within UNICEF called UNICEF Innovation that works on doing things new and differently to um add value towards our mission so what do we do specifically so number one we identify a ing Frontier Technologies um and we try to collaborate with private sector tools to find shared value towards our mission we also uh invest in early stage startups to learn with them and work together to explore how can we provide more impact towards the growth of children and third we internally work on prototypes using this emerging Technologies um to see how can we further our objectives and UNICEF so I'll start by talking about the first part of the investment component and Christina later we'll talk more about how how and what kind of prototypes we're working on internally and last today Chey will speak about one of of the use cases of the work that we've been doing together um with his startup um starting with the Frontier Tech areas so we're going to talk a lot about this um over the discussion today but just for to know so UNICEF Innovation we work with emerging Technologies so what we Define as technologies that lie in 100 billion doll markets and also um support more than a billion people's needs so basically um we work in the technologies that that intersect these two worlds but basically what that means is technologies that lie in financially sustainable markets and have the potential to influence and positively impact um a lot of people and we invest and work with many of the technologies that you see there on the screen like machine learning data science virtual and augmented reality but surely today we're also going to talk and dig in more a little bit about what we do around blockchain which is one of the key Technologies we focus on so the UNICEF in the UNICEF Innovation fund or the UNICEF Venture fund we call it both ways um but the the Venture fund is basically a 30 million pulled funding vehicle uh that we use within the UN to invest in early stage open-source um technologies that have the potential to uh positively impact the lives of children uh this was the first Venture Capital uh vehicle within the United Nations that was funded um four years ago and since then a lot A lot has happened so the purpose of of what we do within the fund is um try to engage and collaborate with early stage startups so the kinds of startups that have a prototype of uh technology uh that that they have a vision that they can use to positively impact the world um and what we do is we we provide little sums of money that go up to $100,000 to these startups in developing emerging countries um so that they can further test iterate their products and eventually scale as digital public goods um what kind of projects are part of our portfolio so the kinds of projects that are registered as private companies and this is purely because we want to support um private sector entities so the kinds of entities that will build a financially sustainable business model and eventually can stand up um without the kind of support that comes from the UN um we only purely invest in open source technology solutions that have an existing prototype and there's a link um for which they can make an argument that their solution that they're building is making a positive impact um globally so the kinds of solutions we invest in um and how do we assess them really is we really look for solutions that have identified a very very strong problem and have um developed a solution towards it I think what we see a lot in the hundreds uh and now actually thousands of applications around blockchain is that we see that many times we we get applications that say they want to use blockchain for something that is not particularly needed so this is one one thing that we address can blockchain in fact uh be used for that specific problem is that the best technology that they can use and it does it go accordingly to what they want to address um we very much explored the team we invest in local teams building local solutions for local problems that have um a global impact so building a company is more beyond the is is more than the idea um a lot goes into the execution of that idea and having the context knowledge understanding what are the players that are part of that ecosystem is a key component um for suce for succeeding in that solution um so so if you're interested in this kind of like engagement with us just be sure that you um have all these components in place together with the technical viability and the business model that you envisioned will help get your solution as a financially sustainable um company a little bit about the portfolio experience so after we decide to invest in the companies um the is going to are what we call the portfolio of the UNICEF Venture fund and this portfolio is particularly active in the first year of the investment in this first year of the investment is that we work a lot on advising on how to strengthen the product development um on how to what kind of strategic support do the companies need to strengthen their business model so many times what we see um is that they need to strengthen their for example their user experience um how can basically a user go into the platform but also return which is a problem uh with many startup funders um um and also you know what are the programmatic expertise that we can support from UNICEF like wash Health disabilities or education to help these Solutions grow and the minimum viable product to be solidified for further funding um one key thing to mention is that the Investments um after the year of the investment period don't just you know leave leave or stop engaging with us we continue our support even further and um especially after the year of the investment period when we see that the products have been solidified we work a lot with external partners and are positioning within the United Nations to Foster these collaborations and facilitate the kind of engagements that will help help the companies um grow even further um all of this to say that today we have made more than 100 investments in more than 50 countries and just to give you a sense of one of the blockchain solutions that we've invested invested in um so their name is stwg uh they're based in India and they use a platform that is enabled through blockchain and iot to track the delivery of food and vaccines um to the people that need it and what's key about this solution is you know especially today in times of covid uh they are now working with the government of India on a prototype to track the delivery of food to low-income areas um where the supply chain is compromised and understanding if the food is in fact delivered and is delivered in good shape is key um I'm going to stop on the examples right here just because um so later after Christina also gives a little bit more about the context and the kind of internal prototypes we do around blockchain inside un UNICEF um we'll have Chey who is one of our portfolio companies talk a little bit more about the kind of Engagement that we've had together and the kind of solution he's been working on and the kind of support we've been given him but before I finish I wanted to also talk about this other part so after the one year of the investment period so after that onee portfolio experience that the companies have with us um we work on scaling these digital public goods and what that means in particular is um so after the companies have been you know solidifying their product on on their own how can we facilitate and Foster engagements between the solutions between the startups and their countries through our UNICEF country offices so we have a presence uh with UNICEF field offices in more than 150 countries and that's a very very vast um Geographic expansion to not only um help them work especially with public sector uh organizations but also um for them to expand into new countries uh so 25% of our portfolio has been engaging with this network of global um offices that allows this solid solidifying uh their presence in the market uh follow on funding as I said before this is something we put a lot of emphasis in so after our engagement period after the work we do together with the startups how do we Foster new relationships with funders from other um other Venture funds or other similar funding vehicles that would be interested in the solutions that lie within our portfolio that are that are Ved and are doing amazing humanitarian work and uh one last thing I wanted to very much highlight is the building up of two Financial vehicles that have been the recent ones within the UN system and within UNIS Stu so one is the growth fund so the growth fund has been um is basically the um the PO funding vehicle also that we have set up to provide larger funding size um amounts to the startups that graduate from our portfolio but also startups that are working in the market and are also ready for the kind of scale up funding opportunities so these these funding possibilities go from 200 to 400 ,000 and then we have the crypto fund so the crypto fund has been the latest uh the latest latest Innovation that um we've done inside of the UN regarding the funding uh possibilities for startups and we set it up um a year ago in 2019 October 2019 and it basically follows the same rules as I was telling you about about the Venture fund except that it provides investment in cryp crypto denominated assets um so so far we've done we've done 12 Investments um Jesus also at the end will also talk a little bit about this as he has also received investment from the crypto fund um but there are eight other countries that are also involved and have recipients of this kind of funding and it's been a remarkable experience for us in terms of tracking the kind of investment that we provided to the startups tracking the kind of Investments that the startups are doing internally um to deploy this funding and make a better use of it and the kind of efficiencies that we've done internally in the investment process um to secure faster and more efficient funding to the beneficiaries that we want to serve with that and that snapshot of what we do Christina the floor is all yours to talk about the internal prototypes that we do with blockchain and crypto awesome and thanks so much I think that one of the important things that you mentioned was the the crypto fund particularly at the end and that's really UNICEF redesigning our own systems to essentially adapt to this new world so um I'm going to build a little bit on the crypto fund and then talk about um particularly ethereum prototypes that we have been building over the last couple years within our team um but people are always curious about where does blockchain and crypto play a role as it pertains to UNICEF and cilia you give great examples about you know early stage Investments that we're making but why are we making these Investments and and what are we looking for as we do this so from a UNICEF perspective there's really three big buckets that I don't think these come as a surprise to anyone in the blockchain space but we're looking to leverage new Innovative financing models so this is things like the crypto fund um looking to increase efficiency and transparency in internal processes so really challenging ourselves to reimagine internal processes as well and see if we can leverage uh blockchain in that case and then how do we incentivize the creation of Open Source digital public goods and we've we've done a few pilots on that um our work particularly within our blockchain team focuses around three buckets the first you've already heard about is the Innovation fund and the crypto fund the second is really around internal prototypes and UNICEF Works in over 190 different countries and so there's countries who are interested in using blockchain and our team would support those countries in those Explorations and I'm going to give you some examples um and lastly learning I heard the talk just before us about how to get started in the space I think that's still a big challenge for a lot of the folks that we interact with to of how do we reduce the barrier and to access to not just crypto but also more generally blockchain applications that can be beneficial so we do a lot on that side um getting un folks together and um you know doing prototypes together or learning sessions together as well um we have been looking at blockchain since actually 2015 um since since 2015 five years at least now um Cecilia mentioned that the crypto fund was launched last year for those of you that would have been at Devcon that's where we made the announcement and we're super happy to be with the ethereum community there and launch that with the ethereum foundation um but I have to mention all of the Milestones that actually went into actually launching the crypto fund and it was a long journey of two years to get to the point where UNICEF could reimagine how it worked with digital assets and actually be able to accept crypto um and so some of the highlights would be for example UNICEF France in early 2018 actually allowed um mining using your uh gaming console and anything that was mined went towards UNICEF um and that supported this yearing Refugee crisis at that point now funds that are uh committed to the crypto fund go to supporting early stage startups that are working on these variety of solutions particularly related to the crypto fund I thought it would be interesting to highlight two internal products that we've been building so being the first un entity to use crypto as crypto um there was a gap for us particularly for public sector tools specifically to help us in how we tell our story and how we're using blockchain and crypto and how we internally support our processes so um our team has been working on Juniper which is a tool set to really enable public sector organizations the first is a visualization tool which is um kind of like a simplified block Explorer um is probably the best way to put it and you're more than welcome to go check it out but the whole idea is for us to be as transparent as possible in terms of how many funds we have how much funds we've dispersed who's received those dispersements and the next version of the visualization tool will even go a level deeper and we'll show you um for example Che who's going to talk has received some crypto what did he decide to spend it on H so he'll label it as he spent it on salaries or he spent it on bounties or whatever he decided to do with that crypto and so we're making the trans uh the process all the way from donation through to use of the crypto by the investment companies as transparent as possible um and secondly a portfolio tool this is like a really customized block explore with also a valuation tool and I'll give you a sense of what that looks like so the crypto fund website itself um three categories you have how are the funds coming in what are the Investments that we're making and then if you really want to dive into the actual block confirmations or transaction confirmations you can actually click on the track section and you can see all all of that fun stuff going on particularly in the investment section though if you want to learn about projects that we've supported and Cilia pointed to a few of those you can go into the invest section and you'll see we've tried to use some plain language as much as possible describe what the Project's doing give you a quick snapshot and then you can click on it and that's where you'll actually see the verification of those transfers that have taken place um our transfers to date have been in the amount of either um our very first was in 10 ether so wanted to just make sure that the piping was working and then our most recent transfers were in the amount of 125 e so slowly but surely building up uh our own muscle memory in terms of how we deal with digital assets then the portfolio tool that I mentioned and essentially being a customized block Explorer um this is for us to be able to keep track of how much transaction fees have we paid for overall dispersement so in the last year those 12 Investments That Cecilia mentioned we're about half a million dollars worth um so less than 2% in transaction fees that we've paid even though uh it's been a crazy year for transaction fees uh it's still for us been uh fairly manageable and and then the valuation part which I don't have a a screenshot of right now but um we have a an algorithm ESS essentially that we used across multiple exchanges to take an average um and we're able to track that all within this portal to make it really easy for our accounting team um and the rest of our colleagues at UNICEF so that's one of the internal projects that we've been working on but the second one that I wanted to highlight to you I think is particularly relevant in the context of Co and this is a project that we were working on even before Co hit um and this is around bringing Universal connectivities to schools and school communities um having access to information uh to sorry to the internet gives us access to information it provides us additional opportunities so we have access to micro workk or we have access to online learning um access to health information and if you don't have access to the internet then you're blocked from all of these opportunities and so we have been working on a variety of solutions to help bring Universal connectivities to school and school communities but particularly we've been looking at how blockchain can play a role in that so um there is a product called Project Connect that our team has been working on for several years that actually helps map the schools in each country and in this case you can see Colombia here and uh the internet connectivity speed of every single School the reason that it's important and helpful for us to know the Internet connect it speed is we can then look at this map and see how do we teach in certain regions can we provide online education or not or if um it has good connectivity speed we know that those communities might have the most recent information about Co for example and maybe other communities that aren't as connected we need to focus on getting information out in a a a variety of different ways in those communities so that was step one no blockchain in that piece at all but but what we have been working on now is getting realtime connectivity uh information and writing that on chain so the old way that each of these schools would report their connectivity speed is that a principal every month would fill out a form and they would mail that into to us um there's obviously a couple um you know inefficiencies in that in that process um and we also want to make sure we're getting the most accurate information and that the information actually matches what the schools are paying for particularly um and then starting to look at okay so if we know the rules of engagement with an internet service provider can we actually use Smart contracts to manage some of that relationship um rather than having a lot of Hands-On in manual intervention so the first step of this process was really understanding where the schools are like I mentioned no blockchain part in that element right away though we are looking now at using bounties to essentially help people crowdsource locations of schools so that would be one one element but what we have done is we're using various methods to collect real-time internet speeds so for example um either through a probe in the school or through um chome extensions there's a variety of different methods we're using in different countries to get this real-time connectivity speed and to have a marker that we're able to say that this information hasn't been tampered with by any party and so to have that on chain to be able to have that um once we've done that then we're starting to think through what the smart contract smart contract structure would look like um we have even had early conversations in terms of if we look at a school as an economic hub for example how could we leverage different um dii protocols um to actually enable that community in a variety of different ways those are still pretty early ideas but just to point out that um those are conversations that our team are having to see how we can best leverage uh blockchain and specifically ethereum in this case uh for these School communities so with the whole intention of being going from a map that's mostly red to going to a map that's mostly green so that then we have uh you know a community of people who have access to the internet but not just the internet but to be able to join for example the ethereum community and have access to micro work or be able to join various projects um that's incredibly powerful ful so the Giga project in and of itself um has four different pillars and to date I've mentioned some of these prototypes that we've done but we have uh four or five various prototypes that we have done that we're now looking to consolidate into one essentially you know larger platform the Project Connect platform so mapping the data and getting that in real time using smart contracts to essentially monitor whether the internet's being is um essentially in the in the band of what's supposed to be delivered um we're looking at various ways that we can capture internet service providers bidding on connectivity in countries and how we can do that in a fair and transparent imp parent way online and then a whole variety of things around empowering the community once they have connectivity um so we've done things like once you have connectivity looking at certificates on chain which is I think a super easy example of you know helping someone build a digital CV um but also micro work and bounties and and things like that I think that's been a big part of our work as well so with that um I'm going to leave you just with some links to our website in case you're interested uh so unicefinnovation fund.org or crypto fund. unicef. but we thought it would be particularly interesting for you to hear uh from one of the companies who's actually received funding from us and is working in these countries that we've been talking about so chewy thank you for joining us on Friday evening and over to you for uh the rest of the presentation thank you Christina thank you Sessy uh it's it's a pleasure it's an honor to be here so I'm gonna share my screen so just let me know I guess you can see my presentation there right so does it say crypto kitties is is this the right one no it's government as a platform this this session is called um reimagining systems and and perhaps this is where we found our best alignment with UNICEF Innovation with Tessy and Christina uh because we were trying to reimagine the public sector and as it says it's in a in a in an approach shifting towards efficiency and Trust as um Christina was referring about how important is being efficient being trustworthy being transparent and this is something that governments lack uh and and I want to start this presentation um with just this foot for thought to you trust in your government can you think about that question a little bit when was the last time that you interacted with your government how how much money that they ask you to pay in taxes uh what services that you're receiving from them what else can you ask them to give or to do for you uh how can we tap on that do you do you actually trust them well don't feelit bad either if you trust or not there is a 50% population that trust or distrust the government uh but what is worst is this is growing because nine out of every 10 public servants they say that they don't they just don't have the tools to cope with the size of the cities with the the the amount of problems that are emerging uh they don't know how to do they don't have the Technologies they don't have the tools they don't have the proads they are operating almost like 200 years ago and this creates a bigger problem according to McKenzie an average of 20% of annual budget of every government in the world goes missing this sums up to five trillion in the state where I live in noon Mexico this is a billion dollars every single year what can you do with a billion dollars what can you do with this with this money to to improve uh your government or or to build this trust that we are thinking or to reimagine the system so this is a lot of money that goes missing a lot of distrust a lot of inefficiency and a lot of people saying that they don't have the tools to do anything about it so we thought we need to reimagine that and as CI was showing UNICEF taught us how to jump in the middle of the those of those Technologies top Technologies and most pressing problems and this is the company that I co-founded o jumped into the middle of these pressing problems and is helping governments to create Solutions using um Technologies such as blockchain and we are doing it together with UNICEF or the etherum foundation among other partners that you can see there to bridge a gap and and I myself I have a background as a mechatronics engineer so what am I doing working in government I did a PhD in artificial intelligence what am I working with the public sector well because I believe that I know these Secret Sauce that we technologist know know as the morl in technology if you see the right of this slide we assume that every year things cost less and do more but when I saw what government is doing and how they operate they assume that every year things will cost more and do less so how can we overlap those worlds in this industry known as gotic and pour this these Technologies and leverage this financial support either in in in regular Finance or in crypto from UNICEF To Build The Better War to reimagine uh governments because uh and this is from the infinite machine book government every government goes inefficient once they cross a certain size threshold and every city is growing so we need to know how can we provide these Technologies to create an opportunity for governments to grow their services to grow their opportun to serve to grow their opport to the the capacity to deliver Solutions as their cities is growing as the citiz and or the population is growing and the best that we can think about this is to build government as platforms think about ethereum think about this phrase from a quote from Tim O'Reilly he says he said to J je bessos once that a platform beats an application every single time and this is what we're trying to build an ecosystem or Sol of solutions that bets into less duplicated efforts rapid adoptions and better Services imagine governments as platforms tapping into two essential principles trust and efficiency I'm going to tap into efficiency very fast because we see efficiency as artificial intelligence and this time we need to focus on blockchain but I want to talk about this because actually we're using blockchain cryptocurrency from the crypto fund that the UNICEF gave us as not only is a fin financial support but also as a batch of trust for the government of the city of buenosaires to Believe in Us and to collaborate with another startup to to mine all those public reviews on on Google Places and social media about the public spaces in Buenos ises and grab the sentiment and and grab the best or or most relevant tax for the government to understand how the citizens are reacting to their public policies and their public spaces we're doing this with the city right now and we tapping into image recognition for faster actioning Pooles um damage Parks Public stri public lighning and also situations this is in Spanish but you can see there that the best guess is the the the street light turned off we can detect situations now with these algorithms sponsored by UNICEF with the crypto found and by the foundation we want to do with the artificial intelligence and with the efficient approach of platforms actions faster and that's it that I'm going to talk about artificial intelligence I want to FOC some trust because here is where blockchain came in and also I I need to step back a couple of years ago 2018 when when UNICEF first uh um trusted in us with the Innovation fund we were part of the first blockchain cohort to build a platform to deliver digital certificates we wanted to make everyone blockchain Savvy or not to be able to tap into the foundational attributes of blockchain immutability transparency decentralization to Leverage the power of the blockchain even if you don't even understand what blockchain means we wanted that we wanted a simple WordPress plugin that and where anyone can issue certificate and we created that with the with the with the first um Innovation fund and now with the crypto fund we created self Sovereign identity and we are combining those worlds as you can see in this video we created a very simple self- Sovereign identity with a blockchain ID using meth mask where you can sign in your your your your credentials you demonstrate that you own a wallet in we an ethereum wallet and we use this wallet as your document holder and then you fill in any form imagine you are asking for a construction permit and you click there send and then an administrator this is an administrator logging in it comes in regular day working at the government it sees uh recent request for construction permits it see my data there already pay the permit all certified on or to certify on the blockchain and then I click okay everything is well here and then I issue the certificate Person Public servant they don't have an idea of what happened in the back end but they created a QR they create a license that is like looks like this and then it's openly verifiable by anyone tampering expiration revocation and authenticity construction permit covid passes reopening tourism responsibly you name it is a blockchain asset linked to a wallet that is seen as document holder or a self soverign identity for governments to serve everything if we look at the image on the top left we're thinking about birth certificates handicap certificates construction permits commercial permits your University diplomas everything on your document holder on your ethereum wallet and once you want to for example take a look at the right uh at the right image if you want to to ask for a construction permit to to to to build an extra room in your house um you click on the MIT and it says hey your government wants to access your verth blockchain certificate and your home ownership certificate and you click accept they got the information you make the payment or if it requires a payment and they send you back another blockchain digital asset with your construction permit with all the foundational attributes of the blockchain who knows about blockchain the citizen the public servant we know about blockchain we know that this brings back trust and we're building this with ethereum um 2.3.1 um library in Python writing everything openly verifiable with the blog search open standard for anyone to be able to verify so that decentralization is happening at this best and with metham mask so that anyone with any browser can can access or can sign this information these kind of certificates we have done it in very different flavors this is one example we are tracing subsidies delivery certificates of money given to artists in the municipality of baa Blanca we we are putting it on blockchain transparency on energy pricings in the national government of Chile we are doing that tamper proof records on energy pricings University diplomas this is on the federal Argentinian blockchain which is also based in ethereum um deposited in the same wallet that you use to interact with your presidency or with your local government skills at different schools on the blockchain um origin of wine derivatives and Artisans products for example also honey products from very uh vulnerable communities in the north of Argentina and the south of Mexico um commitments to sustainability uh or sustainable actions um with the with the sustainability Development Center in um Spain commercial licenses in in Costa Rica in the municipality of keos and Gracia all as a digital asset link it to a s Sovereign identity of a person um winners of public lotteries we're creating a model around blockchain on how an an intelligent public Lottery should look like with t with temper proof records and and and uring that there is no Corruption of manipulation of information and the winners there uh lore licenses uh inspector licenses this has been very very interesting for us because um maybe it doesn't happen around the world but in Latin America there is a lot of distrust in in in police officers so imagine there's a police officer approaching approaching you and you can take out your phone and scan a QR and see its blockchain certificate and confirm that there a police officer that it's supposed to be there that the time is correct that the region is correct so to brings back control to the to the government authorities and to the citizen again it decentralizes this this this sense of trust uh this is an example of construction permits uh being built in the city of San Nicolas and I can keep on talking about this I love these tweets from a AIA and Chris Fabian where last July there we we we closed a a moment saying like we have issued tens of thousands of these different flavors of lockchain digital assets impacting over half a billion citizens in Argentina Chile Costa Rica Mexico and more more countries on the the in the in the region all this world about trust is about documents and trustworthy but what if we cople Both Worlds the crypto fund for AI the crypto fund for blockchain and everything that we're building as a platform think about governments they work as we can see on the left here uh they cop pieces non interoperable silos of silos of data and on the right Lego pieces as a platform we can couple them together see this platform that we have built right now with the help of Unicef and the crypto fund uh with along with eum foundation so any government can have a deployment of this platform go to the menu go to the setup go to service models turn on artificial intelligence for monitoring public spaces or making actions faster detecting a pothole turn on transparency Services turn on um public Construction Services turn on the blockchain certificates and then start tapping into this portable um document holders these these ethereum wallets where we can deposit blockchain or trustable digital assets no paper with more than no paper it's blockchain behind this is what we are loving and as you can see here on the configuration we just changed the name of the city change the colors change the different images turn on the different models click save and then we have this world open source as an operating system for the future of governments this is how we are imagining systems think about this we can detect a public need maybe it's an unemployment benefit or another government proced or service but think about this simple public need a broken street light we can detect that from artificial intelligence with an image and we have H the list of issued certificates of providers of the government that can repair that broken street light so we can match that and this this is where we are stepping right now Beyond identity and do smart Contracting with that provider to repair that lab and once that happens we can ask the citizens for a decentralized auditing for the citizens said yes the lamp the lamp is working right now and with a certain amount of CI citizens confirming that this service has been delivered we can make the payment how can you lose 5 trillion do with this Christina just showed us how the pilot of juniper and and crypt funded unicef. can track the money that UNICEF is investing in in startups like us imagine doing that with government will you trust a government like this what we are trying to replicate it's the app store or the Play Store but for governments is the Gob store these pieces of software these Lego pieces with within an open- Source ecosystem and an open source Community to build Lego masterpieces to create this future of government to reimagine systems with this opportunity that blockchain is bringing back blockchain gives trust government lacks trust it's easy we can do that and this is what FAS King says is a potential Game Changer from o and we have been able to build that because of the help of Unicef and thether foundation and where we are aiming is to leverage this concept of the ethereum Maka system as the infinite machine where we are actually tapping not only into the ethereum network but also into the ethereum developer talent to create different solutions that can fix government because fixing government fix our the places where we live fix our daily lives and I just want to end this presentation saying that this is the time to think about the possibilities of the infinite machine to transform the public sector to reimagine the system but mostly and very very importantly to reinvent the public sector so thank you very much cesi Christina and the th foundation for inviting us to this presentation thanks tree so um we still have a couple of minutes left and I know Christina and I have several questions to you um and we could have some fun with those so starting with a question so I I think you know I very well know your work and I think it's so interesting but there's so many like words that could be a little bit tricky to come in to a governmental official and start with a presentation of that sort so I guess my question to you for you know as as like if you had to think about what do you tell someone that is also looking into blockchain in the public sector um what would you tell them um are the one or two biggest barriers in terms of starting these conversations like selling a governmental official that never worked with blockchain and may never have heard about what blockchain is um where do you start and like if there's any all that you want to show or explain how do you tackle that thank you sesy H goodbye I need to leave and I'm just I'm just kidding uh so it you remind me of this panel when when when the moderator asks me uh so are you selling anti-corruption technology tools to corrupt people and I was like well at least I'm offering an opportunity to upgrade or modernize their processes even if they are corrupt so uh I guess I guess if you need to start explaining blockchain to a public servant then then you already lost the deal uh what you need to explain them is that the internet came to do something better uh the same way that there is a new technology that is actually made or built to fix their world uh the the go the government world as as a whole uh and as fun as it sounds most of our current customers they are they have they the always wanted to be like the Pioneer po politician that uses blockchain in the region so once you see that once you have the first case because there's one that has heard the power of blockchain on the public sector and and he he or she has been the first one on the headlines of the best newspaper once that happen those barriers lower a lot because more of them come and this for example it's I have very tangible example this is happening with the lotteries in argentin when it happened with the university and with the government of of the presidency then the lottery of Rio negro they came to us and they say can we do this with with the lottery can we bring back trust to the lottery we say yes of course and when we did that the president of the lottery called to the lottery of new ken and to the lottery of here and there and and they started sharing so barriers for us are actually being lowered by Word of Mouth the once there is a first case that understood the power of blockchain and understood the mediatic the the the communicational benefits that they have because of using this um B towards transparency and decentralization once that happens more and more of them start coming and to explain blockchain for us it has been as simple as saying like hey you use like electronic signatures digital signatures this is just better it's cooler it sounds better it's a QR and and and and then you you start tapping in and you show these one minute videos that I shared on the presentation and they instr like literally can I can I issue that and that document is is is is tamper proof yes it's tamperproof and is it unique yeah is it it is unique and can anyone verify yeah and and and this starts changing things and most for example think about restaurants you're based in New York how many times have you stepped into a restaurant not on quarantine before uh and you step into a restaurant and they have a lot of papers uh on permits and hygiene and and all everything that they need to have to be a um a regulated restaurant so now imagine three or four QRS that you can scan as a citizen or as a city inspector and you click verify and that checks in for you as an inspector to confirm to your bosses that you are doing your job or as a citizen you can actually AIT your city these simple examples these very tangible examples seem so futuristic to them that they want them and this is where we are trying to tap and this is where we are trying to get and uh perhaps the biggest challenge is still on hey we're going to know where every single scent of your budget is going perhaps this is a challenge but but but we're still working and walking around that makes a lot of sense I think um the word of mouth is something sometimes we we forget about but I think that's why these platforms that allow this exchange of conversations is so key um Christina do you want to go next with a question for Joy yeah I think we probably have time for one more question so I'm I'm happy that I get to get one in um chewy thank you because I think every time we talk we get to see new examples of how you're actually using blockchain with real people and for me that's always super exciting I don't know if you know this but I actually worked in the public sector before joining UNICEF and then worked with governments helping them so it's always so excited to to see all of the use cases that you've you've listed um some would say that the public sector tends to be risk averse and I think we've alluded to that a little bit today but I've also seen I've tend to use the public sector as a benchmark in terms of adoption and you know when we talk about blockchain applications obviously attestations are super important not as sexy as like the defi stuff going on for for you know for comparison but it's showing that there's more mainstream adoption so I guess my question to you is you've talked about attestations and like a whole whole bunch of use of those and I think that that's amazing you hinted at the idea of a digital ID kind of what's coming next because I think that that helps me and maybe the general public kind of better understand wider adoption for these types of Technologies so kind of what's the what's the you know 12 month uh adoption that you're seeing yeah t thank you Christina uh and and yes I remember I remember your your dark past uh so on the risk averse first um this this is this is something that uh and and perhaps is most a a a message for the audience that that an answer to you but this is something that happened to us by working with UNICEF uh UNICEF investing in us not only money but also crypto fund is not only financial support it's a trust bch uh so if we go to the city of venires and try to sell an AI service they say a startup under their 20s in their 30s ah a Mexican in Argentina so but when it is no it's UNICEF coming bringing someone things change risk eradicates vanishes so so this has helped us lot a lot and and and this is a a a small caps but also big thank you to UNICEF because you have helped us to to to bridge this Gap with the risk of us our politicians uh that's the first step and on the road map you know uh this is this is really hard because particularly uh selling to governments during a pandemic has been really hard for us really really hard for us it's governments not knowing what what they are going to do with their budget improvising everything knowing more than ever there is a customer here in Mexico that says to how do you feel that we all know more than ever that we need something that OS CD is offering to us but we have no money to purchase so it is like you know I feel like I'm right but this this sense of I'm wrong in the inside so so what we are looking for in the next three months I cannot think of 12 I'm honest but for the next three months is to see blockchain digital IDs used by Argentinian citizens with real government procedures and also because we already have and this is something that we planned strategically and this is why we have so many flavors it's like having tens of product but but it's just one product using differently is to to convince or persuade the presidency that we can make the university jump in and Lottery jump in and so the same citizen with the same ID they can have a government proced and the University diploma and everything and this in the next three months will give a sense of of the the real GameChanger potential that FAS was saying with that tweet uh hopefully we can demonstrate before 2020 ends uh but at most um my birthday is February 5th so that I'm going to give that to me awesome I I'll mark my calendar too for your birthday so I send you a message um I think that's super interesting especially since obviously so many of the you know folks from the ethereum community are also in Argentina so I think that that would also be just really exciting generally to to see that move forward so sending you all of the Good Vibes for that to can I add something on that yeah sure for particularly and this is about the crypto fund particularly if you live in Argentina and you're expecting a salary in Argentina and pesos you love a salary in cryptocurrency right and this has helped us a lot literally a lot because having money in Argentina and pesos with the economical crisis they are living during this pandemic and this is me feeling sorry but at the same time feeling hopeful and and seeing Argentina as an opportunity um having the money in crypto is not only transparent and and traceable and all the benefits that we have already spoken but it's about accac power it it is the valuation free it is the politi the politicized and this is a huge benefit that I that I didn't spoke and that you just tapped in because of the Argentinian community and the teamw that we have there yeah I think those are all super super valid points okay with that I think we have to call it a wrap for this so uh thank you to the um e Global team for having us thank you chewy thank you Cece and I'll hand it back over to CTIC thank you so much Christina cilia and and chewy um amazing talk and uh really good to get an insight into how you're making a difference in in those communities so I really appreciate you giving us your time and uh hope to see you and what UNICEF does more over the next few months thanks everybody so we are on our last talk for today and uh we're going to just take a quick short four-minute break before we get there and uh after that we are going to