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| Why Blockchain will be useful in establishing a trusted network. |
The World Bank Group has been making sure clients in need are covered during the COVID-19 pandemic. William Zhang, Lead Information Security Architect and Blockchain Specialist, World Bank Group, noted that the economic fallout from COVID-19 has been huge, with global GDP losses at US$4 trillion so far, massive job losses and a lot of business closures.
“It is predicted that the number of people in poverty and extreme poverty will both increase by about 9%,” he said during a webinar session organised by the 10x1000 Tech for Inclusion Programme, titled Leveraging Blockchain Innovations to Cope with the COVID-19 New Normal. The International Financial Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, and Ant Financial Services Group, the operator of Alipay, jointly announced the 10x1000 Tech for Inclusion programme in 2018.
So far, the World Bank Group has been increasing funding for clients in need, accelerating project approval processes, working with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and developed countries to provide debt relief to the poorest countries in the world, Zhang said. To date, there are some 128 ongoing projects in 566 locations in 89 countries, an US$11 billion commitment.
The group is also continuing to innovate to help countries cope better with the situation. Zhang observed that technology, particularly Blockchain, can be harnessed to build trust in doing business with less physical contact. Blockchain's value is in its immutability, consensus-based model, and transparency, he said, resulting in trusted business networks and faster, cheaper payment solutions.
As every participant has a copy of the immutable ledger of transactions, they “can rely on their own ledger to see how money has been spent and what development outcomes have been achieved,” he explained.
He also shared that cross-border payments are cheaper and faster with Blockchain, and that both sender and receiver can see where the money is at any time.
“(Blockchain will) encourage more world donors to entrust the World Bank with their funds for international developments,” he said.
Zhang shared a number of use cases, including a pharma-based Blockchain token economy where participants are incentivised for desired behaviour with tokens that can be redeemed for goods and services.
EVOKE, an online social neworking and gaming platform that was first introduced by the World Bank Group in 2010, offers a similar incentivisation model and now supports Blockchain. Conceived to educate youth about problem-solving and innovating with a positive social impact, the platform incentivises students and teachers with tokens that can be used to redeem rewards such as cellphone minutes and textbooks. Blockchain helps the World Bank Group demonstrate results to donors, Zhang said.
Blockchain is an ideal technology for the era of COVID-19, when the public's health will need to be monitored continuously, Zhang added. Blockchain can manage track-and-trace health data while protecting citizen privacy, he explained.
In the post-COVID era, the consensus is that authorities will require tools to track and trace individuals' health status and their whereabouts, he noted. “Citizen privacy must be respected and in this regard Blockchain-based digital identities (are ideal),” he said.
There would be no central repository of personal data that is subject to data breach, and adoption will increase when people trust that their data is well-managed, he pointed out.
GreenPass from Blockchain company Elastos DMA is one such Blockchain solution. Announced in mid-March 2020, the app can store health status information and location data on a Blockchain so it is immutable and traceable. Such a system would also allow for rewards for good behaviour.
Life will not be as before in the post-COVID era, Zhang further said.
“Digital transformation will be accelerated given that we have all seen the benefits of going digital with meetings, with documents and with the whole business process,” he said.
“People will think twice about either personal or business travel,” elaborated Zhang. “They will think 'why come to the office when a lot of the work can be done at home?'”
He advised business owners to cultivate resilience by tackling single points of failure, and leveraging the 'network effect'. Just as the Internet provides more than one route to a destination, he said businesses should consider implementing business processes that have “many paths, routes, ways to get business done.”
