Marc Serafino
European Commission, which is an executive body of the European Union, is launching a contest to develop scalable, efficient and high-impact decentralized solutions to social innovation challenges using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLTs), such as the one used in blockchains.
The contest aims to take advantage of DLT’s key features, including support for decentralized methods for consensus reaching as well as sharing, storing and securing transactions and other data with fewer to no central intermediaries.
Examples of social innovations
In its invitation, the Commission mentions the following social innovations in which decentralized solutions have shown clear benefits over conventional centralized platform:
- Demonstrating the origin of raw materials or products and supporting fair trade and the fair monetization of labor;
- Allowing for a greater visibility of public spending and a greater transparency of administrative and production processes;
- Participation in democratic decision-making by enabling accountability, rewarding of participation and/or anonymity;
- Enabling the development of decentralized social networks or clouds, or of decentralized platforms for the collaborative economy;
- Managing property, land registry or other public records (you may want to check our article talking about blockchain land records)
- Contributing to financial inclusion.
The contest targets a wide range of actors, including individuals, social entrepreneurs, civil society organizations, research centers from technological and social disciplines, creative industries, students, hackers, start-ups and more. Tackling this challenge requires multidisciplinary expertise.
Prize and expected result
The prize value is set at €5 million. Expected results include:
- Pioneering decentralized solutions to global and/or local sustainability challenges;
- Generating positive social change by making available novel solutions for decentralizing and disintermediating processes;
- Demonstrating the viability of solutions enabling a more even distribution and sharing of information and resources which respects privacy while providing levels of transparency;
- Stimulating the emerging community of developers and practitioners of “blockchains for social good” applications.
The contest is open to all legal entities or groups of legal entities. The prize will be awarded, after closure of the contest, to the contestant(s) who demonstrates a solution that best meets the following cumulative criteria:
- Social impact – both potential and already achieved by the implementation of the solution, such as the size of the community of users engaged by the actual implementation;
- Decentralization and governance – improvements in transparency and accountability, while respecting privacy and/or anonymity;
- Usability and inclusiveness;
- Viability at large scale – cost-efficiency, scalability, security, and sustainability;
- Clear added value of the demonstrated implementation for European citizens, in societal, economic or environmental terms.
Another requirement for projects participating in the contest is that the source code is released under an Open Source License.
The contest is open through the second quarter of 2019; winners will be announced and prize awarded in the first quarter of 2020.
