[Music]
all right um thank you for that uh it's
one of the last talks of the day we
don't have much time so hope it'll be a
good one for you guys yeah so my name is
Arun I uh work with UNICEF I the
blockchain lead at the ventures team
within the UN office of uh Innovation
and we are here to uh chat with one of
our portfolio companies stawick around
the supply chain solution that they
worked on and the impact they are
creating along with uh uh a partner of
ours on you know how to get these open-
Source uh digital public goods funded um
may I ask you guys to quickly introduce
yourself starting with Mani yeah sure uh
thanks a uh hi good evening everyone my
name is Mani I'm the head of product at
statway we are a blockchain based
company where we are basically focused
on enhancing the transparency and
efficiency uh in the global Health
public Supply chains what we essentially
do is uh help stakeholders keep a track
of all their transactions and give end
to end visibility in the supply
chains thank you and thank you both for
the invitation today uh David Casey here
director of funding the commons uh
funding the commons is a community and
event series focused around exploring
public goods funding mechanisms and we
do conferences hackathons uh open source
developer residencies we just completed
one in changai last month and uh public
goods funding experiments so applied uh
experiments using new new
mechanisms so in case you wondering what
a UNICEF person is doing here so we have
been working with blockchain since 2015
uh we run something called the UNICEF
Venture fund where we provide uh funding
for early stage startups such as uh stat
that man is working for uh and we are
also interested in digital public goods
we are part of the digital public goods
Alliance and that's how we got to know
David So hence here I am uh first
question to Mani could you please maybe
talk a bit of the product uh around the
vaccine Supply chains please uh yeah uh
so I think the problem um the the
challenge that we were looking at was
twofold uh so the first initial issue
was around uh how the supply chains are
fragmented and specifically in the
Healthcare Systems how they rely on
siloed and information which do not talk
to each other the other issue was also
around product wastage in terms of
expiry counter feating and cold chain
failures so these this was like the
primary agenda that we wanted to like
you know uh solve firsthand and like you
know have a unified platform so that is
where we've built a a solution called
vaccine Ledger uh which typically
ensures that uh every physical asset in
the supply chain uh we create a digital
twin of that uh and so from what how
that works is that from the time of
procurement or from the point of
manufacturing and every time the product
changes hands we basically record the
Journey of products as in how it is
passing on so we uh help ensure that you
know all these stakeholders are
completely aware of where the product is
in supply chain right now uh yeah and
and we did we did also have like issues
looking around how 30% of the global
vaccines were wasted and there was lack
of information even within uh you know
many organizations who where like
sending out products to various uh uh
lmic countries but there was like lack
of visibility whether it's reaching the
final beneficiaries or not so it it
becomes very important and critical to
ensure that the life saving vaccines and
medicines reach to those uh people
especially in the underd deserved areas
and that's how I think what what we're
trying to do is uh leverage blockchain
uh and provide that uh you know the
whole data uh in real time for every
stakeholder to make informed decisions
that's fantastic so um blockchain here
is of course used to track every vial of
the vaccine I think which adds a next
layer of traceability uh and you know
visibility which uh all the stakeholders
uh get and U talking of stakeholders uh
where have you piloted this solution uh
so
far uh yeah so we we've had a couple of
deployments so we had it both on the
private side also and on the public uh
so we did uh a couple of deployments in
uh Costa Rica uh we had partnership with
idb inter American Development Bank uh
who actually opened doors for us to like
uh help track products within that
market so the major issue at hand was
that once the manufacturers send the
product they only have visibility till
Panama and after which there's like
complete lack of understanding if the
how is the product moving in the country
so we we did make uh a deployment there
and even during covid we were able to
like track a million doses of covid-19
vaccines and also the end beneficiaries
who were receiving it um and we we did
have a another deployment another major
deployment with the UNICEF uh so the way
it works is that we have an LTA with
UNICEF so that basically gives us that
opportunity to like uh go to multiple
countries we recently just deployed in
Bangladesh uh so we are ensuring that we
are tracking the product from the
central procurement level at the country
and uh there are like multiple various
stakeholders within the entire ecosystem
who are also going to be a part of it
the major challenge I think we did have
around was uh you know there were
barriers in terms of uh digital
infrastructure so they did not have like
enough capabilities that could support
uh and even in terms of remote locations
right so there were like very very
remote locations where you do not have
like bandwidth capacity internet
bandwidth capacity so we did employ a
good good workaround plan for that to
have an offline mode which basically
helped people record information in real
time so once they have the data
connectivity back they can like you know
they don't really have to enter it again
but there were again issues with having
uh uh localization in place uh so we did
understand that it was going to come up
uh eventually like as in how we like you
know uh naturally grow uh to multiple
countries we would uh have to like you
know have uh the application of
available in multiple languages and we
how we have also made the whole thing
accessible is that it is it's a
combination of both web and mobile app
so the way it works is that the user who
actually who was initially recording it
manually on a book and pen and paper he
uh has the access on his mobile app so
all he just has to do is download the
app uh you know uh record the
transaction so there's like no double
work that he would necessarily have to
do uh so in in that sense I think what
we're also trying to do is have some
concept called incentivization for uh
making it easier for people to adopt the
application so that's where I think with
uh UNF Bangladesh what we have done is
like the uh you know the demographics
are vast there so we looking at almost
100,000 million doses of vaccination
that we're going to record every year
and that's like a huge number and then
we have like good 150,000 plus users and
wallets that we going to generate rate
just with uh UNICEF Bangladesh the plan
is also to like scale up to various
other Supply chains so we've had like
par conversations running with uh animal
vaccines for nutritional vaccines so the
way it works is that the whole platform
has the capability to not just expand
within the human vaccine space but it
has like a similar use case in various
other dimensions so it it has a
potential of creating a good uh you know
5 million wallets uh in the next coming
up year or two uh so we looking at like
some potential uh contracts coming up um
yeah hopefully
soon um thanks a lot for um not just
highlighting the challenges that you
guys had to overcome in a real world use
case but also the kind of impact um that
could be generated so she was talking of
millions of uh wallets and you know
stuff like the offline mode uh it's it
gets very real out there so that is a
lifesaver actually um which which
enables the blockchain to always be in
sync uh and and and then know other
things that you that you mentioned as
well that's that's actually fantastic so
now I'll switch to uh David So as you
could see David like these guys U manage
to not just build the tech but also make
it accessible and make it work in the
real world and just in Bangladesh uh
they're uh they'll soon start tracking
100,000 um vaccines with thousands of
wallets so um for um projects such as
this uh web 3 projects um real world uh
open source what would be the um sources
of funding that they can tap into could
you please uh take us through an
overview of that yeah so I think I've
always thought that this is a very
interesting use case real world real
time supply chain tracking I remember a
project from about six or seven years
ago I believe it was called wobby that
was more focused on food and there was
like a a lot of kind of uh fake
ingredients issues especially in China
um I'm not sure what happened to it but
I thought it was a Brant use case and
it's like it's not like sexy cuz it's
real world and there's not that much to
speculate on um but it's actually like
really really useful for millions of
people um I think in in terms of funding
uh in crypto we have this uh kind of
phrase of public goods funding but often
what people mean are funding Network
Goods which are uh kind of digital
public goods open source that is
specifically applicable to uh the
optimism super chain ecosystem or the
polygon ecosystem or the ethereum
ecosystem or the Stellar ecosystem um
which is a little different than uh when
kind of government public sector UNICEF
folks talk about public goods which are
kind of like the the public that is you
know the human species or um the public
of Bangladesh so um in that light there
are um a number of public goods funding
uh systems being developed and um some
really interesting work being done in
the optimism ecosystem with retroactive
public goods funding um there's a kind
of old protocol Gollum Foundation which
deployed something called octant um
which uh uses quadratic funding uh like
gitcoin to fund a number of again mostly
ethereum uh open source public goods
what I think um these ecosystems are
looking for is essentially transaction
volume on their chain on their Network
um and so deploying millions of Wallets
on a decentralized public blockchain
network um like a layer two on top of
ethereum would be uh I think critical to
to going after uh public goods funding
from one of these
ecosystems um there's always uh the
option of launching a token um using
that token as uh an incentive layer for
uh real world's uh validators or
Auditors um that are you know tracking
um the vaccines as they go through time
and space using basic devices that um
millions of people have around the world
so you enable kind of uh uh large
amounts of people that are not technical
um to directly engage in validating
transactions or um kind of interactions
um so these are some ideas and then
beyond web 3 I think um this is a real
use case for public sector for
governments for large uh nonprofits and
philanthropic philanthropic bodies like
Gates Foundation
um I think that the uh yeah this use
case goes Way Beyond web 3 um I think
that web 3 uh and blockchain Foundations
should be very interested in these use
cases um unfortunately it's generally um
only if you're if you're using some
specific um stack or technology uh like
I mentioned of of a specific layer to um
would they generally become interested
ethereum Foundation is an exception they
fund a lot of interesting
research thanks both that um uh what got
me into blockchains for the very first
time many years ago was actually the
real life potential of uh of this
technology uh helping society as in a
whole and then now we are beginning to
see these real world use cases and you
already mentioned um about let's say the
amount of data that has to be stored on
chain for the sources uh of uh public
goods funding from the web3 ecosystem to
be interested uh in them uh um
what what else should these projects uh
keep in mind apart from just using the
blockchain of course uh that you know
goes without saying how else can they
make themselves attractive uh to yeah I
think I think um as we spoke about a bit
earlier um understanding how can we
engage uh people in the real world
Beyond uh uh developers um bringing this
technology outside of the kind of um
internal circles that it I feel like um
Al I also got interested in blockchain
about 11 12 years ago for um real world
use cases and impact and um always have
been really interested in projects and
that's how we got connected uh so yeah
looking at how can um people around the
world uh living in places like Costa
Rica Bangladesh um use very basic and
rudimentary devices to confirm uh things
that are happening in the real world and
reward them directly um on a public
blockchain uh for those
actions okay uh so impact can of course
be generated by web 3 projects they may
also be generated by web 2 projects um
who are doing fantastic work the thing
is these web two projects are typically
not aware of how to become web 3 how to
get the data on chain and all that so
how can the web3 ecosystem the funding
ecosystem be more inclusive and you know
including them like do they have to
learn some protocol do they have to like
or is or could there be easier Pathways
for for these guys to enter the
ecosystem as well yeah I think uh this
is an issue with web 3 it's it's uh more
insular than it could be um and a lot of
use cases are being built specifically
for the web 3 Community um I think these
uh types of exceptions are really
interesting and um the the broader
crypto ecosystem would would do well to
engage um more I have seen uh some kind
of retroactive uh airdrops and and
funding mechanisms going to uh GitHub
profiles of web 2 developers that may
have never heard of uh the people
sending them the token but like I think
uh ZK sync might have done this a few a
few um recent uh airdrops have gone to
web 2 developers that are building
libraries that have been leveraged um by
crypto protocols and then the the they
send it like directly to a a Hub um
address and account and and that's uh
that's one way that I've seen the the
web3 community engaging um Beyond kind
of the um the small relatively small but
but growing ecosystem that we have here
that's uh very very encouraging uh to
know that new avenues are opening up uh
for broader areas of impact uh to be
funded by the by the web3 ecosystem so
that's fantastic um that's all the time
that we have uh thank you so much uh MB
mani and uh David for of course
highlighting the solution and of course
uh talking about the ways in which
Solutions such as stat wig and the
vaccine Ledger could get funded thank
you so much thanks