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good morning my name is woman had died
and I'm here to tell you how the United
Nations World Food Program is using
aetherium to distribute aid to refugees
DWP's mission is to end hunger and
traditionally this has been simple where
people are hungry we bring food in kind
like corn rice and so on and so forth
and we give it to them so they can eat
for a few years now we've also been
doing something what's called cash based
interventions which means that instead
of giving people food in kind we give
them the means to purchase their own
food and this can take the form of bank
cards mobile money routers and so on and
so forth and the idea behind it is that
the beneficiaries in the best position
to make their own purchasing decisions
so that essentially you know instead of
saying okay here's some food eat this
they can make their own choice and
there's element of dignity in there and
also that it can have a multiplier
effect in the local economy in order to
enable this sort of modality we normally
have to rely on financial intermediaries
such as banks Mobile Money companies and
cash agents so what the services that
these financial intermediaries provide
you falls onto two broad categories one
is practically accounting which is
creating accounts for beneficiaries
providing a distribution mechanism such
as SIM cards or bank cards and so on and
so forth
authorizing transactions when
beneficiary spend their entitlements and
then eventually reporting to us so this
let's call it accounting overall and
separately it's actually paying the
supermarket's or retailers where
benefices have made the expenditures so
a typical setup could be that at the
beginning of the month the WFP gives a
list of beneficiaries to the bank saying
here's our beneficiary
here's how much each one is getting and
they will create the accounts and load
them and we also have to advance money
for usually a month to the bank to
enable this essentially transfers to
happen the bank then contacts the
beneficiaries saying here's you know you
got some entitlements the beneficiary
goes to a store initiates a transaction
the store pings the bank for
authorization the bank checks the
account if they have enough entitlements
they confirm back and then eventually
pulls back them on a periodic basis the
bank will pay the store for the actual
transactions that taking place and let's
say at the month end we get a report
from the bank saying okay this is what
actually happened so a number of issues
that exist with this model one is cost
of course the bank will charge a fee for
this and at all volumes that that cost
can be quite high there's the element of
risk because we're advancing money to to
the bank and especially in the kind of
places that we work that risk can be
quite elevated if the bank goes bank
robber accumbens fraud or whatever we
have to share beneficiary information
with the bank they need to know
essentially who they're opening account
for and you know privacy could be
compromised there's the issue of
reconciliation so when we get the report
back from the bank we make all sorts of
efforts to verify the report to make
sure that the transactions that they say
took place actually did take place and
this is very laborious and
time-consuming and we can never really
be a hundred percent sure there's
element of control so normally for
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everything we want to do to add a new
beneficiary increase entitlements
whatever we have to formally advise the
bank and they would do it on our behalf
and in addition to the administrative
burden there could be a time delay which
could mean somebody goes without food
for a while we make a lot of effort to
reduce our financial risk and also to
protect anniversary privacy but this
also means the contracting can take
quite a long time which again would
delay operations and then there's the
issue of flexibility so for example if
you wanted to do Eve hours and move our
money and ATM and these companies don't
talk to each other and we don't know in
advance where beneficiaries are kind of
reading their entitlements we can't
really enable this I mean the best we
can do is you know divided a third
half-and-half but it's not ideal so it's
not quite flexible so what we've done
essentially is replaced the financial
intermediary with blockchain and so what
we do is now we load the you know create
blocks in accounts for beneficiaries
load them with the entitlements we
inform the beneficiary they have
entitlements that they can use they go
to a store they initiated transaction
the store now pings our blockchain
instead of the bank for authorization
which directly entitlements provide
confirmation and then at the same
frequency that the stores got paid
before we know essentially which store
to pay how much by when and we make the
transfer to this door directly ourselves
just a clarification here we have bank
accounts and this transfer currently is
happening through regular banking
channels in the future it could be
crypto for example or a digital national
currency but the difference is that we
have 350 global bank accounts that we
use for you know banking staff payments
buying corn and so on and so forth and
the cost of payments directly for us is
really cheap the main expense to us with
the previous model was this accounting
issuing cards POS terminals that was
essentially the main cost so yeah just
to clarify that you know we have our
corporate bank account our bank accounts
are and then usually we have to have a
separate bank to provide those
distributions and that's what we've
replaced and so we did a quick proof of
concept in the overcoat village in the
same province of Pakistan in January and
based on that learnings essentially
we've launched the pilots in the
hearthrug refugee camp in Jordan since
May this year in the past five months
we've been assisting ten thousand five
hundred beneficiaries we've distributed
1.6 million dollars two hundred thousand
transactions without a glitch and we've
reduced the fees essentially by 98%
so that is what that accounting portion
cost us and the 2% is what's costing us
to make these direct payments in the
future with crypto or something else
that could even go maybe near zero
we're not sharing any beneficiary
information with anyone so again in a
refugee context that's very important
we're not advancing any funds to anyone
sort of financial risk is greatly
reduced we have full control so if we
want to change entitlements add someone
new we can practically do it in real
time so the assistance is not delayed
and very important for us we've
authorized every single transaction so
we have hundred percent certainty that
you know what we think happen actually
happened and that significantly improves
our reconciliation process and they
associated payment so it actually
reduces the effort on our side then
because we don't have to worry as much
about financial risk and privacy
protection then we can actually contract
people faster which means we can offer
it faster and we're much more flexible
now because all the accounts are on
blockchain we can connect to as many
outlets as we want and they're all
coming out of the same wallet so we can
provide that flexibility to
beneficiaries which again it's it's
great so you might ask why are you doing
this on a blockchain you could do this
essentially on a traditional system and
that's completely true we could but one
of the main reasons is that there is
currently a lot of fragmentation and
duplication in the system and this is
only for illustration but essentially
imagine if we have Bob and Bob is
receiving assistance from four different
agencies each agency would have their
own identity system for Bob they would
have their contract with a separate bank
and they would channel assistance
through each one of these and of course
you know there's a cost and effort
required to maintain all these system
the contracts with the bank and they
don't talk to each other so that really
the things are not optimized or
harmonized in a way so what we're hoping
to achieve and actually one of the
reasons this exists is that that the
technology in the past has prevented
collaboration among the agencies but its
various ownership issues so if we have a
system and we have a contract with a
bank and someone else has something else
we don't want to use this because it's
not cool and vice versa and what we hope
is that blockchain can cut through that
as a neutral neutral neutral
interoperable equally owned all of that
you know open-source system then it's
not really owned by anyone but it's just
a mutually operated system that
one can use and this way we can have
beneficiary let's say identities or
wallets on the blockchain for Alice Bob
Dave and Aaron and various UN agencies
can link to that and provide whatever
service they want to provide and giving
our various networks like frog for us as
WFP with food retailers someone else
might have health network like hospitals
schools whatever else in my bibim can
really dramatically increase the
convenience to beneficiaries and if
we're all using the same system we can
really optimize and harmonize the global
effort into unprecedented degree with
big data artificial intelligence
whatever it might be and i think
extremely importantly the element of
Financial Inclusion I mean even now
without using crypto you know we were
we're adding quite a bit of that to the
people who may not have a bank before
bank account before but with the advent
of that you know investments loans micro
loans insurance international
remittances would be available to many
hopefully soon at a low or no cost
another reason of why blockchain is that
essentially so we have now let's say not
entity for a person on a blockchain and
we as W if you are adding financial
transaction histories to it and just
showing that you can spend money is not
very meaningful but if you sure that you
can save a little bit of it that damn
word actually counts towards the credit
history and this credit history now is
not tied to a specific financial
institution let's say in Jordan so if a
stereo' refugee a Syrian refugee were to
go back at some point they could
transport this history with them and
maybe get a small business loan and get
back on their own feet if we managed to
then bring other actors on board we can
maybe add education data health data
acid registries work permits and make
this profile increasingly more and more
useful to the beneficiary wherever they
are without the fear of persecution for
example because of their origin or
whatever else it might be and I don't
think it's unfeasible to think that one
day maybe even government IDs could end
up on the blockchain and we've heard
here a lot a lot of things about the
privacy protection zero knowledge proof
and I know it's at an early stage but
essentially this is the path we've just
started and we hope as technology
advances connectivity becomes widely
available the price of smart phone goes
down in a few years time this could be a
full fledge
essentially two for beneficiaries to
have more convenience and flexibility so
our invitation is to other humanitarian
actors who don't have a profit model
built in is to not reinvent the wheel so
we have not set up we have essentially
small contracts for cash transfers and
we're asking event you know they have
resources they join us open source free
and dedicate the resources to making the
system better more secure add additional
modules like identity supply chain
health whatever and also make it
available for free so that it can
essentially grow to be a system everyone
can use currently we're using a private
chain and mainly that's because the
transaction throughput that we require
it can't be handled on the public chain
but one day I mean philosophically were
leaned if we can ensure security and
privacy and all of that you move there
so the system is self-sustaining and
doesn't even require the backing of WEP
or do you one or whoever else for it to
function so yeah please join us to
empower the world's vulnerable we really
look forward to collaboration this is a
photo from our proof of concept that we
did January of this year and in Pakistan
essentially and for this we use the test
net to distribute food and cash to these
beneficiaries essentially to illustrate
the point that it can be done and using
that learnings then we've done our job
in pilot which is now going well it's
five months in product production and
we're soon going to scale up to a
hundred thousand beneficiaries and a few
months after that to five hundred
thousand which is all of Jordan and from
there other countries could follow that
have you know that could potentially
benefit from this solution I have many
many people to thank
of course WFP itself for providing this
service safe space for this idea to take
root the etherium community at large was
been very supportive the etherium
foundation for allowing me be to be here
today and get this message out and also
rich Bordeaux rich put your hand up who
we met at the singularity university
around this time last year where this
was just an idea and we had
very little resources and supports and
we told him about it he helped us think
through it and he pretty much hacked
together what we used in this proof of
concept in the photo that you see and he
did it for free no matter how much we
insisted he didn't accept any funds so
in a way he gave us that initial push
that we really needed to get this pilot
flying essentially my email address is
there if anyone is interested in more
information and since I have a few
minutes left I would actually like to
show you a video of how how the system
is currently working so in Jordan they
happen to use iris verification even
before we went so we wanted to
seamlessly integrate into that so we
don't change the beneficiary experience
especially if we're going to fail and
the system would have to be rolled back
essentially so what you would see here
on one side is the cash register at a
supermarket in one of the refugee camps
that you know they bring up the normal
bill the amount comes up the amount is
put into the iris scanning terminal the
beneficiary scans their iris that iris
then goes to be checked against an
identity the identity comes back and at
that point the terminal has both the
amount and the identity of person trying
to do it they pink or blockchain can
this person do this transaction would
reply and that's essentially the
a lot of oranges
on the bottom right to briefly see the
amount 1218 teen beneficiary cancer iris
transaction goes the iris imprint goes
to the database comes back with the
identity now it's coming to our
blockchain with the amount and identity
and that's it I have four and a half
minutes so maybe one or two questions I
think there was one already there but in
general in order to have a establish the
blockchain identity especially a
long-term one you would need a private
public key pair and do you have any
solutions in place providing people with
public private key pairs in such a way
that they can control them and they have
adequate security with them yes it's a
good question the one of the things we
cannot assume right now is hardware and
connectivity for everyone especially
where we are right now in fact the
Internet is cut off again we're building
towards the future so as you might know
Google SpaceX one web a whole bunch of
people are working to bring affordable
satellite internet everywhere in the
world and the price of smartphones is
dramatically dropping so I think by the
time we're ready the standards right
entity have been sorted out zero
knowledge plus whatever we can then
transfer a beneficiary private keys to
them potentially under devices and the
device could even have a biometric
authentication to trigger the private
key but for it to be it it data to be
stored with each beneficiary and not
centrally not sure if answer the
question I'm working with group
this handling the refugee crisis with
Burma or Myanmar it's about a 1.5
million people first question how many
beneficiaries can be scale - sorry how
many trees transactions can it scale -
can it do a billion a day because we're
looking at these kind of numbers with
1.5 million refugees the other question
is can it also not just do payments but
learning outcomes and then settle with
some incentivized collection of meals or
some kind of incentive and what do you
think can reconnect later because it's a
sure get in touch my email is and so on
the first question as I mentioned we did
our proof of concept on the test nets
but we're doing we're doing a private
implementation right now and I've you
know we can handle quite a bit of
transactions per second so million that
they won't be a problem in fact we're
shooting more for more because WFP
itself has 80 million beneficiaries that
we serve in 80 countries and you know
we've heard over the past few days the
efforts are in place to essentially
speed up everything potentially even the
main net and so we don't foresee the
throughput to be a limitation either now
on what we're doing privately or even in
the future and then yeah I mean
definitely that's I think the beauty of
small contracts that you can program
whatever logic you want into it so for
example we have school meals which means
that generally speaking let's say if a
child attends school then the child and
the family gets food so it's in a way to
ensure children attend school and also
that some nutritional outcomes are met
and with smart devices and everything
our yeah we can essentially sort of
automate that so that you know the
entitlements going to a small contract
in escrow and if certain conditions are
met then the trigger to the end
recipients or recipients 56 seconds were
really quick one in history
cool thank you
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you
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