Well, what I'm going to talk about today in this article you can think and say:
This guy is crazy, look at how many new applications and development are coming up, when it comes to payments, conventional finance or decentralized finance (DeFi).
As I quoted above, finance, this is the key word of what I mean. Most of the applications and DApps that we have knowledge of and familiarity with today are jointly related to finance. But does blockchain apply only to the financial sector?
I'm sure it doesn't!
And that's where I'll show you, how for example the Algorand Protocol and in general blockchain technology can go further and reach more layers of society, from data or food security and copyright to use cases involving public governance or the environment.
To understand better then, I will take here some situations that involve environmental problems, such as carbon dioxide emissions or maybe even problems related to climate, illegal extraction of wood or even food production chain. There is something that has been growing a lot in the information society that we live today. In face of so many environmental problems and this growing concern, people in general and consumers have started to become more demanding in relation to the way producers deal with their products and the production chain in general. Today there are already many ways to deal with this like environmental certification stamps or even handcrafted products where consumers are able to see up close where and how they are produced, and all this is very good. But one question remains: to what extent the green stamps as "organic product" or "legal wood from reforestation" as FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) are genuine and not fruits of corruption or something like that?
As well as all this I mentioned above, we should also consider today the carbon market, where companies issue certificates that prove the "carbon credit", that is, in a way it is a proof that that company fulfills its environmental role and it can then sell say that transferring its "right to emit carbon" to another company that needs greater production, since this first one, which complies with environmental laws is up to date with the environment. But then we also run into another issue. Until which point is true what this company says that is said environmentally correct? Is it not possible to emit or to fraud also the carbon credits?
Certainly yes, as in a government it is also possible to defraud biddings, to divert money and many more.
So, what about what blockchain has to do with all this?
I would say everything to do with it, simply by three points:
immutability of the ledger;
transparency of information;
data security.
The good news is that there are already studies in the legal area and blockchain jobs that can also be beneficial for the fight against corruption, as a public servant of the BNDES in Brazil (Gladstone Arantes Jr.) mentions, check it:
As a civil servant, my role is to work to build a relationship of trust between the public administration and Brazilian citizens.
Since the beginning of the BNDES Token project, this has been our intention. My goal is to take this concept beyond the walls of the BNDES.
Residence: Rio de Janeiro
Category: Political
Formation: PUC-RJ
Known as a member of the team focused on cryptomeda and blockchain of BNDES, participating in the project to create the bank's own token
That's all well and good, but what advances have blockchain-related companies and infrastructures made? How do they intend to revolutionize the food supply chain for example, or perhaps control the emission of carbon credits or something related in the most efficient and decentralized way possible?
Once you have an unchanging and transparent record, it's much easier to monitor what and how much agrotoxin has been used in the product you're buying at the supermarket, with a simple reading of its QRCode. Another example might be to track which legal reserve the wood used in a piece of furniture you are buying to decorate your home came from. This is impressive!
See some examples of how blockchain is already revolutionizing the environmental sector and growing its ecosystem:
Global Carbon Holding partners with the Algorand Foundation to leverage blockchain technology and bring greater transparency and trust to the global Carbon Credits ecosystem.
ClimateTrade is a Spanish company whose main objective is to help companies achieve their sustainability goals by offsetting CO2 emissions and financing climate change projects.
PlanetWatch has developed and deployed a global network of low-cost air quality sensors and environmentally conscious organizations and individuals who install air quality sensors, with the aim of validating, filtering, and displaying data on the Internet and through a mobile application in real-time.
Thus, I hope that you, the reader of this site, have experienced and realized only a few examples of how the technology behind cryptomorphs, known as blockchain can impact various sectors of society, such as the environmental sector for example. Cryptocurrencies are just the tip of the iceberg that we see expressed in Bitcoin or any other Proof of Work (PoW) currency. Infrastructures that do not understand what is to come can be limited to small communities of enthusiasts, without a real case of use for their products. Stay tuned!
