 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the driving open collaboration through joint solution panel discussion for the Hyperledger Global Forum. My name is Nancy Mann. I'm the founder of Eklong and the chair of the Hyperledger Social Impact Special Interest Group, and I will be the moderator of the session. As you all are aware, distributed ledger technology holds significant potential to deliver benefits for humanitarian aid, development, and civil society institutions in general. We're really excited to have you join us as our panel will go over ways that we will use the open and collaborative nature of DLTs to unlock social good. We will explore some different various use cases, barriers to innovation, and sustainment issues of the social good economy. The purpose of this discussion is to really spur innovation, tackle never before addressed issues, and serve as a launching pad for future innovation. As part of the session, we'll cover three main sections. The first one will cover industry trends. The second one we'll discuss is governance frameworks and also add on open questions. So if you have any questions that you would like for the panelists to answer, please drop them in the Q&A chat box. So that should be available for everyone. And finally, it is my absolute pleasure to introduce our panelists for this session. Each panelist will introduce themselves, please, and give an overview of their work and potentially also highlight some of the innovative projects that they've been working on. So Mark, I will actually have you start. Okay, thank you very much, Nancy. And good morning and good afternoon, good evening to those wherever you may be. My name is Mark Liberati. I work for United Nations Volunteers Program, a former UN volunteer myself. I'm currently the policy pillar team lead and also had been participating in our AI blockchain big data working group for our digital transformation project. I also sit in a member of young UN, which is sort of an informal affiliation of change makers inside the United Nations system. And I'm vice team lead for policy in the IT working group called Digital Currency Global Initiative, working on competition, consumer protection and dispute resolution. Very glad to be here. And also I might touch upon a recent white paper working on in Team Unicoins, which was part of the Reimagine UN Challenge, which is looking at a time-based token for collaboration for the SGGs internal to the UN system. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Mark. Really looking forward to more about the Unicoin project. Alicia, can you also say good afternoon everyone my name is Alicia Noel and I founded a company called Cultivati. I do research consulting and education related technology and innovation mostly in the food and agricultural supply chain space. I'm also vice chair of the social impact SIG at Hyperledger as well as the D lab blockchain accelerator and several other groups. I'm looking forward to this discussion and hopefully bringing in some examples of use cases and how the questions and also ways that the technology is being leveraged to have impact in a variety of ways. Thank you. Thanks Alicia. Hey, Sean. Hello everyone. My name is Sean Wohlborn. I am the co-founder of Lead Vision. Our focus is really in the waste and recycling space. And we really, we originally started off with developing some technology, computer vision and now we're incorporating some technology as well. So look forward to discussing some trash wish anyone if you're interested. I'm also in on the Miami Climate Alliance on their steering committee as well. So typically I'm out of Miami right now. I'm currently at my grandparents house. So I'm in Idaho tuning in from the West Coast. And then other than that, I've been involved with the social impact group for a little over a year now. We've been working on some blogs in the circular economy space. So we'll dive into that in a little bit. But when it comes to waste and recycling, you know, that's really, that's really my jam. So any questions in that realm, feel free to shoot them over. Thank you Sean. So we have with us a panelist that really cover kind of the full breadth of social impact and social good. So it's very exciting. Just to kind of start off a little bit of the conversation around these various industries trends. So, you know, I kind of wanted to propose an open question. So what are some of the industry trends and thinking about ag circular economy and some of the stuff that you guys are working on, you know, CBDC or United Nations like that are really driving blockchain technology adoption in your respective fields. In your culture, I'd say the use that I'm seeing blockchain being used for the most is around traceability, track and trace initiatives that allow different stakeholders to know where food is coming from, who the different players were involved. Some of these make that information transparent to consumers as well. Some are really only involved. So that's where the majority of blockchain uses ICR. And also there are cases like horror token out of Indonesia that is using blockchain with GPS and other technologies and partnering with local banks to provide micro-loans for small holder farmers so that they can access capital in an environment where it's difficult to prove land ownership, where there's not always that record. We're also seeing companies, organizations like Fair Food out of the Netherlands that are working with them to make sure that all of the producers pay a fair wage or being paid not that they can live on with dignity. So a lot of different examples in deciding to watch come forward. Yeah, I was just also going to add, I mean, and I was thinking, when I first started, I was actually about five years ago asked to sort of join this informal, it's called the UN Blockchain Group and it was done through the UNOPS, the Office of Project Services and they were looking really at a very practical problem which is moving cash around. I mean, it's in very hard-scrabble places often and it's very expensive to move cash, often even just for salaries or for volunteers to be living allowances for humanitarian assistance and it requires, it's a huge logistical operation and they were excited about that. I think then that involved having discussion with many different actors at the time and I think it really opened up the eyes to the potential of this mean which was much bigger than just payment services. So there is a huge, I mean, there's a proliferation of blockchain solutions that are cropping up around different UN use cases. A well-known one is World Food Program is Building Blocks which is also looking at this sort of a payment solution. There's a UN Digital ID which has actually been trying to have an internal ID system. There's the consortium between various UN entities. It's currently between World Food Program, UNDP and UNICEF but you can imagine more, he sent that leading to sort of a more centralized unidination system. The UN Postal Administration actually is issuing an NFT stamp, a crypto stamp and also now they're, I think UNICEF is also accepting crypto to their affiliated offices. I mean, and then that's just the internal. There's also external where they're actually, for example, UNDP is building through their Alt Finance Lab solutions for those program countries such as, I think a recent one I saw was called Cedar Coin where they're using it for traceability of replanting trees that then can be GPS location provided and so the donor knows that that and it's actually attracting the diaspora, Lebanese diaspora population but it could be open to anyone and that's looking to sort of harness financing for the SDGs while giving that assurity to the donors that there's no double counting of the trees, for example. So I think there's just almost unlimited opportunity and it's sort of just beginning so it's a very exciting time to sort of be in the space. Yeah, and from my perspective, it's really focused on the circular economy. Again, looking at raw materials, looking at products. So on the front side of the supply chain, you're really tracking those materials as they're moving from manufacturer to distribution to retail and then at the point of consumer. So that product that you pick up from online, what is its source? Are those vendors vetted? What kind of practices do they have from a social perspective as well as an environmental perspective? And then that's some of the front end and then really where I'm focused is the reverse side. So after you put that material into your recycling bin or you drop it off somewhere at a local recycling center or someone comes by to collect it, what happens to it? And that's where we see a lot more we're seeing some up and coming innovation in that space to say, hey, I deposited X bottle here. What does that bottle turn into and can we verify that on the back end to say, hey, no, it didn't go to the landfill. It actually did end up in the recycling center or alternatively it went to the recycling center but it ultimately ended up as XYZ product on the back end. So that's looking at the reverse logistics aspect. And there are a few companies in the space that are doing food, compost as well as bottle tracking. And then we're also seeing some impact from a company called Loop and not necessarily focused on blockchain but they are looking at reusability. So when you have that reusability aspect then blockchain comes in to say, hey, yes, this person did recycle or did have this refillable bottle. It was empty. It was put into the van or collection vehicle at this time. And then it actually doesn't necessarily get recycled but it gets refilled at a local place and then brought back to the person. So looking at the carbon footprint of that right and having some calculations around it, we see blockchain having that value from a transparency perspective but more importantly, I think when we're talking about reverse logistics, I think that one of the biggest aspects is the carbon footprint, right? How long is it traveling? Is it going to China? Is it going to India? Is it going to Bangladesh? Back in 2017, 2018 when China stopped accepting our materials, a lot of folks lost faith in our recycling system but what we're realizing is that, yes, we need a lot of investment in infrastructure but how are we going to use innovative technologies to create additional efficiencies that weren't available in the past, right? And so we have these stagnant systems that are currently in place but we see a lot of opportunity for growth and also for deploying innovative technologies to create that transparency, right? And that's one key element that blockchain brings, right? I put something in the can, not sure what happens to it, well now we can actually pinpoint where it ends up and we can feed that information back to the end user who is actually recycling the materials. So that's just high level, a couple of quick examples but look forward to diving a little deeper as we move forward. Thank you all so much. And I noticed a couple of words that I just wanted to capture for the audience were really trust and transparency as being some key factors and deciding what use cases blockchain makes a lot of sense. And I think Mark, one thing that you said that really caught my attention was we're just scratching the surface, right? There's just so much potential I think with all of these different use cases in different ways. So this kind of leads me to my next question, right? So there's so many opportunities in which blockchain can really be that cutting edge technology and bringing innovation and also bringing more efficiency into different processes. So what are some of the hurdles that you guys have seen as folks are developing out these use cases what are the hurdles in developing these different types of public-private partnerships? And I'm also kind of curious on the other end not only what the hurdles are but what are some of the steps that you or folks that you've noticed in this industry have taken to overcome some of these hurdles? Yeah, I was just gonna say I mean, first of all, just I mean, also on circular kind of, because we're talking about like open collaboration, I mean, you are always looking at other inspirations that you can take away from and hope you can sort of replicate on that which also does sort of lower the barriers. And it is sort of lowering the hurdles because often one of the hurdles is people don't, they see it as a very nascent technology and they feel that it's then not fully ready for deployment or there will be extremely costs or that the complexity will outweigh the benefits. And so of course, like anything, the early adapters are obviously then making that lowering that barrier for everyone. And so I think, I mean, even personally one of the things that I really take inspiration from was this Chinese use case. It was a Jiu-Jitsu Wii, which was a volunteer platform and it had millions of users. And then they were using the, they were taking the hours of the volunteers and tokenizing that to provide both, certification of the hours that were provided but through and they also had another very nice tech stack on the verification process. But then they were able to convert that into an asset that was very, it drove in the incentives for the volunteers. And this was a bit what also did inspire for the white paper. So I think, I mean, it's a, I think we're coming up sort of the innovation going from the early adopters and I think it's becoming a bit more mainstream. And I think that has ultimately both the lessons learned from those who were the early adopters as well as the sort of the paths that they blaze have really opened up doors for organizations that might not have the mantra of, disrupt first, break it and don't worry about it. And that tends to often be in public sector organizations or more larger incumbents that might take a more skeptical view for various good reasons. But I think those barriers luckily are falling and falling quickly as the technology both develops but also use cases are moving more towards scale. And then I think there's a healthy competition and sort of a desire to also participate meaningfully. And so that's sort of what I wanted to share on that point. I wanna go ahead. I can jump in as well. Oh, go ahead Mark. No, no, please, go ahead, no. Yeah, so, so, the hurdles that we see, I think Mark really had the first thing that he mentioned with any type of project is cost, right? How much is it gonna cost us? What's the maintenance? What's the support going to be like going on, going in, especially when you're talking about a new technology that people are already hesitant to adopt? It can be difficult to sort of drive some of the costs benefits around it, right? Just from, like Nancy said, just from a transparency perspective, how are we quantifying the value of that to an entity when they might not be necessarily concerned with it, right? So being able to really storytell around some of the social impact value that's brought to the table, but as well as the cost savings is very important. And there was a blog that we recently put out in one example in there. Cripsy was doing a recycling project where they were basically tracking some of the plastic waste that was going into the ocean. And once it gets collected, they say, okay, it was actually picked up from this point, right? This river or whatever it may be. And they can then quantify that and then take it back to a brand and say, hey, look, now you can use this recycled material and you can pinpoint the place where you made the impact, right? So that's just like a quick example of trying to figure out how can we essentially close the loop on materials, collect them, but bring them back and put them back into... Yeah, I think Sean's a bit broken at the moment, but... The question becomes how do you bear hearts on some of the hurdles with the public-private partnership in developing those aspects because when we look at the brands and then we look at the government and we look at the consumer and you see the different moving parts and then you also have the manufacturer in play. And when you have these different entities, they all have their own agendas, right? And so being able to match the benefits to each of them to move your project forward, it can be kind of a challenge, but the main focus is what is driving the what is your ultimate goal with the project, right? And how are you gonna move it forward? Because it may just be a pilot project and then you've done all this development and then it goes and sits on the shelf for three to five years because it doesn't get any funding or the story behind it and the benefits behind it weren't well explained. So that's what I would say as far as a hurdle is, look at the different agendas that are out there and figure out how you can match up your project with what the other entities are trying to accomplish. Thank you, Sean. I completely agree with everything we're just talking about. Pieces, all these moving parts and the different organizations do have different priorities. They sometimes don't align. It often takes a lot of not just collaboration, but negotiation in terms of the food and ag space in different parts of the world. And I'm not just speaking about as a developing world, I am including G20 nation. A lot of tracing is still done by paper. A couple of months ago, I had a meeting with the CEO and CTO of a European country for a global grocery chain and discussing track and trace. And they're still doing it with, they don't feel the need internally to move over to digitization. Other countries, things are much more digitized. So it's important to know what is the on the ground environment that you're going into? Certainly in the US with the FDA promoting their new era of smarter food safety, which Frank Yanis spoke about during the keynote on Tuesday, during his keynote, we're seeing a lot more adaptation of these different technologies and we're going to continue to see more adaptation of blockchain and other innovations. And yet sometimes countries or sometimes companies go into environment they don't necessarily understand the ground conditions. And whether it be Asia or Latin America or Africa or just a matter of going into Europe or a European company coming to the US. And that's very important because if you don't take that time to understand the environment you're working in, both in terms of infrastructure, roads, telephone systems, internet availability, as well as the legal constraints and what is the legal environment, especially around banking or anything like that, it's going to be really hard to develop something that can be used and that users are going to be willing to use and adapt. Thank you, Alicia. Mark, did you want to add something? No, Alicia and Sean both just sparked a thought about sort of having that regulatory co-creation or at least really trying to work, I think closely, I see this often in the working group on a digital currency where there are some regulatory actors and you do then have, it's sort of breaking those silos often and looking for those forums. And this is, I mean, ITU is a nice example because it has a broad stakeholder base. In that case, I think, and even within agencies, I know that when that UNICEF cryptocurrency donation came out, I mean, it raised questions around how did they legally structure that? And then the legal offices, I think, at least in my own organization, that was one of the questions I raised, which was thinking around how did they structure that and does that now open something up that wasn't seen as open up before because they were taking more out of an abundance of caution? So I think working closely with those state actors, but also looking for the innovation points in those state actors, I think will also identify that very early on as a strategic partner, I think also makes a lot of sense. Mark, I completely agree. It's always important to have those chair leaders and these driven state organizations so that there is that internal motivation to move forward. Absolutely love that. Internal motivation, I think that's a tagline we're gonna use throughout the discussion, but this is actually a perfect transition into the next question, starting the conversation around governance frameworks and how we can really enable these open collaborations across various stakeholders, right? Sean mentioned the different manufacturers, the suppliers and all these distributors and all these different participants within various networks. So the question kind of is, how can governance frameworks be designed to ensure that the interest of these network users and all these participants are aligned with each other? And I think you guys touch upon that a little bit, but I wanna kind of pull that out a little bit more. From my perspective, and here I'm putting on a hat to work inside of government on technology and would be writing RFPs for different type of information management systems, it was critically important that we speak with a lot of different stakeholders, not only the agencies and the users and also the different community groups, everything like that. And I see the same thing when it comes to developing, especially cross-border track and trace systems, whether it be mainly from a reducing food fraud perspective or more of a environmental impact or social impact labor issues, it's really important to speak with the different players, understand what not only their constraints, but what their concerns are. Because if you understand where they're coming from, why they might be concerned about having their real name used on something, if you understand that there are very real public safety or physical safety issues in play, it's going to then enable you to design something that will work for them and that they're going to be much more confident around. And when they observe that you are taking their concerns seriously, they're gonna be that much more willing. I've always seen more willingness to come to the table when they see that we are listening to their concerns and trying to figure out how do we make it work for them as well. Lisa, just to kind of follow in question about that, thinking about the ag space, especially when you're looking at supply chains that you're dealing with multiple farmers, that potentially, as a potential way of using it, how do you manage sometimes the conflicting interests between, or the competition, so to speak? How can you get all of them on board in a system like this to really be cooperating with each other? Well, really good question. And this comes down to, whom? And is it really competition or collaboration competition a lot of these traceability initiatives, the information is not available to the public? So then you've got a manufacturer who isn't worried that somebody is going to come in and take their suppliers or bid higher to their suppliers. Different initiatives take very different perspectives on it, depending on the environment they're working in. Just a couple of years ago when Walmart rolled out their Spanish and salad green initiative, they made it mandatory at first that all of the direct suppliers participate. And then a couple of months later, anyone supplying one of their suppliers will be participating. So it was a tiered adaptation, but it was mandatory. And sometimes that's what it is. You don't understand the environment and who holds the power for lack of a better word of explaining that. Thank you so much. Yeah, I wanted to jump in. I was just thinking more, I mean, exactly. I mean, I think Alicia has touched upon these misalignments that can occur and then really thinking about how you're trying to then bring, I'm currently reading Eleanor Ostrom's Governing the Commons and first female economist of when the Nobel Peace Prize. And well, sorry, Nobel Prize for Economics. And she has these eight principles and it is all about sort of bringing a commons together for community pooled resources, but it holds a lot of insight when thinking around designing consortium networks and trying to align those individual incentives or sort of domain incentives with the consortium incentives. And that is sort of like how you're really good. And she has the eight principles, quite frankly, you know, establishing clear boundaries and having a stake, adapting them for the local circumstance. I think Alicia just was touching on that very well. Like the participatory decision-making and having them, all those participants have that decision-making. There's of course different approaches that one can take, clear monitoring and evaluation. I think here, blockchain actually does an excellent job in offering a nice way in thinking around monitoring and evaluation trails in real time, graduated sanctions for those that are breaking the rules or and then also having a clear and universal conflict resolution mechanism for dealing with those issues as they may arise and not also being shy about conflict, not all conflict is necessary. It needs to be seen as sort of litigious but also can often be mediated. And then of course there needs to be sort of an acceptance by the outside actors as to what is happening inside. There has to be some sort of sovereignty provided to those consortium. That's of course more legal question often. And then I think again, but Alicia was talking about those that nested tiered approach. And then looking at, and in this book, one of the examples that I love, it's the Gaol Oya Irrigation System in Sri Lanka. And it was the issue of those who are getting the water. I mean, want to take as much for their farm. They're not as interested in those farther down than I was interested in helping the irrigation channels be maintained. And one of the solutions they came up with was based on all of those principles that I just suggested. But then quite simply on the nested side really had these very like field local, like a few farmers in a consortium. And that was part of a larger consortium. I think this also touches upon Nancy, your question at the beginning on how you can sort of leverage within something bigger and make that more efficient, sort of lowering the cost and the barriers. So I think that that is sort of, I mean, one of the inspirations that I've taken away from this book recommended because it's super insightful. And it definitely made me think a bit on sort of the design aspects one would have when looking at what are the options when you're trying to make that fit for your purpose. Yeah, just to add on. I think I knocked that one out of the party. As far as sovereign, as far as when we're talking about the different players that are active within it. And I mean, the circular economy aspect, just because that's my burning butter, that's my go-to. When we're discussing transparency, right? And we're discussing who has authority in certain actions. Sometimes what we run into is when you uncover something, it can create more issues. So sometimes people like to leave it covered, right? So we have to be careful in sometimes how we present certain things, because we could say, yeah, it seems like a great solution. But once we put XYZ entity in charge, then stuff's gonna hit the fan. So we don't wanna do that, right? So basically, I know that's sort of a kind of an aside or a tangent, but the real point is we're gonna have to dabble with different authority mechanisms as we move forward, right? Is the government in charge? Is there some private entity in charge? What's the anonymity that's gonna be required? What are the privacy concerns that are gonna be put forth, right? And then ultimately, if a breach happens, what are some of the responses that are gonna, what's the response plan, right? In a lot of times, when we talk about governments involved with something, consumers run the other way. They're like, oh, governments in charge of this? Ah, we don't want it. And it could be hugely, immensely beneficial to them. But just when you say the word government, and they're like, ah, they just turned their ears off, right? We have to figure out what are these balances that we're gonna have to implement? And how can we use technology to not only balance out these different authoritative mechanisms, but also how can we make sure that we're still telling the story about what are the benefits that are gonna be derived from having XYZ entity in charge? Or why do we need the government here to support this project, right? So I think it really goes back to that whole storytelling aspect and making sure that people aren't scared of a technology just because it has a third, you know, it's an open network or something. Networks, so we don't wanna join that, or whatever it may be. I think Mark and Alicia really, really hit those ones. So. Sean, I just wanna touch on your response regarding people being afraid of the technology. One thing I come back to time and time again is that blockchain, kind of like HTML, often it's being used, but they're using it. Ag for digital out of Australia, one of the founders gives an example about how they were working. I wanna say Papua New Guinea, that might not be correct with farmers, and they gave them the handset with the app preloaded and taught them how to use it. You don't need to mention blockchain technology at all. And later, one of the producers came to him and said, I think it's like use blockchain, because just like when we use the internet, we don't need to know how to code HTML. But it is there. So the technology can seem intimidating. And at the same time, it doesn't need to be. And we need to get past that hurdle. Thank you all so much. I think Mark, please go ahead. No, I was gonna say, I couldn't agree more. I mean, obviously, I think that is when, at the initial trying to explain when we were talking about Unicef was building this bounties network and there was a token and then it even explained to colleagues that you have to get this metamask. That was just too much complexity. No one saw the benefit. And now you can have nested wallets. And even in this UN Digital ID, it was made originally for, there was another version of it. And it uses hyperledger technology underneath it for the ID solution, but that's not what's relevant. I mean, it was really for pensioners just to validate their identity. And it was built with pensioners in mind that it was with the absolute simplicity as the goal without really putting the technology in a much more muted space. Yeah, we'll obviously serve dramatically bringing this really even not even thinking about the last mile, but even really towards mainstreaming it that it really has a much broader user base. Absolutely. I love the conversation that we're going where ultimately right down the road, we're not gonna be talking about the underlying technology itself, but we're gonna be talking about the value that these use cases are really bringing to each of the network participants. So one thing actually, and I think you guys all touched upon this a little bit in the previous conversation with the question. So I'm thinking for folks that are looking to start a blockchain project, start working on some of these use cases. In most cases when you're starting off, you don't necessarily have the unlimited resource, so to speak, right? And so things and issues such as like being able to maintain as well as secure those network might not be something that's on the number one priority when you try to pilot something out. So how can we use, are there various standards? Are there various guidelines that you would recommend? How can we use, what is currently out there for folks to use to keep an authority in check that doesn't compromise the integrity of the blockchain type, you know, DLT when you're kind of like giving out the ability for someone else to manage your network for you as you're developing some of these things out? I can also rephrase the question. Well, I was just gonna open with this. I mean, it's a very tough question and I think there's a lot of potential avenues one can go with the one that I just wanted to share that I thought was very interesting and I think might be disruptive in its own way and disruption often come from the public sector or at least it's incentive too, but when well structured it can and there's this, the European Blockchain Services infrastructure creating this sort of a public infrastructure there might then see better, you know from a competition perspective, right? Like not having just the big incumbents but for much smaller players to jump in to sort of a greater commons. So if the commons can be sort of taken on by, I mean, a public or a public private sort of consortium that then allows for other things to flourish and that that a bit was the idea of the atrium inside the UN system to have this consortium that then would allow for other things to flourish and I think actually also what sort of other like the keys that open that up. I mean, on there they're looking at self-sovereign identity and then I think once you can solve that you can be talking about public infrastructure you really might open up an incredible unleash an incredible amount of innovation that can grow on that ecosystem that I think is incredible. I mean, so I think that's even something sort of maybe at a global level that can be considered for ways in the same ways we have open access to different technologies that are sort of seen as public goods and there might be different actors that are providing those services but you're setting those standards so that everyone would have universal access and then in creating that that is very beneficial that that sort of ecosystem where you're optimizing the policy goals you're trying to achieve which would be sort of that prosperity that can arise from those innovations in a very in a way that benefits society ultimately. Yeah, I could jump I guess as far as let's say getting started, right? You know, if let's say someone's fresh there just, you know, Googling around doing some research I wanna get on the, whether it's about the development side or just wanna do some sales for someone that's a blockchain company already out there. I think one of the first aspects is to figure out, you know, in this goes to any sort of job that might be out there, right? What are some areas that you're passionate about? You know, what are some spaces that you can carve out whether it's from your own history and background from your own interests, your own hobbies and pardon, right? Cause you don't wanna get into projects where it's a direct for you to be there, right? So I would say, you know, step one is, you know what are you passionate about? What are you interested in? And then you can find different projects within not only Hyperledger but, you know, all across the globe and everybody's remote now, right? So you can find people who are in your space and then, you know, you can reach out, right? LinkedIn, you can look at different, maybe it's not a job per se but you just wanna have some free time on the side where you just contribute to, you know, cold email or something like that. People are always willing to, collaborative aspect, people are always willing to, you know, at least introduce you to what they're working on and that kind of thing. So I would say, you know, if you're looking to get started, I would say, you know, LinkedIn, figure out what you're passionate about and then start reaching out to folks. And then as you move forward, I think what you'll do is either, one, eliminate things that you don't like about working in the space or two, you know, come across things that you're even more interested in, right? So that would be, I guess, my, you know, one, two cents from that perspective and also universities are a great resource for research projects as well. And so you can do some Googling after you figure out where your interest lies, what kind of route you wanna go down, reach out to universities and institutions, have a great resource as well. Oh, I think we lost Sean for a sec. So while we wait for Sean to join us, what Sean was saying was actually perfect segue into kind of the open questions that we had. One in particular, just to kind of, you know, continue the conversation was, you know, how can I get started on contributing to different existing or, you know, new blockchain projects, especially focusing on the developing, advising, funding aspects of that. Mark, I actually wanna kind of feed that question over to you, in particular because of the Unicoin projects that you guys are also starting off on this. Could you tell us a little bit about that project and then, you know, ways and also kind of lend some insight in ways, you know, you've been an active participant in the Hyperlider Social Impact SIG for quite a while. Would love to kind of get your perspective on this for the audience. No, thanks. I mean, of course, you know, the answer I gave was very high level and sort of policy oriented, but I mean, at the individual level, I mean, in the Unicoin project, for example, I mean, it is very decentralized. We have no funds. It's a voluntary group inside the UN system through Young UN and we didn't, we really had to scrabble. I mean, also, I mean, just also in how I sort of developed myself into this area, I mean, I also took all the opportunities, but I think forums like the Social Impact SIG is a great place for joint collaboration. I also try, I look at, you know, there's different token engineering communities and also I think DOWs are looking at how these are sort of, what you can take away from DOWs and looking at these open source communities while maintaining the open source part because I think often the DOWs, although I was initially extremely excited about it and I'm still a huge proponent, can ultimately become gated communities and I think it is about how universal or how accessible and inclusive those communities you're creating are or not and sort of to know the difference. So I try to then tend to look at the ones that are very inclusive while at the same time having those community standards very similar to the Auschwitz principles as Hyperledger, for example, has its code of conduct and other rules that it expects for community participation, which is key to make those commons viable for the community. But yeah, on the Unicoins, it is sort of it was an idea around fostering that it wasn't bit inspired by DOWs or the best cases for them, as well as discos which are distributed cooperatives more from an idea of feminist economics that often care work is undervalued and not recognized and not accounted for. And so they were looking at, in the Young UA Network, for example, we have, as I said, it's managed by volunteers and I work for a volunteer program, so obviously you're interested in how you incentivize and bring people on to a community, especially around the care work aspects that is sort of just the work, right? There's not the glamour, there's not, you don't get to put that on your LinkedIn, that really is just the work that makes the community happen, that actually creates an enabling environment for everything to occur. And so there, at least this organization disco that is sort of exploring that how to better incentivize that and their solution is providing a separate accounting structure for that, sort of to noting that there is a difference between sort of the other types of work that's accounted for versus the care work. Moving towards a prototype of Unicoins ultimately is supposed to be a token that represents time contributing within the UN system towards the SDGs in a cross-system collaboration because that's what we're trying to incentivize. So, but in our prototype, we're thinking about first prototyping it, we might be working with an organization that's dealing with emerging female leaders, but also, and that we've had some interesting discussion with that, and I think that would be a brilliant use case because there's a lot of care work also that takes place in maintaining that community, but also then in the young UN network, which also, as I said, requires a lot of care work, but then we also have very substantive tracks, which are then really working on substantive outputs and seeing how the accounting system will work out, just to give a quick example, so we wanted to make sure that we have two models. One of the models is a collaborative model, so people would be having Unicoins, they would then, this would be their token as to how much they've contributed to that network, to make it simple, we were going to go back to a certain amount of time of people who've already contributed to the young UN network to sort of recognize their hours that they've already contributed, and then that would then with those tokens, they would then able to be capitalizing what they value, what they want to see, what projects or initiatives they want to then capitalize, and then the question would be as they've, once let's say a project requires 100 hours, you've capitalized that 10 people each put in 10 Unicoins, representing the 10 hours that they had already contributed to the system, either for care work or in the substantive tracks, and then that might, if you wish to think of it like a Dow, could providing a decision-making option, so that would hold a 110 share on the ability to have that consortium consensus around then how they will then allocate that, and you can think of this like a project of time, and then how they will then spend that time that they've capitalized to achieve what their ultimate goals they want to accomplish. And then, of course, we also have some other considerations in the white paper, such as providing, this is again these tiered approaches, and having different user rights, so if you think about very simple user rights, about sort of being able to just participate in the economy, meaning you can just offer yourself to looking for, to providing work, or do you have the ability to make a proposal, sort of a level up, not only making a proposal, can you clear that proposal, this is following sort of public sector clearance processes, what you see is in most organizations, of course, as well, and then who can then approve, and if you can have other approvals, so it can be both the approval rights obligations, who can be the mediators, and are sort of able to make constitutional sort of structural changes to the code, and to the consortium rules, as well as then decision making authority. So those are a bit what we're trying to work out in the next step on the prototype, we're looking for volunteers to help us with pro bono actors, for anyone who wishes to DM me, on that which is posted on our online volunteering website. And this is what we would like to, to ultimately prototype, because one of the issues that came up when the topic here is driving open collaboration through joint solutioning, it is ultimately a bit what we were seeing as something, the incentive structures or the structures, were not ultimately optimizing, or at least that was the view taken by those in the younger network. And I think you see this all across the board, I think this is ultimately what one of the promise of consortium blockchains offers, and there will be different models. As I said, looking at Austro's principles, they do need to be fit for purpose and fit for those different communities. But there are general high level principles that I think, and that's why I find so fascinating about this book, that I think is highly relevant, at least as a checklist, as looking for what is your community, and then really seeing how those principles sort of fit, while also looking at very analogous communities that you can take insight from, both on what they did really well, and some of the lessons learned on areas where they could have improved. So that's why we want to, of course, prototype this first, to sort of work some of those issues out, and then take it a bit forward, and then of course iterate accordingly. So I spoke enough on that, so I'll turn it over to other colleagues to share some insights as well. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mark. Alicia, I actually wanted to kind of feed the same question over to you, and we've talked so much about how folks can get involved in hyperledger social impact, as well as the various other projects. We'll have to get your perspective, and where you see those opportunities lie. I think, first of all, any global forum should check out the hyperledger wiki, and projects, because right now, there's an entire page of different projects that are looking for people to contribute for them. I think that's always a really good place to start. And go to meetups that are related to the topic. There are a lot of meetups now, now most of them are online, which in many ways gives you opportunity to attend events that aren't in your local geographic area. Sometimes it might mean, wait, wait, wait, wait, in order to attend something at a different time zone. Hello, most of my life. But this, and both the issues in that geographic region, in that country, but also meet people who are building, people who are already active in that, and make connections, see how you can contribute. Also, as you're there, you're gonna learn about different telegram groups, different Slack groups. When I go to some of my telegram groups around blockchain and social impact, or women in blockchain, I regularly see opportunities posted, some paid, some not paid, depending on the group and depending on the project, where it's not necessarily that they need tech skills. Sometimes they need marketing skills, they need business skills. So if you're coming into the sector, or you're not technical, and you still think that this is a technology you wanna be in, there are ways to contribute other skill sets. And that's really important to keep that in mind. And there are a lot of different programs, especially for universities, Rutgers University, there's a great student-led group within the business school. While I do have a degree from Rutgers, I met blockchain and social impact hackathon. And at one point I went over, I was introducing myself to the group, and they were looking to do something agriculture related. And it turned out we had Rutgers in common. So program with Rutgers that contributed to that. Up in Montreal in Canada, McGill University has a food system program that now is very closely involved and is the home of a new working group around interoperability on the semantic web. So if you are a student, definitely look, see what's at your university or any other you have an affiliation with and look at a lot of different places. And right now more than ever, you don't have to be just bound by your geographic area. Look, go to meetups, go to another city within meetups, go to another country, type in blockchain or type in blockchain and see what comes up. Because there's always something to learn and it's a great way to find a good opportunity. Awesome, thank you so much. So I'm looking at Q and A and I don't see any questions and we have a few more minutes. So for the folks that are listening and feel free to drop us and ask a question on behalf of those. And I do have one other question. And Sean, maybe I'll pick on you a little bit for this question. So what advice would you give to someone looking to start a blockchain project? Yeah, and I think I got disconnected earlier so I'm not sure where I left off. So I do apologize about that, some rural connections. But as far as just starting out, I don't know if you heard my spiel about the passion and interest that I mentioned earlier but yeah, really focusing on what's gonna motivate you to come in and get work done, right? Because a lot of these projects are at least initially gonna be volunteer projects where you're committing your time, whether it's on late at night or in the morning, on the weekend, whatever it may be to try to just put some sort of contribution forward until the project picks up or gets some funding or maybe they bring you on the team or whatever it may be. So you definitely wanna make sure that it aligns with your interests and your motivations. And then I think that a lot of what we've mentioned as far as reaching out not only by a hyper ledger but to universities, Link did. Oh no, I think we've got Sean again. Just type question into the chat. Would there be any place to find use cases that are... So I think you mean not in phase one of a pilot but further along. I'd say look at projects in different... One challenge here is small companies don't have the bandwidth to stand writing them up. They might not have the people they can assign to that. And then when it comes to larger companies or to any company indeed, they can't just decide to write up the use case. They also need approval from every company involved. So this is where a lot of the use cases are being... And there are some out there. Thank you for that, Lisa. And just one other thing to add. So hyper ledger actually has a use case section where a lot of the member organizations are posting about their use cases. Oftentimes those are actually much more in the developed phases. And usually they also have contact information for folks that are putting those out. So that's something definitely to check in reference. So just type in hyper ledger and then use cases and you should be able to find PDF documents of the various projects that are available using hyper ledger technologies actually. So it's a great plugin for that. But we're all out of time. Thank you all so much for your time today. The panelists really appreciate your time waking up at the hour that you're up at. And as well as for the audience really appreciate your involvement and engagement in this. Thank you all.