Machu Picchu: why should humanitarian organizations be interested in using blockchain?

Photo by Mark König on Unsplash

The blockchain today is like Internet in 1991. People are convinced that there is something useful there, but the hurdles of simply getting access to it scare most of them away.

Fear not. Very soon, people will consider #blockchain access as today they consider electricity and water (and in some places telephone and Internet): they just open and close a faucet.

Let’s take the challenge and see together how to do it the simplest manner possible… for the purpose of Machu Picchu.

Machu Picchu is a collaborative open source initiative. It aims to use the Ethereum blockchain to share “Data as a Public Service” among all the organisations that provide support and benefits to the persons in need. We already explained in a previous article how Machu Picchu plans to bring the blockchain within reach of persons-in-need, while letting these persons keep ownership of their data, using only an old feature phone.

If you want the main ideas and don’t have time, skip to the last section of this article: “what have we learned?”. 😉

Let’s learn blockchain the fun way

In this series of articles, our target reader is the staff and decision makers of the humanitarian organisations that bring benefits to persons-in-need. Their job is to provide aid to persons-in-need. Their job is not to be blockchain specialists, but they do need to understand what means getting access to the blockchain, like what means getting access to the Internet.

• Here, you’ll meet the few concepts that you need to know when using the blockchain.
• In a next article, you will install Metamask on your browser and exercise it. Metamask is a browser plug-in that takes care of a number of blockchain access protocols.
• In a final article, you will compose an avatar from several elements and use Metamask to register it on the blockchain. It will look like one of the following, taken from the example here.

Don’t let the fun part fool you 🙂. The avatars that you’ll create and register on the blockchain in this demo are composed of hairs, of eyes, of nose, of mouth etc. With very little change to the code, you will be able to do the same with a person-in-need: the name, the gender, the age, the belongings, the location etc. Once registered on the blockchain by one humanitarian organisation, the data is available to all other organisations or programs. They can all acccess the common data and improve the efficiency of their actions. “Data as a public service”.

Why should relief organisations care about blockchain?

If the blockchain is just another distributed database, why should a relief organisation care about learning yet another IT tool?

• because once installed, a blockchain-based infrastructure is very light to maintain, the organisation can focus on field actions, not on “business continuity” nor database backup;
• because any data in the blockchain is traceable and signed by its author, including the benefits and incentives that have been distributed as well as commitments from the beneficiaries;
• because the use of the fundings can be checked by the donators without requiring any special reporting.

How to use Machu Picchu?

Machu Picchu intends to be an open source library of blockchain components and of ready-to-use examples. Any assistance organisation may use directly the examples, or adapt the examples to its need, or develop specific applications based on the examples.

How can we make it simpler to access blockchain?

Using the Machu Picchu toolbox makes accessing the blockchain much simpler.

How are you reaching the Internet today?

In 1991 when I started doing Internet, I had to take care of configuring several layers of software. Many of these layers were not stable and would throw a terse exception whenever something unexpected happened, leaving me to find out alone what went wrong.

Today in 2020, you just open your laptop or you wake up your mobile and that’s all, you are connected.

How do you reach the blockchain today?

Today, reaching the blockchain is a bumpy process for the layperson because when something unexpected happens, finding out what went wrong may be easy for the geek, but not so obvious for the layperson. The protocol layers may remind you of the Internet of 1991.

The drawing above shows in the left column the different layers of protocols that the user still needs to be aware of, today in 2020. Note that it looks very simple in the server side (the right column) because there is no server, by definition the blockchain itself is the server.

We can predict that, like the Internet, very soon the applications (mobile or web app) will access blockchain access invisibly via your router.

How does Machu Picchu access the blockchain, in the meantime?

In Machu Picchu the persons-in-need will access the blockchain to update their own personal data. The quality of the data given by a person-in-need has direct consequence on the incentive that the organizations who access the data will accept to pay this person. How the persons-in-need access the blockchain, with only an old feature phone, is already described here. The functions are however limited.

The staff of the aid organisations need more flexible blockchain access. For doing so, they will use web applications, and mobile applications. Here is how they access blockchain with the tools used by Machu Picchu. The 4 distinct layers listed above are collapsed into 2 layers, as in the drawing below.

• The web3 library and the selection of a web3 provider somewhere on the Internet are taken care of by Metamask, a browser extension. A “web3 provider” is a server that takes care of forwarding the blockchain transactions to a blockchain node.
• Running a blockchain node and handling the transactions forwarded by the web3 provider is taken care of by a “provider”, an entry point to the blockchain.
• We can predict with a good degree of certainty that the next generation of home routers that you use to access Internet will also have blockchain access integrated.

We’ll revisit this in more detail when you’ll install Metamask on your browser.

What have we learned?

• The blockchain is like Internet, very soon you’ll use it the way you use electricity or water, by opening and closing a faucet.
• The blockchain is interesting for humanitarian organisations because once installed, the facilities are very light to maintain and the use of the fundings can be verified at will by donors. A reporting can be as simple as running a blockchain explorer.
• Today, because each layer of blockchain access is still distinct, it can be difficult to trace connectivity errors, making the access excessively complex. Very soon, all these layers will be integrated in your Internet router. Then the real interest of using blockchain will show up.

To take benefit of the advantages of using the blockchain, now, what are the 3 basic concepts to understand? See here.

Thank you for your interest. Let’s make Machu Micchu happen together. The potential is immense.