How Can Impact Investing Advance the Growth of Blockchain?
By David Drake
has been adopted in various ways around the globe. For example, Latin America has positioned itself as a territory with extensive interest in technology. In this region, various sectors see as having the potential to propel economic growth, transparency and financial development.
Already, is using to reduce corruption and facilitate voting while Chile is using the technology to facilitate electronic transfer of funds. But it is Argentina that is taking the lead in and utilization of in businesses as a way of cushioning inflation. The country is already playing host to many projects and the industry here enjoys tremendous support from government.
Supporting Startups
As a result, Labs has declared its support of Argentina’s startups. Better still, the Argentine government has agreed to further invest up to $50,000 in each startup that is a beneficiary of impact investing funding provided by Labs and crypto exchange LatamEX. In addition, the government of Argentina intends to finance 10 -based projects each year for the next four years.
This is a big step for projects in the country and the world at large because it means startups can now be funded in their initial, formative stages by investment partners. According to Jess Davis, CEO of , will require some form of funding and demystification.
He says, “ will be canonized in history as the most collaborative form of finance. It will allow for greater opportunities economically as comes on. Countries that reject this formative model of finance will fall behind no matter the population size. The demystified approach to governance, compliance, and education will bring alternative methods of finance possible globally.”
The Benefits
Governments and investors have a key role to play in promoting global utilization of . Other than providing funds, governments need to provide clear and non-restrictive regulations that protect investors and consumers. At the same time, they need to provide a stable and conducive environment for technology to thrive.
On the other hand, investors should provide start-ups with advice, mentorship and the right technology to enable them develop solutions to real problems. The potential of technology is huge, there are many possibilities of creating jobs for developers. Beyond this, the funding provided to entrepreneurs to establish their startup companies will ensure that jobs and projects in this sector are sustained.
The benefits of are not only economic, they will also be realized in the social space. In countries where inflation and corruption are rife, and can provide an alternative mode of payment in peer-to-peer transactions and also serve as a measure of ensuring transparency.
Disclaimer: David Drake is on the advisory board for most of the firms mentioned or quoted in this article.
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In September, SophiaTX the first open-source platform to primarily integrate blockchain technology with software, used by 87 percent of global businesses and 98 percent of the top 100 most-valued brands.
“To advance blockchain into business operations, the blockchain must integrate with ERP [enterprise resource planning] and other enterprise applications such as SAP,” notes the . “This sector has been relatively untouched until recently when Equidato Technologies AG [SophiaTX’s parent company] announced their first project, SophiaTX, an open source blockchain platform and marketplace designed for businesses of all sizes.”
The integration of blockchain technology with ERP, CRM (customer relationship management) and SCM (supply chain management) business software is certainly a hot topic pursued by major vendors and blockchain-oriented solution developers. In May, SAP itself its innovation system, dubbed , focused on next-generation technologies, with an SAP Cloud Platform Blockchain service targeted at all industries, including but not limited to popular use cases in financial services and supply chains. SAP’s allows customers and developers to build blockchain extensions for existing applications and integrate SAP solutions in the blockchain ecosystem. Embedded in the SAP Cloud Platform, SAP’s blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) pilot allows customers to experiment with the technology.
SAP is also envisaging the integration of blockchain technology with other next-generation technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT). In September, SAP a blockchain co-innovation initiative and plans to make blockchain technology an integrated part of IoT, manufacturing and digital supply chain solutions using its Cloud Platform Blockchain service.
“Prior to defining the strategy and approach for SophiaTX, we assessed the technological capabilities of other blockchains to ensure we were truly adding value,” Jaroslav Kacina, CEO of Equidato and SophiaTX, told bitcoin Magazine. “We wanted to create a product that will not only be suitable for business but also provide superior functionality and features. We found that very few of the existing blockchains are focused on business and enterprise applications, and we couldn’t identify any that would be suitable for business from compliance, security and architecture perspective.”
Kacina explained that Ethereum, for example, is probably the most dominant platform for initial coin offerings (ICOs) and token generation events (TGEs), but in his view, Ethereum’s use of proof of work makes it inappropriate for providing secure, holistic, high-performance blockchain solutions.
“On the other hand, SAP’s own Leonardo initiative, Blockchain as a Service (BaaS), is shaped as a private solution and therefore tends to be relatively expensive for smaller businesses, as well as less transparent, since it is cloud based,” Kacina added. “We designed SophiaTX with business use in mind so it is compliant, secure and public, therefore allowing businesses and customers across entire the value chain to join and adopt the use of the platform.”
Based on the same proprietary technology as the DECENT blockchain, SophiaTX was created by Equidato Technologies AG, a joint venture between DECENT on the technology side and the Venaco Group bringing its experience in enterprise applications for business to the project.
“We have decided to use DECENT technology due to the fact that DECENT uses DPOS (Delegated Proof of Stake) which is faster than Proof of Work used by Ethereum and bitcoin,” Kacina explained. “We needed a platform which is suitable as a starting point to create additional features to make it compliant, secure and relevant for business. And also, having access to [the] DECENT team’s capabilities allows us to bring [the] product to market in [an] accelerated fashion. The ‘hard fork’ was created as a copy of the DECENT’s main net and installed as a proprietary solution for SophiaTX.”
A proof of concept (PoC), recently demonstrated to a select group of attendees in Zurich, shows how businesses can use blockchain technology to transparently and reliably exchange information between their enterprise systems in real time, with a customer invoice directly created in one SAP system automatically transferred via the SophaTX testnet to another company using a different SAP system.
SophiaTX wants to be a cross-industry platform allowing both vertical and horizontal integrations for businesses of all sizes. “At the initiation of this project, we analyzed all standard modules of typical ERP systems (SAP) across finance, procurement, logistics, sales, manufacturing and others, and we have identified over 15 specific use cases within several industries,” Kacina told bitcoin Magazine.
“It became apparent to us that, in order to adopt blockchain [technology] into various industries and connect to the enterprise applications, we needed to provide common building blocks across all modules of ERP, SCM and CRM systems. This led us to the concept of establishing a platform, as a key infrastructure for peer-to-peer smart transactions, prior to building industry specific solutions.”
Kacina explained that different types of cross-industry scenarios have been worked out. For example, one-to-one document exchange could be used by any industry needing to acknowledge the transaction of invoices, purchase orders, delivery notices and other documents, while multiparty-information exchange is especially relevant for projects or systems with multiple vendors, contractors or collaborating firms. As an industry-specific example, SophiaTX wants to enable a “track and trace” solution across value chains, allowing supply chain transparency and security, which is considered as being of particular interest to the food, pharmaceutical and luxury markets.
The proprietary SophiaTX token, SPHTX, will fuel the SophiaTX blockchain. The SophiaTX token sale will last for 10 days with a hard cap of 115,000 ETH and fund the development, marketing and ongoing management of the project and the overall SophiaTX platform. Kacina explained that the token will grant rights to use and transact using the platform, thus rewarding miners validating transactions and blocks on the chain.
The SPHTX token will also allow access to the development platform and facilitate the licensing for private blockchains. Finally, the SPHTX token will permit using the marketplace, a web-based entry point for customers and solution developers, which will feature an App Store and a Dev Store.
“The SophiaTX marketplace will be used by both industrial companies and a global community of experts, consultants and developers,” Kacina told bitcoin Magazine. “It will be specifically designed to not only share applications and assets, but also to exchange know-how, process maps and blueprints, integration strategies, and to offer professional consulting services to encourage accelerated adoption and use of the platform. A developer, for example, could publish an app in the marketplace which would be accessible to businesses, as well as the end-user community, [that] use applications that integrate with their existing systems. Developers are rewarded when their application is downloaded and deployed.”
