A new platform aims to disrupt how sustainable projects are funded, and that too with the help of blockchain technology. While most enthusiasts of crypto keep talking about large financial projects and governmental policies, a small startup in New York City is aiming to bring a big change in the not so glamorous world of funding environmental projects.
Funding process
Impactio works in a five-step process.
- Submission: Project Leaders submit their projects on Impactio
- Modifications: Project Leaders and Curators collaborate to improve project application quality
- Selection: Curators collectively choose a portfolio of high-quality projects using Impactio tokens
- Final list: The Impactio curates a list of dynamic projects of high-quality impact
- Funding: Funders view the final list and can choose projects based on their criteria
The funding works in an ICO model. But unlike most ICOs, the projects funded through Impactio will give voting rights to donors. The platform has already conducted a pilot drive for seven weeks (July 1 to August 21) during which they were able to attract 100 participants and approve 17 projects.
Proceed with caution
The idea seems to be a silver bullet to a lot of problems but one has to remember that nothing in life is easy. While it is true that individuals can directly contribute to projects, there’s a catch as always. Who verifies and punishes these projects for failure to deliver? In the current model, this is done by donors who are given voting rights through smart contracts. But there is a big challenge to this. In a perfect world, this would be practical. But how could a sophomore college student donating to a rainforest project in Indonesia verify the authenticity of claims made by the promoters of the project? In the case of global organizations, the amount of scrutiny is huge and the website of Impactio fails to give solid information on such matters. Giving voting rights to the people funding it might not be a good idea, especially in the case of environmental projects. Most people donate money to such projects on an emotional basis, simply put they do not have sufficient knowledge to make a meaningful decision on such matters. For example, planting trees is not a good idea in many places in the world and not all kinds of tree planting are beneficial in the same manner. To make such decisions, it takes deliberation and a lot of effort which the common man doesn’t possess.
The last part might have given a bit of confusion to whoever reading it, but we have to remember, some rules, regulations, restrictions, and procedures are kept for a reason. While it would be fantastic to have direct democracy, it would only work if the participants are informed and making a consensual choice. This assumes that the participants are rational beings, but the study of economics and psychology has revealed that in the past few decades that it is not the case. But all hope is not lost, the beauty of democracy is that while it makes harder to implement the right decisions, it also makes it equally harder for wrong decisions to get through. Smart contracts will have the same effect. And as past experiences have shown, democracy always outperforms any other form of governance in the long run.
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