Digital Impact Coins
Public innovation projects often suffer from the major risk of demotivating civic participation. This can be due to a lack of accessibility and accountability for both citizens and participating organisations. Within public and social sectors, DLT interventions can support flexible civic-centered initiatives and decentralised platforms for the collaborative economy and as well as promote decentralised digital infrastructure that facilitates increased participation in complex, multi-actor decision-making, ownership, and consensus forming.
Challenge Owner
The Alternative Finance Lab (AltFin Lab) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is an internal innovation team focused on experimenting with new financial mechanisms and technologies to progress the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). AltFin Lab’s portfolio includes successful pilots with Distributed Ledger Technologies such as CederCoin and The Other Bar.
The AltFin Lab is working with the Tadamon Community on stimulating civic investment in development initiatives across areas such as education, health, water, agriculture, and women’s development. The Tadamon Community is specifically a community of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) which serve as a focal point of civic action and engagement. The platform helps to bring together citizens and CSOs to solve common challenges.
A key ambition of the Tadamon Community is to enable new types of innovative investment in Community projects. For example, financing via a ‘digital impact coin’ where those who contribute to public innovation initiatives are rewarded for their contribution, impact investment and commitment.
A digital impact coin can serve as an economic incentive model mechanism, and thus encourage positive engagement for public benefits. This mechanism also encourages a long-term relationship that can be extended across ecosystem members who share common values, as well as be passed between community generations. This model can also integrate well into faith-based economic investment models. Examples of digital impact coins include CedarTree and TreeCoin, which link citizens to environmentally-positive actions and investment.
The Challenge
A key ambition of the Tadamon Community is to enable new types of innovative investment in Community projects. For example, financing via a ‘digital impact coin’ where those who contribute to public innovation initiatives are rewarded for their contribution, impact investment and commitment.
A digital impact coin can serve as an economic incentive model mechanism, and thus encourage positive engagement for public benefits. This mechanism also encourages a long-term relationship that can be extended across ecosystem members who share common values, as well as be passed between community generations. This model can also integrate well into faith-based economic investment models. Examples of digital impact coins include CedarTree and TreeCoin, which link citizens to environmentally-positive actions and investment.
Potential Challenge Areas
The UNDP AltFinLab's Digital Impact Coins challenge is focused on developing a solution for European beneficiaries, with the opportunity to test the use case with the Tadamon Community and other UNDP programmes.