SmartAid – The Next Generation Donation Platform

SmartAid – The Next Generation Donation Platform

by | 27 July 2020 | Blockchain

Will my donation arrive at the people in need? Or will it get lost, somewhere in the administration costs of a humanitarian organization? Today, intransparent systems confront donors with a high degree of uncertainty, which diminishes their overall willingness to donate. Therefore, we at Datarella teamed up with the YOU Stiftung to create the next generation of donation platform for sustainable aid projects – SmartAid.

SmartAid is reinventing online charitable giving by implementing our Traceable Donation Technology – powered by Blockchain. SmartAid offers its users a unique donation experience with three distinct key value propositions:   

    1. An effortless donation experience 
    2. An engaging donation experience 
    3. A trustless donation experience

An Effortless Donation Experience 

The first barrier, which hinders people from supporting impactful aid projects is the haze related to donating. Our goal is to make supporting these projects, which are often located on the other side of the world, as easy as buying a coffee. No login, no IBANS, no SWIFTs, no hidden fees, no subscriptions, no minimum amount, no bs. Simply scan a QR-Code, whether it is on a billboard at the metro station or on your computer screen or click a link and you will find yourself on the highly intuitive donation home page of SmartAid. Just a few clicks are required to conduct your good deed. Simply choose your favorite payment method and you help to create prospects for less privileged people.

An Engaging Donation Experience  

After your payment was processed, you will be rewarded with a unique QR-Code. Share this code and the attached link with your friends and family to show them the journey of your donation. Sending it to your community will also make it easy for you to find it back in your messaging history. Also, since SmartAid is a web app, you can download it to your home screen – just like a traditional app but without the hassle of downloading it from the app store. 

A Trustless Donation Experience 

The received QR-Code makes it not only easy to find your donation ID back in your message history, but it holds all the information required to track your very own donation among all others. At this point, SmartAid differentiates to traditional donation platforms – no trust is required since everything is documented immutably and transparently on the SmartAid Blockchain. 

Traditional donation systems vs. SmartAid’s traceable donations

As illustrated in the graphic above, traditional donation systems allocate fiat currencies, like EUR, USD, in one pot, and distributed to different cost centers of an aid organization. Therefore, traditional donation platforms cannot provide donors visibility about the usage of their funds.  

In contrast, on SmartAid each incoming donation is documented on the private Ethereum SmartAid Blockchain. To enable full transparency of the whereabout and usage of each individual donation, each payment will be represented by its own ERC-20 token contract. Each of these token contracts are distinguishable by their contract address. As visualized in the graphic above by different colors, this allows granting SmartAid donors blockchain secured clarity about how their funds will be used.    

The donation tracker then provides the user an overview of the status of his donation. Here she will also be informed about the actual usage of her kind donation.

Donating hard-earned money to charity is a noble gesture. It requires a high amount of trust and transfers a significant amount of responsibility to the receiving party. Unfortunately, intransparent systems confront donors, as well as aid organizations, with a high degree of opaqueness. Donors face a high degree of uncertainty about the usage of their givings, which in turn diminishes their overall willingness to donate. At the same time, aid organizations are suffering from high costs of reporting to and providing their donors with formal audits. In both cases, the value which arrives at the people in need is significantly reduced. Therefore, we at Datarella are working with our partners on SmartAid to create the next generation of donation platform.  

We are proud to announce that SmartAid is also among the winners of the EU funded H2020 accelerator Blockchers. Here we are going to extend the functionalities of SmartAid for aid organizations.

Stay tuned! 

A Blockchain-Based Disbursement System For Coronavirus Aid 

A Blockchain-Based Disbursement System For Coronavirus Aid 

by | 30 March 2020 | Blockchain

The Building Blocks payment system that Datarella has developed for the UN World Food Programme may serve as a blueprint for highly efficient distribution of financial transfers during the Corona crisis. The Building Blocks system was launched on 1 May, 2017, and since has supported several hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees with their payments in Jordanian camp supermarkets. We at Datarella envision a similar system for disbursements of Corona-induced money transfers by governments and state agencies: Datarella can deploy a blockchain disbursement system for Coronavirus aid at short notice.

How Building Blocks Works
Donor countries provide the UN High Commission with funds for specific use in refugee aid. The UN High Commission forwards the funds to the WFP. The WFP administration in Rome is part of the Building Blocks Blockchain, through which all transactions in refugee camp supermarkets are processed. Every refugee receives a certain amount on their account each month, which they can spend for certain purposes. The refugee identifies herself at the supermarket checkout using the iris scan or ID app and has the amount incurred during his purchase debited from his account. The supermarket operator carries out a weekly transaction with the WFP administration in Rome and receives his money in local currency. Up to this point, all transactions have been carried out purely digitally in the form of blockchain transactions. With this process, savings of millions in bank and transfer fees are achieved. In addition to the highly efficient billing, there is no need for an additional audit by an auditor, since the building blocks system has been certified and blockchain technology guarantees the correctness of the transaction history.

Building Blocks for Corona Financial Transfers
A system inspired by the  Building Blocks system can be used for financial transfers in the corona crisis. The federal and state ministries of economics and finance operate system nodes and thus have full control. Other nodes could – but do not have to be – operated by process-relevant organizations such as BaFin, Landesbanken, IHK, chambers of handicrafts, auditing companies, etc..The complete set of rules, including all levels, conditions and dependencies, are programmed as smart contracts. The final payouts can also be automated.

For Citizens and Companies – For All Types of Corona Aid
Every citizen and every company downloads an app that works as a wallet and that can be used to receive and send funds. The wallet also serves as an identification tool for the citizen or the company. The user fills out the application form for Corona emergency aid, loans, basic security or protection funds provided via the wallet. She uploads the necessary documents such as ID card via the wallet and sends the complete application. The user’s identity can be determined with a high degree of certainty via an additional ID function. If the authorized transfer recipient has been determined beyond doubt and automatically, the payment will be transferred to his account – also automatically.

We at Datarella are ready and working on a Building Blocks inspired version of a Corona Aid Disbursement System to be used in Germany, and the EU, we can deploy a Blockchain disbursement system for Coronavirus aid at short notice.

Other Approaches to Corona Aid Disbursements
There are other approaches to address the urgent need for efficient distribution of Corona-based aid. We can’t evaluate them in the same way we can assess our above described own system, but in one of our next posts we will describe one of them – the project “Diggi” which was created during a hackathon organised by the German Bundeskanzleramt a week ago.