United Nations

United Nations agency to upskill thousands of staff in blockchain tech

The UN Development Programme, which is tasked with eliminating poverty in over 170 countries, wants to educate its 22,000 staff on distributed ledger technology.

A United Nations agency tasked with helping countries eliminate poverty is set to upskill its 22,000 staff in blockchain technology, with the ultimate goal of helping countries achieve “sustainable development” growth.

According to a Nov. 30 statement, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has partnered with the Algorand Foundation to launch a blockchain academy in 2024.

The academy will serve the UNDP’s 22,000 staff members across 170 countries, educating them about distributed ledger technology and blockchain, including how it could be used for financial inclusion, supply chain transparency, real-world asset tokenization and digital identity applications.

During the Algorand Impact Summit in New Delhi, UNDP’s expert for alternative finance and low-carbon development, Robert Pasicko, told the audience the partnership will enable the organization to “upskill, empower, and inspire UN practitioners around the world.”

The curriculum will include lectures, workshops and hands-on assignments and will be “instrumental in equipping our team with the tools needed to address complex global challenges using blockchain technology,” said Pasicko.

Doro Unger-Lee, head of education and inclusion at the Algorand Foundation, added that education was a “critical first step toward identifying and delivering actionable, on-the-ground use cases of blockchain to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in a number of areas.”

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Takeaways from Davos: Blockchain is changing the way we fight for sustainability

Evercity’s Alexey Shadrin shares his insights from last month’s World Economic Forum in Davos.

The Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change unites around 40,000 people from 196 countries. Governments, international institutions, financiers, businesses, non-governmental organizations and native communities gather for a two-week sprint to discuss the measures to tackle the climate crisis. The famous 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals were also first introduced at COP21 in Paris along with the historic Paris Agreement. It is aimed at limiting global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with an aim to limit it to 1.5 degrees (most likely already achieved according to most evaluations).

The COP has also created tools to prevent climate doomsday. Such economic tools as voluntary and compliance carbon markets, carbon credits, green bonds and other green assets tied to positive environmental impact play a crucial role in decarbonization global efforts. However, they are often inaccessible to small and medium-sized companies from developing countries. The main reasons are high upfront costs and complex structuring processes in line with global green standards.

Positive and negative impacts on the environment have to be forecasted and described according to approved methodologies. This information is used for the future monitoring and reporting and is verified by assurance providers. That’s where greenwashing or deceptive eco-claims may occur. On-chain verification brings data immutability and transparency, stimulating issuers to meet their green commitments.

12% of carbon offsets and the birth of ReFi

It is an open secret that the issuance of green finance instruments has long been monopolized by the Web2 financial infrastructure players, such as banks, exchanges, registries and standards. So, it is no surprise that Web3 is bringing the most disruption at this stage.

The most obvious Web3 use case in green finance is the transfer of assets from traditional centralized registries to the blockchain via fungible or nonfungible tokens (NFTs). The tokenization of carbon credits pioneered by DAO IPCI in 2017 and scaled by Toucan and Klima DAO in 2021 led to the retirement of 20 million tons of CO2 — almost 12% of the annual voluntary carbon market retirement volume. As a protective move, leading carbon standards immediately banned tokenization. This initiated an ongoing public discussion and highlighted the need for a wider approach than increasing liquidity.

Related: What Goldman Sachs’ CEO misunderstands about private blockchains

Such an approach, initially described by the timelessly passed DAO IPCI founder Anton Galenovich, is now being implemented by a new generation of infrastructure solutions. One of them is Guardian, an open-source tool that provides auditable, traceable, reproducible records that document emissions and the lifecycle of green assets. It provides a low-code environment to instantly launch new apps, asset types and even standards. The blockchain-based infrastructure has overall proven to be faster, more cost-efficient and transparent. This is crucial for unlocking green finance for small and medium-sized enterprises and eliminating greenwashing.

Web3 also offers the opportunity to develop innovative instruments that boost the liquidity of previously illiquid assets or merge the strengths of multiple instruments. Take, for instance, carbon-linked bonds. They unite the features of green bonds and carbon credits, giving green bond investors more incentives and allowing issuers to get lower coupon rates. Biodiversity credits value ecosystem services, and my own Evercity’s “carbon forwards” enable financing for early-stage carbon projects ahead of issuing actual carbon credits. There are already Web3 exchanges, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and liquidity pools, such as Solid World, that deal with such assets.

The combination of blockchain technology with monitoring tools, such as the Internet of Things and satellites, can provide further transparency and traceability of impact reporting along the green finance value chain. All of the abovementioned use cases have already started to make a significant impact on the attainment of the Paris Agreement and U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. The companies behind them consider themselves part of the growing Regenerative Finance (ReFi) community.

Convergence of Web3 and carbon markets

In 2017, Glocha and DAO IPCI, which executed the world’s first voluntary carbon credit transaction, introduced a blockchain booth at the COP. The Climate Change Coalition was formed with support from the UNFCCC Secretariat to unite blockchain pioneers, who back then faced a lot of skepticism from traditional players amid the initial coin offering wave. Five years later, the picture had changed dramatically — COP27 in Egypt marked the convergence of the green finance and Web3 worlds.

With national states falling short of their climate responsibilities, new players have stepped up. The sunny Sharm El Sheikh featured a record number of Web3 companies. The United Nations Global Innovation Hub was at the center of all the climate tech talks, featuring high-level speakers and crucial topics. The Web3 agenda was also featured at the Singapore pavilion, International Emissions Trading Association, Climate Chain Coalition, the Gulf Organisation for Research & Development and several others. At dinner parties and hotel conferences, like the one organized by the Hubculture, Hedera and the HBAR Foundation, carbon market veterans mixed with the Web3 crowd. What should be a more solid sign of industry adoption?

Two of the most important carbon market standards, Verra and Gold Standard, were featured at blockchain events, but no official statements regarding tokenization were made. At the same time, some of the carbon-market veterans have already adopted Web3, with AirCarbon exchange, Climate Trade, Climate Check and Ecoregistry leading the way.

This COP also marked Africa’s growing openness to carbon markets and climate finance, as the continent seeks financing and technologies that foster sustainable, independent growth. But the key elements of infrastructure need to be deployed first. Web3 and its open-source part offer such an inclusive, decentralized infrastructure with peer-to-peer payments and transparency that build trust between green issuers and investors.

Regenerative finance is among the hottest WEF trends

Being annually held at a fancy ski resort in the most expensive country, the World Economic Forum (WEF) is the opposite of the COP in many ways, but foremost in inclusivity. While the COP always changes its host country, the WEF stays in the snowy Davos fortress. The outside temperature this year was around -17 celsius, but the hotel prices were even more extreme. A lack of snow highlighted that climate change is indifferent to wealth and status.

Access to the WEF event zone was restricted to politicians, business leaders and friends of the organization, and one had to have a badge to enter. The outside stakeholders gathered at hotel conferences and the Promenade, a street lined with boutiques that were transformed into promotion spaces, also known as Houses. The Houses were mainly occupied by corporations, blockchain companies and countries, such as India, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, which wanted to promote themselves on the international stage.

The main topics of discussion at the WEF were the economic downturn, geopolitical issues, sustainability and Web3. The intersection of the last two was among the top trends. In September 2022, the WEF launched the Crypto Sustainability Coalition aimed to investigate how Web3 and blockchain tools could be utilized to achieve positive climate action. The working group meetings on carbon credits and climate action were held among other thematic events.

The key Web3 Houses included Global Blockchain Business Council, Hedera, the Blockchain Hub Davos and a creative ReFi space featuring digital art. Apart from the ReFi project, these events featured speakers, including someone from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Will.i.am and Naomi Campbell. Each day ended with late-night parties, where attendees had the opportunity to mingle with high-level individuals and investors from around the world.

What’s coming in 2023?

Web3 companies had the strongest ever showing at both the COP and WEF events, showcasing solid use cases with broad global support. Climate and Web3 were among the hottest topics, with the ReFi sector on the rise. 2023 and beyond promise continued growth for this trend, with the potential to become the blockchain space’s leading focus. The industry awaits guidance from carbon standards and regulations to drive the market, but there are also untapped opportunities in topics beyond climate, such as biodiversity.

Related: 5 tips for investing during a global recession

Web3-native standards and infrastructure, such as Guardian, are coming soon and are poised to shake up the market landscape. Established players must act quickly to stay relevant. Adoption is fully underway, with developing regions, including Africa, ideally positioned to get the most benefits from Web3’s sustainable solutions.

The Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change unites around 40,000 people from 196 countries. Governments, international institutions, financiers, businesses, non-governmental organizations and native communities gather for a two-week sprint to discuss the measures to tackle the climate crisis. The famous 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals were also first introduced at COP21 in Paris along with the historic Paris Agreement. It is aimed at limiting global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with an aim to limit it to 1.5 degrees (most likely already achieved according to most evaluations).

Alexey Shadrin is a co-founder of the Carbon Fund and Evercity.io, a Web3-based platform for green finance origination. He is also a finance group leader in the Climate Chain Coalition and a frequent speaker at high-level events by the World Bank, U.N. and WEF. He also co-authored an Elsevier-published book about using blockchains for climate finance.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

North Korea stole more crypto in 2022 than any other year: UN report

A report submitted to the United Nations found North Korean cyber attacks have become vastly more sophisticated and raked in more crypto than ever before.

A confidential United Nations report has revealed North Korean hackers stole more crypto assets in 2022 than in any other year .

The UN report, seen by Reuters, was reportedly submitted to a 15-member North Korea sanctions committee last week.

It found North Korean-linked hackers were responsible for between $630 million and more than $1 billion in stolen crypto assets last year after targeting networks of foreign aerospace and defense companies.

The UN report also noted that cyber attacks were more sophisticated than in previous years, making tracing stolen funds more difficult than ever.

“[North Korea] used increasingly sophisticated cyber techniques both to gain access to digital networks involved in cyber finance, and to steal information of potential value, including to its weapons programmes,” the independent sanctions monitors saiin its report to the UN Security Council Committee.

Last week, a Feb. 1 report from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis came to a similar conclusion, linking North Korean hackers to at least $1.7 billion worth of stolen crypto in 2022, making it the worst-ever year for crypto hacking.

North Korean hackers have been stealing more crypto than ever before. Source Chainalysis

The firm named the cybercriminal syndicates as the most “prolific cryptocurrency hackers over the last few years.”

“For context, North Korea’s total exports in 2020 totaled $142 million worth of goods, so it isn’t a stretch to say that cryptocurrency hacking is a sizable chunk of the nation’s economy,” Chainalysis said.

According to Chainalysis, at least $1.1 billion of the stolen loot was taken from hacks of decentralized financeprotocols, making North Korea one of the driving forces behind the DeFi hacking trend that intensified in 2022.

Chainalysis has revealed North Korean hackers tend to send large amounts of their stolen funds to mixers. Source: Chainalysis.

The firm also found that  North Korea-linked hackers tend to send large sums to mixers such as Tornado Cash and Sinbad. 

“In fact, funds from hacks carried out by North Korea-linked hackers move to mixers at a much higher rate than funds stolen by other individuals or groups,” Chainalysis said.

Related: North Korean hacking activity ceases after regulators implement KYC: Report

North Korea has frequently denied allegations of being responsible for cyberattacks, but the new UN report alleged North Korea’s primary intelligence bureau, the Reconnaissance General Bureau uses several groups such as Kimsuky, Lazarus Group and Andariel specifically for cyberattacks.

“These actors continued illicitly to target victims to generate revenue and solicit information of value to the DPRK, including its weapons programmes,” the UN report said.

Submitted before the 15-member council’s North Korea sanctions committee last week, the full report is reportedly due for public release later this month or early March.

Decentralized solutions for climate change are key as COP disappoints

Climate change initiatives led by politicians and sponsored by some of the biggest polluters demand a change in initiatives — Decentralized tech could play a key role.

Climate change has become one of the most pressing issues in the modern world with mounting pressure on companies to develop and implement climate strategies. Politicians around the globe have also been actively involved, with several nations pledging to go carbon-neutral in the next couple of decades.

Amid all the initiatives and conferences led by politicians and billion-dollar companies over the years, the threat of global warming and the carbon emissions spilling into the atmosphere have only risen.

The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, was the 27th United Nations climate change conference. More commonly referred to as COP, the conference is one of the largest of its kind that sees attendance from top policymakers and tech CEOs.

COP27 ultimately resulted in minimal progress on loss and damage, with high-emission countries agreeing to compensate those countries enduring the brunt of the climate mayhem that they played a negligible role in causing. But, once again, no promise was made to stop the emissions fueling this disaster.

Politician-led conferences such as COP27 have become a glaring example of everything that is wrong with such initiatives. COP27 was host to more than 600 representatives of fossil fuel companies and many others who were there to prevent rather than support progress and action. Above all, the event was sponsored by the largest polluter of plastic in the world — Coca-Cola.

The annual climate carnival concept was probably not the best way to encourage meaningful action on global warming. The presence of the fossil fuel industry and continued failure to fulfill their intended purpose means the problem of climate change needs a modern solution, and for many, decentralized tech is the key that can benefit climate initiatives in the long run.

Decentralized solutions

Decentralized tech has proven revolutionary in data management for many industries apart from the financial sector. Climate change initiatives are already integrating blockchain tech to their benefit including an increasing number of projects at COP held yearly conferences. 

KPMG U.S. climate data and technology principal Arun Ghosh told Cointelegraph:

“One of the major outcomes of COP27 was landing on the loss and damage set of agreements enabling wealthier nations to help provision and plan for the recovery of people and livelihoods in under-resourced nations. Blockchain not only provides the trust and transparency set of enablers but with the introduction of CBDC pilots as well as the adoption of BTC as a recognized medium of exchange in countries like El Salvador, there are accelerated investments and plans emerging to integrate and transact between organizations, countries and citizens.”

Blockchain tech can be implemented in many ways to make climate change-related initiatives more efficient.

Recycling is one sector where blockchain can encourage participation by giving a financial reward for depositing recyclables like plastic containers, cans, or bottles. Similar setups already exist in several places around the world.

Recent: Gensler’s approach toward crypto appears skewed as criticisms mount

Plastiks is a nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace that sponsors initiatives to cut down on plastic waste. Plastiks partners with recycling firms and certifies their plastic recycling using NFTs that can become an additional source of income for the recycling firms. The project claims that recycling data, once recorded on the blockchain, also becomes a hard receipt of how much plastic has been removed.

Due to its ability to transparently track crucial environmental data and demonstrate whether obligations were reached, blockchain technology can also deter businesses and governments from breaking their environmental commitments or falsely claiming progress. 

For example, Regen Network offers blockchain-based fintech solutions for ecological claims and data. Some of their offerings include a public ecological accounting system and the Regen Registry, which allows land stewards to sell their ecosystem services directly to buyers around the world.

EarthFund DAO is another environmental initiative that organizes a decentralized community looking to tackle humanity’s environmental problems. The platform enables tokenholders to vote for and crowdfund “world-changing projects” such as the EarthFund Carbon capture project.

Crypto Climate Accord is a private sector-led initiative focused on decarbonizing the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry. To date, more than 250 companies and individuals in crypto, finance, NGOs and more have joined the movement.

Amid all the major use cases of blockchain tech, its progression in aiding the very complex carbon credit market has been most talked about — for both good and bad reasons.

Carbon markets and how they work

A carbon credit represents one metric ton of carbon dioxide, which can be bought, sold or retired. If a business is subject to cap-and-trade regulation (such as the California Cap and Trade Program), it probably has a set number of credits that it can apply to its cap. The company may trade, sell or store the extra carbon credits if it emits fewer tons of carbon dioxide than it is allowed.

An emission allowance from the seller is bought when a credit is sold. Despite the fact that emissions reduction is the result of an action, a credit becomes tradeable as a result of a genuine reduction in emissions.

Carbon markets aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enabling the trading of emission units (carbon credits), which are certificates representing emission reductions. Trading enables entities that can reduce emissions at a lower cost to be paid to do so by higher-cost emitters. By putting a price on carbon emissions, carbon market mechanisms raise awareness of the environmental and social costs of carbon pollution, encouraging investors and consumers to choose lower-carbon paths.

There are two main categories of carbon markets: cap-and-trade and voluntary. Cap-and-trade sets a mandatory limit (cap) on greenhouse gas emissions and organizations that exceed these limits can purchase excess allowances to fill the gap or pay a fine. As its name suggests, the mandatory market is used by companies and governments that are legally mandated to offset their emissions. The voluntary carbon market, on the other hand, operates outside the compliance markets but in parallel, allowing private companies and individuals to purchase carbon credits on a voluntary basis.

Problems with carbon credits

Carbon credits have been touted as a market-based fix to help curb carbon emissions, but they come with a slew of problems. Carbon credit markets are ridden by poor offset quality, where certain credits might not be of the same quality as marketed and some are outdated and no longer meet the standards of top carbon offset certification organizations.

Some organizations offering such carbon offsets don’t do what they say they will. Voluntary carbon markets are largely unregulated and companies often get away with false advertising called greenwashing. These businesses either invest in non-verified credits or double-count the same credit. All of these actions trick buyers into believing they are reducing their emissions when they are actually not.

For example, according to Yale Environmental 360, a total of one billion tons of CO2 worth of credits have been made available for purchase so far on the voluntary carbon market. However, there are roughly 600–700 million tons more sellers than purchasers. Consequently, only roughly 300–400 million tons of CO2 offsets are actually achieved. This indicates that somewhere between 600 and 700 million tons of CO2 are produced without being offset.

How blockchain can help

There have been significant advances in computational technology within the blockchain realm that can enhance the efficiency of these carbon markets. Blockchain tech can aid in the process of credit creation and validation. R.A. Wilson, chief technology officer at digital carbon offset trading platform 1GCX, told Cointelegraph:

“Blockchain can vastly improve existing bottlenecks within the current carbon credits market, including issues surrounding fraud and misrepresentation and duplication of credits. While these improvements will be key to scaling the carbon credits market and building greater trust within the industry, blockchain is only one part of the solution. To scale the tokenized carbon credits market to its full potential, the industry will also require participation by trusted and established carbon credit providers, as well as collaboration with regulators and government agencies.”

KLIMA DAO is driving the development of the voluntary carbon market by building a decentralized infrastructure that makes the market more transparent and accessible. It sells bonds and distributes rewards to KLIMA tokenholders. Every bond sale adds to an ever-growing green treasury or improves liquidity for key environmental assets.

Nori is another blockchain-based carbon credit market built with farmers in focus. This project supports farmers adopting regenerative agriculture projects to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

Tegan Keele, KPMG U.S. climate data and technology leader, told Cointelegraph that blockchain, along with other technologies, certainly has the ability to help carbon credit markets in terms of traceability:

“A credit can be traceable but not high quality — blockchain won’t inherently solve the quality problem, but it can help validate when a credited producer makes statements regarding origin or quality.”

Still, not everyone is convinced. Dan Stein, director of the Giving Green earth climate initiative, believes the problem is much bigger than double counting or traceability.

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Stein told Cointelegraph that blockchain-based climate solutions are hot air and that the real problem with carbon credits is offset quality:

“If anything, chain-based carbon credits exacerbate this problem by creating a credit as a commodity when it is instead a differentiated product. In fact, I’ve heard stories of companies ‘laundering’ old offsets that they couldn’t sell any other way onto these chain-based solutions.”

He added that by making transactions easier, “it turns credits into more of a commodity, and everyone treats them as the same. What has happened in practice is that project developers have taken old low-additionality credits that they can’t sell in a normal market and loaded them ‘on-chain,’ where suddenly they have found new buyers.”

The use of blockchain technology in the climate change fight has faced appreciation and criticism alike. On one hand, decentralized tech is being actively integrated for new solutions at a global level to make certain aspects more transparent and streamlined. On the other, climate activists believe that current blockchain solutions aren’t as helpful and only focus on tokenization.

Looking ahead, it will be interesting to see which projects catch on and scale to meet the challenges of climate change.

Does the IMF have a vendetta against cryptocurrencies?

Is the multilateral lending institution throttling useful DLT experiments in the developing world, or is it saving crypto from itself?

Is the International Monetary Fund (IMF) really hostile to crypto? Many in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space think so. In January, the fund asked El Salvador to drop Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender. 

In May, it reportedly pressured Argentina to curtail crypto trading as the price for an IMF loan extension, and it also recently warned the Marshall Islands that raising a digital currency to the status of legal tender could “raise risks to macroeconomic and financial stability as well as financial integrity.”

“I do believe that the IMF is an implacable foe of crypto,” David Tawil, president and co-founder at ProChain Capital, told Cointelegraph. Given that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are ‘“issued” by non-state entities and are borderless, “crypto has the potential to be ubiquitous, which can significantly curtail the need for the IMF,” a financial agency of the United Nations.

“Bitcoin stands against everything the IMF stands for,” Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer of the Human Rights Foundation, told Politico in June. “It’s an outside money that’s beyond the control of these alphabet soup organizations,” while Kraken’s Dan Held simply tweeted, “The IMF is evil,” in response to the fund’s reported actions in Argentina.

Still, others believe that this multilateral lending institution that serves some 190 countries — and has long been a lightning rod for criticism in the developing world — may have a more nuanced view of cryptocurrencies.

A broad-minded view of crypto-assets?

In a September report, “Regulating Crypto,” the IMF seemed to have no problem with the existence or even proliferation of non-governmental digital currencies. Indeed, it called for a “global regulatory framework” for cryptocurrencies in order to bring order to the markets “and provide a safe space for useful innovation to continue.” 

“The IMF has taken a very broad-minded view of crypto-assets,” John Kiff — managing director of the CBDC Think Tank and, until 2021, a senior financial sector expert at the IMF — told Cointelegraph, especially if one looks beyond some of the recent cases cited above. He added:

“The Marshall Islands and El Salvador opinions pertained to country governments adopting crypto as legal tender when their unit of account currencies were already well established. And, those adverse opinions were mostly focused on the macroeconomic impact of hitching their fiscal wagons to cryptocurrencies.” 

Institutionally speaking, “It’s true that the IMF is skeptical of crypto, and it came down hard on El Salvador,” Josh Lipsky, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, told Cointelegraph. But that’s because the fund was worried about the financial vulnerability of that nation’s economy. The IMF “will have to bail them out” if and when El Salvador reneges on its international debt payments.

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Meanwhile, “Argentina has done something like 20-plus lending programs over the years, so it can’t really go back to the IMF and renegotiate [its loans] while it is also conducting crypto experiments,” added Lipsky, who previously served as an adviser to the IMF and speechwriter to Christine Lagarde. The mayor of Buenos Aires, a cryptocurrency proponent, was reported to be developing plans that would allow the city’s residents to pay their municipal taxes in cryptocurrencies. “That raised some eyebrows” at the fund, commented Lipsky.

Even Tawil agreed that the IMF was justified in forcing “certain policy choices, like austerity or taxation or removal of government subsidies that cannot be supported economically” under certain circumstances. If a country “has awful policies” that will make it persistently dependent on the fund’s support, then “the IMF will use its lending ability to influence policy choices.”

Money laundering risks 

In connection with the Marshall Islands’ bid to implement a sovereign digital currency, known as SOV, as a second legal tender, the IMF’s Yong Sarah Zhou cited not only financial stability perils but also “anti-money laundering and combatting the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) risks.” 

Simon Lelieveldt, a Netherlands-based regulatory consultant for payments and blockchain, wasn’t really sure this was the fund’s main objection, however. Yes, crypto can be “used as an investment asset and also a tool for money laundering — as can cash in the bank,” but it is more likely crypto’s “ungoverned nature” that alarms the IMF and other intergovernmental organizations, including the Financial Action Task Force.

Governments in the developing world sometimes feel “oppressed by IMF rulings and neoliberal dogmas” and are tempted to “escape the harness of the IMF” through the use of alternate legal tenders, actions that inevitably “lead to reactions from institutions that are afraid of losing their power,” he told Cointelegraph.

A misbegotten case?

El Salvador was the world’s first country to adopt Bitcoin, or any cryptocurrency, as legal tender in September 2021. “El Salvador was a really bad use case,” Lipsky told Cointelegraph. “What Terra Luna did for crypto in the United States, El Salvador did for crypto globally.” 

What went wrong? “There were so many failures, but if I were to pick one, it would be how rushed it felt.” There was a “paper-thin, two-page explanation of how it [Bitcoin] would work,” and that was it.

Rather than take an experimental approach, beginning with small pilots and independent risk assessments, the Bitcoin Law was hurried through El Salvador’s legislature and immediately imposed — “reckless and rushed,” according to one critic.

The IMF’s wariness of crypto as legal tender only deepened in the wake of the El Salvador inept BTC launch, in Lipsky’s view.

Still, institutions like the IMF and the World Bank arguably have an “outsized influence” on small countries looking to take more control over their currencies, and they “can apply pressure, from making aid conditional to simply blocking aid, unless countries comply with their requirements,” Henri Arslanian wrote in his recently published book, The Book of Crypto.

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When El Salvador recognized Bitcoin as legal tender, for instance, the World Bank, another lending institution in the United Nations system, not only criticized the move but “also refused to provide technical assistance, citing environmental and transparency concerns,” wrote Arslanian.

Natural enemies?

Given the mandate of nongovernment organizations like IMF and the World Bank — which is, broadly speaking, to support global financial stability and spur economic growth in the developing world — there could simply be a natural tension vis-a-vis decentralized currencies — which are often volatile and hard-to-control financial instruments with no return address or even identifiable individuals in charge. 

As Tawil noted, the IMF is often called upon to deal with economies “plagued by corrupt and inept leadership and illusory currencies,” and therefore, it really has “no incentive to add another ‘issuer-less’ currency.” Nevertheless, he added:

“The IMF cannot ignore reality, which is that our future will be filled with cryptocurrencies.”

Blockchain could help anonymously document war crimes

Blockchain combined with decentralized storage could ensure data preservation and anonymity when reporting war crimes.

Human rights investigators appointed by the United Nations have confirmed that war crimes have been committed by Russian forces in Ukraine. The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine was created in March 2022 to provide a framework for UN human rights investigators to report war crimes in the region. 

Erik Møse, chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, stated in the UN’s article that “Investigators visited 27 towns and settlements and interviewed more than 150 victims and witnesses.” Møse also noted that “Sites of destruction, graves, places of detention and torture, as well as remnants of weapons,” were inspected.

While the report developed by the commission has allowed UN investigators to document war crimes in Ukraine, tools and protocols are still needed to enable individuals to accurately and securely report these acts. Additionally, the need to preserve war crime evidence has become critical as the war in Ukraine enters its seventh month.

Given these challenges, industry experts believe that blockchain technology has the potential to solve many of the issues faced by individuals and organizations documenting war crimes. For example, Jaya Klara Brekke, chief strategy officer at Nym — a platform powered by the Cosmos blockchain that protects the privacy of various applications — told Cointelegraph that Nym is developing a tool known as AnonDrop that will allow users to securely and anonymously upload data. She said:

“The intention is for AnonDrop to become a tool that democratizes the gathering of evidence that can be used to pursue human rights cases. In the current climate in Ukraine, this would be particularly important for the purpose of securely documenting and sharing evidence of war crimes anonymously.”

“The core technology of Nym is a mixnet, which takes data from ordinary users and mixes it together using encryption to make everything look identical. It protects against people watching the network, along with metadata surveillance and IP tracing,” she elaborated. While Nym provides an anonymity layer to allow users to transmit data without revealing who they are, information then gets stored on the decentralized storage network Filecoin. 

Will Scott, a software engineer at Protocol Labs — a company working with Filecoin on its decentralized storage solution — told Cointelegraph that some of humanity’s most important information is stored on Filecoin to ensure that data remains publicly available.

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A blockchain network combined with decentralized storage could be a critical tool for documenting war crimes since it allows individuals in regions like Ukraine to anonymously report, share and retain data. A Wall Street Journal article published in May 2022 stated that “Prosecutors say that, with Russian forces having occupied so much of the country, it is impossible to process all of the evidence of every potential war crime.” Moreover, Ahmed Ghappour, Nym general counsel and associate professor of law at Boston University, told Cointelegraph that it’s becoming critical for witnesses of human rights violations to come forward without fear of retaliation. He said:

“In Ukraine, where witnesses of war crimes are facing a technologically sophisticated adversary, network level anonymity is the only way to guarantee the safety and security needed to provide evidence to prosecute perpetrators.”

A work in progress

Although the potential behind AnonDrop is evident, Klara Brekke noted that the solution is still in its early development stages. “We took part in the Kyiv Tech Summit Hackathon this year hoping to find individuals who could help us extend AnonDrop’s functionality. For instance, AnonDrop’s user interface is not fully up yet and we still need to find a way to verify the authenticity of images uploaded to the network,” she explained. 

Ghappour elaborated that verification is the next critical requirement for making sure evidence uploaded to the Nym network can be used in court. “I think one of Russia’s greatest strengths in this war is the region’s ability to deny that any evidence is valid. Russia’s use of deepfakes and misinformation is another strength. We need to guard against these attacks.”

Ghappour mentioned that in order to combat this, image providence features must be implemented within AnonDrop to enable easy verification when documents are examined in a court of law. Even though such processes for image verification currently exist through tools like SecureDrop — a solution that allows individuals to upload photos anonymously for media outlets to use — Ghappour believes that these are limited to siloed organizations.

“We want to take image verification a step further by democratizing the process, ensuring this feature is available to users rather than just media outlets.” 

Once image providence is implemented, verifying war crimes could become easier for court officials. Brittany Kaiser, a human rights legal expert, told Cointelegraph that she believes such a tool could help advance the human rights documentation space, where often individuals feel too at risk to submit findings themselves. 

“Through images alone, it is possible to verify typical indicators of atrocity crime, including, but not limited to, mass graves, torture marks, binding of hands, executions and other violations of international human rights law that amount to war crimes or other atrocity classifications,” she remarked.

Given the potential for this use case, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that AnonDrop isn’t the only blockchain application focused on the preservation and verification of war crimes. Starling Labs — a Stanford-based research lab focused on data integrity using cryptography and decentralized web protocols — is also using blockchain technology to report war crimes. However, verifying the integrity of data remains the biggest challenge for both Nym and Starling Labs, even with image providence in place.

For instance, Scott pointed out that progress must be made in order to make sure images are legitimate and that verification works well. He further remarked that access to the internet in various regions of Ukraine is censored: “There are distribution questions that are important to consider here.”

Recent: Vietnam’s crypto adoption: Factors driving growth in Southeast Asia

Challenges aside, it’s notable that organizations responsible for prosecuting war crimes are considering using technology to help advance traditional processes. For example, The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague noted in its strategic plan for 2016 to 2018 that it could “support the identification, collection and presentation of evidence through technology.”

The report further noted that the ICC is interested in developing partnerships with non-governmental organizations and academic institutions to facilitate the use of technological advancements for war crime documentation. In the meantime, Ghappour emphasized that Nym will continue to push forward with enabling AnonDrop to be used in regions like Ukraine: “Russia has prolonged wars in the past, so we need to progress with this project no matter what.”

UNFCCC weighs blockchain use cases to fight climate change with Cointelegraph

During the DigitalArt4Climate press conference, Cointelegraph editor-in-chief Kristina Lucrezia Cornèr took over the stage to understand the various blockchain initiatives that actively fight climate change.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) along with climate change entrepreneurs and Cointelegraph delved into discussing the role of emerging technologies, such as blockchain solving global issues like climate change.

During the DigitalArt4Climate press conference, Cointelegraph editor-in-chief Kristina Cornèr took over the stage to understand the various blockchain initiatives that actively fight climate change. Starting off the conversation was Anna Dart, a digital avatar by DigitalArt4Climate who shared the idea of bringing together artists to inspire climate change:

“We are blessed with having the opportunity to impact our world with the transformational power of art and eco-friendly blockchain technology together.”

As part of the initiative, the digital arts of the finalists will be exhibited as clean nonfungible tokens (NFTs) across various UN initiatives related to climate change. Miroslav Polzer, founder and CEO of IAAI and the strategic director of the Climate Chain Coalition, took over the conversation as he explained the next phase of the initiative — which involves mobilizing the resources or funds.

Panelists at the UN Climate Change conference. Source: UNFCCC

Polzer explained that the sale of the clean NFT aims to support United Nations’ youth-focused Sustainable Development Goals initiative — with 15% of the revenue going to the artists and 35% to the Youth Climate Action Fund. The remaining 50% will be dedicated to institutional and technological infrastructure for non-party stakeholders including DigitalArt4Climate management, the United Citizens Organization DAO set-up, education and GloCha GoodLifeApp. 

Diving into the technical aspects of NFTs for climate change, Irina Karagyaur the head of ecosystem growth and BD at Unique Networks, spoke about bringing back the power to creators and people.

She supported Unique Networks’ decision to build proof-of-stake (PoS) NFTs over Polkadot, citing the need for a lower carbon footprint, especially when fighting climate change:

“In general, the industry is transitioning to PoS to enable climate and ESG initiatives and to improve and reduce energy consumption by 99%.”

Dolphine Magero, CEO of Global Youth Climate Action Fund Institution, also highlighted the importance of including artists that wish to join in on the global fight against climate change.

According to Karagyaur, minting an NFT on Unique equates to emitting a carbon footprint of a single human breath, which can be used to power climate action. Eyeing widespread adoption of the technology, Unique Networks launched an open NFT marketplace wherein artists can mint eco-friendly NFTs to power various climate change initiatives:

“There is a blue ocean for doing good, please reach out to us, pitch us your idea and be part of the movement.”

Related: Iota Foundation joins Dell to develop real-time carbon footprint tracking

Dell’s edge solutions team announced the onboarding of Iota Foundation, climate change-focused technology company ClimateCHECK and BioE to develop a solution on top of Dell’s in-house Data Confidence Fabric (DCF) and Project Alvarium initiatives.

Mathew Yarger, head of sustainability at the Iota Foundation, stated:

“Transparency and trust in data is paramount for addressing the global issues of climate change and transitioning to climate action.”