A Use Case of Blockchain: International Aid Organizations

This text prepared for the final assessment of Blockchain Foundations and Use Cases course on Coursera.

What is the business case, area, or topic that this use case applies to?

International Aid Organizations' supply chain building, donation management, and transparency of funding.

What problem are you trying to solve? What is the value created by solving this problem?

In today's world, due to both political pressures and the trust concerns of nations, respect for the work of international organizations tends to decrease. As a result of this situation, donors are decreasing and aid campaigns are not enough. The fact that people who practice investigative journalism, especially in underdeveloped countries, have not been able to control the expenditures of these social organizations leaves a question mark in the minds of people who want to donate.

The difficulty I am trying to solve is to set up a system where we, as donors, can see our donations, which we have to transfer through intermediary institutions, in a completely transparent way. With this system, international and national aid organizations will save the funds for the regions or issues they want to help on the blockchain via a smart contract. Donors will send the amount of aid they want directly to these smart contracts. With the transparency that Blockchain provides us, we will be able to know where the money really goes, which fund can collect how much, and we will not need to keep money in the accounts of charities in any way.

Thus, international aid organizations will be transformed into institutions that only find the issues and locations to be helped and process them into the system as smart contracts. This will allow donors to regain their trust.

How will a blockchain be applied to this use case? Which component pieces will be utilized? Will the blockchain used be public, private, or consortium and why?

We need a *database* so that we can know which donor donates how much and where. In addition, this database should have *shared access* and have to be *public* as donations will be made by different people from all over the world. The current system is *untrusted* as donors and organizations are actors that do not know each other, thus blockchain is necessary.

Through the interface to be created, the donors will donate their ETH to the charity projects they want via a selection screen, without being a member - so that the donors can remain anonymous. Each donation will generate a public-private key, and the public key will be registered on the Ethereum blockchain. The donor, on the other hand, will be able to keep the private key on their device, upon his request. These donations will be processed into the smart contract of the relevant project, and after a certain amount, the contracts will send the collected aid to the targets.

How might a token be used for this use case? Why is it needed, and what benefit does it bring to the project?

No token will be used other than ETH since there is no assets to put a value into. ETH will be used for money to fund.

Describe some other details and factors that are worth considering in this use case. Are there any difficulties or challenges that may have to be solved? Are there any weaknesses you could see that could be exploited?

For the further developments, one can implement tokens for projects and share-based donation system. However, SWOT analysis of this feature needs to be done to understand if it is an improvement or not.

The most important weakness is paying for "gas" whenever someone wants to donate. It may break their desire to donate to a project. In order to lower the prices of creating blocks, we may consider to using a proof-of-stake method for blockchain, or totally different blockchain technology.