Blockchain Use Cases with Case Studies | DataHour by Benjamin Arunda

Key Takeaways

thank you very much once again for having me uh on this session and I I hope and I believe that you're going to learn something from this session um as uh as um you've had from the introduction blockchain is really one of the most hyped Technologies uh of the decade um for the last 13 years I mean at the word blockchain has been a buzzword and it has been really hyped by by so many people uh across the world that includes uh government includes uh uh corporates and even individuals they've really hyped it and uh it has revolved largely around cryptocurrencies uh and speculation so much so that a few years ago I uh um started writing my second book um actually last year my second book that it it's it's almost out by the way and uh I came up with an idea which I call the crypto poison so the crypto poison is what I refer to as um is is what the time I used to refer to the fact that a lot of cryptocurrency speculation has blinded so many people from seeing a number of real use cases of blockchain uh so much so that so many people are scamping around uh cryptocurrency-based use cases and forgetting about a number of other use cases so even when you go to the market most case studies um that have been implemented at scale uh have case studies that revolve around um uh financial services that includes Banking and other fintech based Solutions so today this is the way I've structured this presentation um uh I'm just going to start by just sharing with you a few General use cases yeah this is to give you a general idea of uh the possibilities of where uh blockchain can be used and then after that uh very quickly I'm going to move to um to uh a specific case studies where I'm going to handle also a few case studies these are projects these are real life projects um that are uh that are already been created and these are real life solutions that can be used uh by people yeah um okay yeah so I'm going to start with the most popular use case when I talk about General use cases which is the digital currencies or other cryptocurrencies so when I talk about cryptocurrencies or digital currencies I mean uh you probably already have heard of Bitcoin so when I mentioned Bitcoin it brings to mind uh what digital currency or cryptocurrencies are in the early days of my career it used to be very difficult for me to explain to anybody what uh blockchain was without having to mention the word Bitcoin that was so interesting one day I had uh I I was having lunch with a banker in Kenya a senior banker and interestingly um this guy asked me can you explain to me what blockchain is and um uh I think it it actually said can you explain to me what Bitcoin is yeah uh but some sometimes many of them mentioned ask for uh to be explained for Bitcoin simply because one they don't know what blockchain is they don't even have any idea there's a technology called blockchain or two because they think Bitcoin and blockchain is synonymous it is one and the same thing yeah so I tried I really tried to explain a blockchain and you you've heard of the word the blockchain for dummies so I tried to explain this this term a Bitcoin yeah as though I was planning to a child so I really tried I really tried um but at the end of it after the explanation the the the the gentleman asked me now I hope you carried uh one of the coins one of the Bitcoins with you because I want to have a I have to have a look at it and touch it and have a feel it and that's when I realized that really I had not done a good job explaining to him what Bitcoin was so I really went back to the drawing bottle to to really look at how best people can understand what Bitcoin is yeah so from then since then I actually stopped explaining Bitcoin to dummies yeah and I started just explaining Bitcoin as it is yeah because Bitcoin is a concept that if you don't um have some knowledge it it becomes very difficult for you to understand but today I believe I'm I'm speaking to an audience that uh already have a foundation a prerequisite of the fundamentals of blockchain and cryptocurrencies so looking at digital currencies why is Bitcoin or why is cryptocurrencies the number one use case of of blockchain the reason is across the world uh currencies National currencies or rather Fiat currencies and Fiat currencies are the currencies that are issued by central banks these currencies are centralized and are controlled and issued by a central Authority which in many countries is what you call the referred to as the central bank or a Federal Reserve yeah in other countries uh in India in Kenya there is a central bank that is in charge of printing the money yeah they're in charge of also issuing the currency into the economy yeah so the core of the innovation of blockchain was was currency uh the the founder of the creator of of of Bitcoin uh with a known uh Satoshi nakamoti which is a a just a uh not really his actual name really created bitcoin with an aim to decentralize access to finances or with an aim to create a currency that will not be controlled by any government at all yeah and that's how we created bitcoin so globally whether you talk about the U.S so they talk about India the fact that central banks are the only people can issue a currency and they are the only people who can print a currency and makes it so much centrally controlled yeah and the feeling that um this has so many weaknesses then makes um the solution of Bitcoin or the solution of blockchain has more capabilities in terms of uh removing some of the systemic weaknesses within a centralized fiat currency so having a cryptocurrency means that it cryptography is allowed for secure and transparent transfer of money without the need for a central Authority so if I'm sending you money Bitcoin one Bitcoin I don't need this transaction doesn't need to go through a central Authority yeah you you uh for instance when you talk about clearing and um and settlement of of finances whether it's of checks or of any money that is sent that clearing process depends on a centralized Authority it depends on a centralized Bank to be able to clear that before that money can reach the person that um that is the recipient so that's why really the solution of digital currency is really key and later on I'm gonna on the real real life case studies I'm gonna handle an example of what you call the Central Bank digital currencies which is also a major solution uh that blockchain brings about so a little bit faster uh another General use case is Supply Chain management blockchain has key features that we talked about last time and now the key features include the fact that it is decentralized the fact that it is immutable yeah the fact that it is transparent yeah so transparent is a key feature or the transparency is a key feature that is necessary and is needed by the supply chain industry yeah so when you talk about logistics or Supply Chain management largely logistical as networks or supply chain networks are largely opaque so that if you are sending a shipment from from China or you're waiting for a shipment of your product from China to India sometimes it becomes difficult for you to trace yeah uh the the actual location or rather to trace in real time uh your shipment or rather the process of also procuring products how can a supply chain manager yeah or rather somebody who is auditing the work that has been done by a supply chain manager how can it be able to actually actually verify that the supply chain manager did the procurement in the correct process yeah uh for instance some most companies have a process where um uh the the they have a pre uh they have a list yeah a list of uh of suppliers that that have already been verified that I've already invented and this list of suppliers is what they are required the supply chain manager is required to procure any products from yeah and this is common particularly hotels where they have a list of suppliers who are supplying food stuff or drinks so if the supply chain manager then decides to go outside this list perhaps in an aim uh to have some gain in that process maybe uh to work with maybe a friend of his so that he can get maybe some Kickback in terms of payment or in terms of some some some some benefit for giving that business uh then is anybody auditing that system can be able to clearly see that such a thing and happen that this manager did not follow the due process of uh the supply chain um uh process or procuring those goods so having a clear a transparent not opaque a transparent yeah and addressable and immutable system yeah or procurement or rather of Supply Chain management right from this place where you are procuring the product to the place where the product is is received the reason why this is very important just before I give you two examples is assumed in a hotel yeah uh you procured a certain product or a certain uh certain batches of drinks yeah and it happens that a number of batches were actually um um who actually spoiled and they ended up poisoning your your customers yeah now what will happen already or procured from multiple or rather different uh suppliers sometimes it becomes difficult to actually determine which supplier supplied that particular drink that was spoiled so when you have a properly uh digitized Supply Chain management on the blockchain everything becomes traceable you can be able to trace the drink that was taken by a customer right from his mouth trade to where it came from from the supplier which means it becomes easy to approach and blame it becomes easy to ensure accountability and to reduce risks in the entire Supply Chain management and now um of course there are already companies that are using a blockchain in Supply Chain management a good example is is Walmart yeah uh and and I would advise you to really research and expound on on this use case where Walmart is using blockchain to track at the track and Trace movement of pork from China already in China now mask as well is is using blockchain uh based supply chain uh management to track their cargo then another use case is voting systems well I don't know about India but um in Kenya and not just in Kenya including the the US and a number of developing countries elections are always very motive yeah especially when the elections are tightly contested where you have opponents that are closely uh contesting an election sometimes the election process is is is um is mad with irregularities where you realize that uh a particular candidate staffed a ballot boxes with pre-marked ballot papers uh sometimes a candidate has worked with a hacker to um to mess up with a digital voting system and and this has happened in Kenya uh sometime in the past uh where election managers work with with uh with external or other telecommunication companies and data service providers to feed the election system with the wrong information and manage the feed an algorithm into the election system especially in the time of telling so that for every if if I'm your opponent for every uh verse 10 votes that you get this algorithm can deduct a number of votes from from you yeah so that I always this algorithm keeps me always ahead and this happens because voting systems are centralized yeah and they want to agreed last time is that centralized systems have what you call a single point of failure and when they have a single point of failure means that you just need to attack a single point in that election system and it becomes so vulnerable that you can now manipulate data and you might you can manipulate transactions within the election system so how can we decentralize these election systems so the first thing that we may need to do and that's that's also a use case that I'm going to share with you is it is important as as much as possible for countries that want to implement this kind of of system to have a blockchain-based digital identity yeah and uh there's one case study we're going to cover later a blockchain-based digital identity will really help yeah to establish all other to implement uh uh a voting a decentralized voting system and even without having a blockchain business identity uh voting can't voting cards can be issued based on the blockchain where at the point of issuing this voting uh voting cards uh if they can be attached yeah to Biometrics yeah or of that happened today even in Kenya Biometrics are attached to voting cards but the problem that happens is it becomes very easy for people to just compromise that system yeah because they can just enter data that doesn't exist or sometimes what happens is uh they enable they compromise the system in a way that some an individual can vote multiple times but when it is based on the blockchain remember the key features of blockchain it is decentralized which means decision making is decentralized no individual is going to enter that system and just change all the data or just uh input data as you want yeah this system is the central list yeah which means it is going to be difficult yeah for um for an election official who was is already compromised to go into this system and change data without living at clear auditory now that is the key term when there is when the system is secure and auditable then it becomes easy to actually audit the entire process and actually determine whether the election was was a free and fair and these are system that has already been used in a number of uh us uh elections not national elections but State elections uh and and particularly in certain parliamentary elections these are small election in-house elections they have already implemented a blockchain and a particular in Africa is in 2019 Sierra Leone with an African country with the help of a company known as Agora blockchain they used a blockchain-based election system in the presidential election yeah and that really helped to a great extent to reduce yeah um uh the the instances of of uh of the regularities in that election then quickly into digital identity I didn't mention digital identity in that in that part of Elections now can you think of it how many people globally yeah right now the total global population is about 9 billion yeah how many people globally do not have an identity yeah think of it when you go to any Bank in India or or in Europe or in uh in Kenya in any part of the world the first thing that they want you to produce before they can open a bank account for you is what they call kyc or know your customer know your customer details include you providing your national identity yeah which can be either your passport in some cases but mostly is a is a national identity card yeah in some parts they can accept a national recognized driving license uh they'll request you for instance in Kenya they require you to also provide um uh a Kenyan Revenue Authority uh pin number that is a tax pin number yeah and they also require you to to provide um um um a photo a photo a passport photo passport size photo photograph of you now this data Banks keep asking for this data every time you go to open an account the question is will the banking system ever have a standardized system that do not need to so that you don't need you don't need you do not need to provide your ID every time you're opening an account why can't they have a shared resource or why can't the government provide a shared resource yeah in a way that you do not have to all the time provide your ID card because the reason why there's a lot of fraudulent activities in the banking industry is because the process of kyc the process of collecting this data is sometimes mud with also some irregularities where I have two different ID cards that were issue I corrupted the government official to provide me two two or three government ID cards where you know one ID card I'm Benjamin and another ID card I am Steven in another ID card I am Edwin so having multiple identities yeah and you've seen this even International crime where you see an individual having multiple uh passport identities how is that possible you you can ask yourself that how is that possible how can individual have three different passports the reason why that is possible is because most passport issuance systems are centralized yeah they're built on centralized Technologies which makes it really easy to compromise if you get a a hacker who is sophisticated they're able to hack it they're able to get certain details they're able to collect fingerprints and they're able to create a fake passport yeah and that's why I am the black markets uh uh really thrived a lot where they were selling a lot of uh of of of uh fake passports and all that now a good example of that is South Korea is actually creating a blockchain-based digital identity system for its citizens this is an announcement they make they made recently actually this year uh I think it was it was in November also and that means uh this is possible this is also being used in some parts of Africa by the way there are companies like non-profit companies like Red Cross uh and uh uh Southern U.N bodies that are exploring the use of blockchain-based digital identities to provide identity for refugees yeah so refugees like in Kenya we have a number of refugees that are moved from Somalia into Kenya so you realize they are in a certain Camp they do not have Kenya's national ID and they are in there in Kenya but they have identities from from Somali so sometimes it becomes difficult for such people to be included in a financial system that's why we have a high uh uh a lot rather low Financial inclusion yeah in a number of uh developing countries because so many people do not have a an identity they don't have a way for them to identify themselves if we can be able to digitize this yeah where um uh the government provide a reliable uh blockchain-based self-sovereign digital identity it becomes easy uh for other companies that rely on digital identity companies like Banks or fintech companies lending companies insurance companies they can all plug into this uh National digital identity system and be able to to um to onboard users faster uh relying on this National based kyc process so the list is endless I mean you can I can mention to you several use cases actually my first book in my first book that I wrote in 2018 I talked about blockchain use cases across 14 different Industries yeah and that covers the general use cases the book is right now under review and will probably be available back on Amazon um uh early in the year but really my point is they use cases of blockchain are just as many as the use cases of the internet yeah anywhere you can use the internet blockchain can be used there we will see a blockchain based decentralized uh social media platforms blockchain based uh um video sharing platforms blockchain-based metaverses a number of each problems can be solved uh with the blockchain technology that makes it have endless capabilities so quickly I'm going to really also handle um a few case studies because all these things that I've talked about I mean may just be theories they may just be things that are that will be talked about from year to year and and nothing is really being done on the ground yeah but I want to tell you that actually there are a number of companies already doing something yeah on the blockchain industry with real solutions yeah whether they have um they have blockchain based Solutions trying to solve different and problems across different Industries trust me I can give you endless a number of several use cases not just use cases case studies yeah and these are some of them are available online you can be able to explore them you can be able to learn them so let me just read this quote from Jack Ma all of you know Jackman who's the founder of Ali Alibaba and and uh so blockchain technology could change our world More Than People imagine yeah so interestingly I captured the last part of this statement where I said people imagine people imagine is I mean we can think of so many things that blockchain can solve so many problems that blockchain can solve but the question that people keep asking show us where it has solved that problem yeah so you need to show us where has it solved that problem other than just telling us that it has it can solve so many problems so that's what I'm going to capture in the next few minutes I'm going to start with one of my favorite use cases yeah uh which I think is applicable in Africa and even in developing countries in Africa we have so much landmarks here which means agriculture is our number one source of income yeah for most households so we have so many uh uh um uh smallholder Farmers Farmers that uh are just farming to have some income for their subsistence yeah um to have some food on the table yeah they're not intending to some of them are not intending to sell in large scale yeah but now we have also small other Farmers that are selling uh some of their produce yeah uh to to the to the National for instance if it is cereals in Kenya we have what we call National cereals board that buys cereals from Farmers it may it's uh maybe grains it buys this cereals from Farmers uh and and and and is able also to uh to to to to sell them to other Millers but there are also a number of um of uh what you call aggregators or other um uh companies in the in their business industry who who buy from Farmers food or Farm produce but many of them delay to pay these Farmers yeah so these are the company known as shamba records now Samba record is simply leveraging blockchain technology yeah to help farmers have some record have some data yeah and data is what Farmers need for them to be able to access one insurance and two and most importantly financing farmers can be able to scale their activities but they need financing how can they get financing when they do not have records they don't have records to show what was their last produce yeah how many metric tons did they produce or how many kgs of of grains did they produce in the last uh season yeah how many how much did they sell yeah uh how much of their potential produce did they lose to diseases in the farm yeah so such data is important for them to be able to have access to insurance and finances yeah um so this company uses uh leverages a number of uh AI tools or iot tools in the in the in the in the uh in the in the agricultural industry now these tools with these tools they're able to collect data on the soil they're able to collect data on the common diseases that that these crops face uh they're able to collect data on the farm produce uh for instance when you talk about if they if they come to your farm they can collect data based on they walk with you through the entire system and they guide you on how to collect data and how that data once collected can be able to help you yeah relate with insurance companies yeah and also relate with with the with the bank or a macro Finance institution because in Kenya we have certain microfinance institutions that are providing finances for Farmers yeah but if you do not have data it becomes difficult for you to access this yeah also an important element of this solution is the fact that this solution seeks to reduce middlemen in the value chain of these Farmers so that if you are selling a watermelon yeah if you're a farmer and you produce watermelon now for you to reach to get that watermelon to get to the main Market sometimes it has to pass through maybe three or four people so by the time it is getting to the market the price has more than triple because of the cost of transport and a lot of other everybody in the middle in the valuation wants to make profit but the problem is having this long value chain always makes the farmer the farmer is end up always losing and losing in this aspect one they reduce the value for their produce so the person who is buying from them buys at a very low low price yeah for it because this this guy wants to sell to other members in the chain before it gets to the main Market yeah then two many times the payment delays yeah so the farmer already delivered they produce to this person or not this company they're waiting for for payment and sometimes the payment delays so much and another season has already come so they're not able really to um and to um uh to to participate properly in that season because they're not able to buy the right seats they're not able to buy manure and all that so based on these records somebody records also provides uh data uh based on which crop you're producing they're able to provide the right data uh with regard to uh uh with regard to um uh um uh diseases or whatever with regard to seeds they got to fertilizers and all that now the fact that this entire process is decentralized yeah the fact that this entire process um is decentralized and the fact that it is digitized makes it possible to collect data in a way that is reliable using other technology disk you can do this with blockchain alone you have to rely also on uh technology like iot or AI to be able to create a narrative yeah that makes it possible for a farmer to have records a history of its transactions and I have added the link of some records that you can check their website and really learn more about what they're doing then another another solution which I won't spend so much time on is um uh Ben Kiko banking is a digital bank for the digital economy that's all what they they call themselves but truly interacting with Ben Kiko what Ben Kiko is trying to do is to provide a solution for micropayments for bloggers virtual assistants and online jobs yeah uh right now the digital economy is growing really fast you know and uh uh individuals uh working in Kenya based in Kenya can be working for clients in India or doing writing jobs and on some online jobs for clients in the UK or in in America yeah sometimes payments yeah using PayPal becomes difficult because some of these people are young people who do not even have identity national identity some of them are below in Kenya you get an ID uh when you reach age 18. now sometimes this guy is is 16 and he's doing is doing jobs online like people are creating content online he wants to be paid he wants to receive his payments how does he receive his payment when he can't open a bank account and they can't use mobile money because even mobile money requires you to provide a national identity for you to open m-pesa account yeah so thought of this and created a solution where they've actually tried to scale it to bring in a dial that makes it possible then to uh to integrate a number of other Solutions uh for uh content providers uh content creators that include nfts uh use of nsps and um and and uh and be able to receive uh Bitcoin payments yeah or cryptocurrency payments directly into your wallet and within that same wallet it becomes very easy for them to convert it into fiat currency and use it for anything they want to use that they want to do within the within the economy and I have added the website therefore for your convenience now another solution also in the same line now I told you most solutions or other most case studies that have shown great success in my view have been Solutions revolving around Financial Services yeah Financial inclusion yeah it has been the most hotly debated uh use case in blockchain because it affects so many people uh not just so many people but it affects the core of all economies Financial transactions so this has been very a very interesting use case for me the use of what you call Community inclusion currencies yeah I I don't know if I I mentioned this in in my last in my last uh presentation to you but I wanted to really emphasize this um Community inclusion currencies there is a solution in Kenya yeah that has been used by Red Cross and this this was implemented early uh During the covid-19 period uh during the covid-19 lockdown period there's uh sometime in 2020. now this solution is called sarafu now sarafu is what we call a community inclusion currency which means it is a currency that is created just to be used within a certain community for instance think of any Islam in India think of an Islam in or rather an informal settlement yeah in in India or in in Africa or in in um in any developing country Philippines or any developing country uh in particular sometimes it becomes difficult for non-profit organizations that want to support individuals in such settlements uh to actually send them that support and that support to Earth and have that support reach them without being intermediated by a middleman because sometimes you may send the money to Benjamin you send uh a hundred thousand or you send ten thousand um or let me say a thousand dollars to Benjamin uh ten thousand dollars to Benjamin and they're supposed to give a thousand dollars to each member of the community maybe they're about 10. now the problem is Benjamin may decide to reduce that number and they decide to give uh every member of the community only 500 and I can decide to pocket the other 500 this is a common thing that happens in across uh emerging economies and developing countries where you receive donor funds but this donor fund does not reach the the Henry's recipient the end recipient only gets a small percentage of what was meant for him so the use of sarafu in Kenya this is how it works you actually dial a ussd card yeah uh like in this case you dial *384 Star 96 hash yeah and then it takes you through a process of registration yeah now once you create an account there you can be able to anytime you can be able to dial that ussd or that's that shortcut when you dial that short code uh uh you are able to access a list of vendors within that platform that can be able to that are selling a number of basic needs for instance when you open that when you go to that short call it it provides you with a list of people who are selling for instance um people are feeling gas cooking gas or people are selling uh certain basic utilities like cooking oil people are selling on on retail and on a retail note people are selling um uh Maize flour uh or a number of basic names uh basso yeah a number of things that are needed uh basically for somebody to survive so these vendors on this list are vendors that accept sarafoo so if I if you're a member of that community and I send you a hundred sarafu which in this case one setup is equivalent one Kenyan Shilling if I send you 100 this is you can only spend it to buy those basic Goods you cannot go outside that platform to go and buy use it for another purpose yeah and you cannot send it to somebody yeah outside the list of vendors yeah so you cannot go I want to send this money to somebody else yeah other than those who are within the uh this platform so that makes it possible and actually Red Cross has implemented this in a place called mukuru in Nairobi Kenya yeah where they actually gave out yeah 60 million sarafo yeah that's about 60 million Kenyan shillings 600 000 US dollar yeah that has been traded since the launch of this this rifle yeah within that community and that has made it possible for Red Cross to directly deposit sarafo into the wallets of the beneficiaries and made it possible to donate directly to the people who need it without having to pass through Benjamin but I'm going to pass through you or through anybody else who is a centralized Community leader yeah but to help directly the household that needs it these are technology that was built by a company called a startup called Grassroots economics and they have actually implemented they have scaled this to multiple communities so different communities for different communities they have created different uh types of community inclusion currencies just about three more use cases and we're done um then another a very interesting use case for me which is also in the financial assistance sector is what we call a cotton eBay now cotanipei is uh um a payment solution that leverages blockchain to process payments through ussd card so a friend of mine a few years ago asked me a question now you're talking it you told me you're talking about blockchain being a major solution in financial inclusion but the problem is most people in Africa and in developing economies do not have smartphones how do they access internet for them to be able to access uh blockchain because you need internet to access blockchain how possible is that how can you be able to transact without being able to access uh the internet then that was a really tough question then because uh we hadn't seen a solution that would would really be able to make it possible for those who are using feature phones to also access blockchain based uh Solutions or currencies now Cortana relying on or rather building on uh on the cello blockchain they have built a solution which they call Cortana Bay now this solution makes it possible for anybody to interact with the blockchain yeah without having a smartphone so by dialing that ussd on a feature phone you can actually be able to interact with that blockchain yeah and be able to actually buy a cryptocurrency with that is in that blockchain yeah uh which is be able to trade or rather get uh or rather be paid within that platform with a stable coin which is a cryptocurrency and they actually use what you call the seller dollars the cusd yeah which is a stable coin on the sellable option yeah a stablecoin means that it is a cryptocurrency that does not lose value but uh in most cases except where this algorithmic algorithmic it is backed one to one to the dollar yeah so that uh the value is equivalent to one dollar yeah so one sale will be is equal is equivalent to one US dollar one seller USD so this solution is also being used and has experienced a strong backing by a number of non-profit institutions not just in Kenya but across a number of countries um across Africa this solution is being used in in refugee camps yeah to improve Financial inclusion to people who do not have the kyc documentation people do not have proper national identity for them to Access Financial Services this solution has been a handy and has helped to make it possible for a number of people to be able to access such Financial inclusion or financial services yeah so you are able to trade with this stable coin you're able to deposit and withdraw funds you can withdraw from your crypto account and into m-pesa and from m-pesa you can be able to withdraw to uh to to to any any any other a platform that includes a mobile Bank mobile banking platforms and the the important thing with this is that you can be able as well to make micro payments uh if you are trading within a certain Society you're able to make micro payments and this is a solution that I think is really scalable yeah and we are going to see a number of others like that then a little bit away from uh away from the Financial Solutions I also have uh I was intrigued by this solution of a true scholar now true scholar tries to help learning institutions to establish Tampa proof uh uh transparent verifiable immutable credentials yeah I don't know how what happens in India but in in Kenya uh and in most parts of Africa when you go to look for a job the employer normally finds it difficult to verify whether your certificate is actually authentic or not they actually rely on you to be a trustworthy to present the right certificate and in instances where they want to actually verify whether that certificate is authentic what do they do they actually call the institution that issued that certificate now imagine that process imagine you have a hundred applicants yeah uh and each of them you have to verify their certificates and each of them present to you maybe 10 certificates or just three certificates yeah or credentials how do you verify all these do you call all these institutions asking did Benjamin arunda graduate from your institution yeah how how how can that happen so blockchain makes it possible that at the point of issuing the certificates or the credentials you can be able to issue the credentials on a blockchain based platform which then makes it possible for an employer to Simply verify that credential by just uploading what uh what the the the applicant Express provided to them so that if I go to an employer and submit my my document they can simply just upload that document maybe they scan it uploading in a in a platform a blockchain platform for the belonging to the university and it scans and its scans and it's able to produce the details of that certificate yeah if that platform has the records of the certificate now the problem with centralized or centrally issued certificates and badges and credentials is that it becomes very easy very easy for anybody yeah to fake a certificate in Kenya there is a straight known as River Road so in River Road if you wanted to go there if you wanted to become a a PhD holder or if you want to become a master's degree holder you can just go to that street spend a few thousand a few hundreds of dollars and you can be able to graduate come out of there with some with a certificate yeah and that certificate there are people who sometimes even practice with those certificates without being known or without being caught and they practice with those certificates in different Industries their Engineers who are not Engineers doctors who are not doctors of course in many instances there are a lot of improvements as up and especially in professional bodies and and institutions that involve professional practice like law uh medicine engineering nowadays in Kenya there are professional bodies that then verify these certificates but for a number of courses that do not have professional bodies it becomes very difficult for the employer to even know who is an authentic and with not yeah so having such a platform and this isn't a platform that I've experienced before in the early days of my blockchain career I did a course with um uh and digital currency with the University of Nicosia just to introduce myself to this uh to blockchain and that was that was I think that was 2018. and at the end of that course they issued me with a certificate based on the blockchain yeah now that certificate if I provide it to to anybody it can just be able to upload it on that platform and it will give him the details of when I graduated uh or what I scored was my lecturer yeah a number of details that really makes it easy for you to verify my credential so this is a good solution and this can be useful for budgets job-based budgets yeah uh whether you are at work uh is the same solution that would be used for for digital identity like passports that can also be implemented there because at the core of it is what we call a harsh root yeah where um you ensure that for a university they have a a root a hash root which means that every certificate will be hashed will have a common hash each of them will have a common gene or rather common hash yeah uh and that common hash will become an identity for them to show that he graduated this year it wasn't as he graduated from a certain batch of students and therefore that credential can be verified then as I wind up uh another good use case is a central bank digital currencies now this is this is going to be one of the most disruptive use Case by the way because these are currencies that are now being issued by central banks being issued by governments yeah uh recently of course um uh I was stuck by one of your um media a media a media entity I think from India and it's just sharing an announcement that was made by is it the Reserve Bank of India or the Central Bank of India um and they're talking about uh their plan to issue rather the issues of a central bank Regional currency in October last year uh Nigeria issued the Central Bank digital currency and do you know why they issued theirs is because in Nigeria Nigeria has a population of about 200 million people and interestingly most of that population as at last year were not um included in their financial system yeah so they had low Financial inclusion yeah so and they did not have properly functional mobile uh mobile money technology or mobile money service so a number of people in that economy were started using and adopting cryptocurrencies yeah and the government saw the pace at which cryptocurrencies were being adopted in Nigeria the use of Bitcoin was growing so fast the use of ethereum and the likes yeah so much that the government felt like they were losing control of their the national payment infrastructure or the national payment system so what did the government say then if you can't beat them you need to join them so but of course the government and most governments really can't endorse Bitcoin but what they can endorse is what they have created by themselves so then they created a blockchain based uh digital currency which they built on the hyperledger blockchain yeah and right now as of uh last week as of this week actually a Nigerian government have reduced the limit of the amount of money that you can withdraw yeah uh in from the banks because they're trying to promote their digital currency they're trying to promote the use of their blockchain based in naira yeah a number of countries that have also implemented this or are implementing includes the U.S China Kenya Ghana and India Kenya is working on a central bank digital currency we are not sure whether it is what you call a retail Central Bank digital currency or also a digital digital um uh Central Bank digital currency now an Allison one is the one that is just used largely for cross-border transactions yeah uh which means it doesn't replace the Commercial Bank it doesn't really bypass the Commercial Banking issuance of of these uh currencies but a retail one is where ordinary citizens or ordinary companies in a in an economy can be able to open a bank account with a central bank as opposed to with um uh uh uh uh as opposed to with a commercial bank so that I can interact directly with the Central Bank have a bank account there receive be able to transact with it the digital currency now the thing with this is governments will have so much control in the financial system by the time this becomes adopted to a great extent government will have so much control imagine where a government can actually lock money in your wallet yeah uh when when you when you don't support them all when you are political inclination really doesn't um uh please them then the government because the government can actually directly control that wallet it becomes really dangerous those are some of the challenges so that some of the limitations that we think as a uh uh professions in the blockchain industry will become the limitations of Central Bank rich or currencies because inherently cbdcs are not entirely decentralized yeah they are they are issued by central banks but they are based on the blockchain so central banks are leveraging blockchain to issue uh their currencies based on the blockchain now and I I think this should be the last one is the binance pay solution yeah so binance pays a simple uh borderless and secure way to send and receive cryptocurrencies from a mobile device yeah uh this is an interesting solution yeah and not just the binance pay only but you look also at um you look also at um at uh what do you call it a Visa and MasterCard they also try they're also in partnership with other institutions providing cryptocurrency cards that make it possible for you to pay using cryptocurrency in a decentralized way yeah so that you just work with the with your card you don't need to really trade because these cards are able to communicate with an exchange and be able to convert the cryptocurrency into the currency that you want yeah so this is an interesting solution and maybe one last solution before I I think this is something I also discussed in the last time is um a case study in healthcare and I don't have it in this slide but it's a custody in healthcare um that uh probably you can explore and uh that is I think it's called medrec yeah um I did share with you last time about how health records yeah or Healthcare data is really vital to the growth of the healthcare industry how is pharmaceutical research done yeah how is medical research done how is uh how is patient data treated yeah uh do you ever get um do you ever give consent for a medical research company to use your data do you ever give consent for your hospital to share your data with somebody yeah but several several instances of record our data is shared by institutions that are doing research without our consent of course that data is shared although I know in uh with anonymity but still it is our data yeah and that data if it belongs to us then we should be asked how it should be processed and how it should be used and that's why we are seeing a lot of data laws cropping in including the uh I think it's called the gdpr the gdpr is the a general data uh uh uh protection or signal data Privacy Law largely used in the EU and in Kenya as well we've created or we've implemented a data law yeah so metric will make it possible for you to um they'll make it possible for uh these hospitals to be able to Aggregate and be able to manage patient data in a in a more efficient way yeah and I think there are a number of other solutions that are being worked on that I I didn't include in this in this presentation for consciousness of time but I would I would really present I mean I I would actually even be able to get and if you go ahead and resize you can be able to get different case studies across different Industries whether you talk about agriculture you get multiple uh case studies that are already being used yeah where blockchain is already being used as a solution in different fields in education in healthcare in finances in a number of other other areas and it is very simple yeah and now lastly um lastly is a hashing of documentation I I once guided a student from India during a hackathon uh I I I was a technical Mentor during that hackathon and they created a simple solution which hashed gave a harsh identity to any certificate or any document that you that you upload onto that system so that if you upload for instance a land titled it uh that's just that platform was giving a harsh identity to that Land Title that unique harsh identity that would then you can use uh to access that document later yeah so it becomes sort of a public registry yeah sort of um a public registry where you can be able to if you have that hash identity you can be able to access a lot of documents or be able to access the authentic documents that uh that uh belong to a certain um individual or belong to a certain process otherwise without thank you so much for listening I hope that uh it was helpful and I hope that uh I have added value to you okay which was the first cryptocurrency you invested in uh okay that is a personal question but of course uh the first cryptocurrency I ever invested in was uh Bitcoin in a small way than ethereum and a number of others came after yeah so those are cryptocurrencies that I I referred to as Blue Chip cryptocurrencies just because they have a lot of capitalization yeah uh there are no con conversion charges in blockchain no that really depends with which platform you're using yeah so that is based on if you build a hub an app you can make it free to convert as well as you can as well uh charge a a cost yeah uh a good example is the binance platform if you've ever used binance funding platform their P2P platform on the binance exchange um the conversion there uh that if you're transacting from the funding account to the spot if you're in a spot account they do not charge you any any any fee yeah but many platforms even on the p2-bit platforms actually charge yeah so that really depends on what the app has created or what the person has created you can charge a fee on that app as well as you can decide not to charge a fee um we all say crypto is decentralized the question becomes with best platforms like binance and others how do we still say crypto is decentralized with the best platforms like buyers and others how do we still say crypto is decentralized now one thing that you have to understand one is that not all cryptos are entirely decentralized yeah not all cryptos are entirely decentralized now the cryptocurrency that that uh that we that have shown the highest level of decentralization is Bitcoin yeah uh and and that is uh it's sort of blockchain 1.0 now um Bitcoin is built entirely in a decentralized way yeah and even it's uh it's proof of not it's proof of work mechanism or other is consensus protocol is entirely entirely centralized now if we look at ethereum ethereum being a being a layer to blockchain ethereum also is decentralized although because we we know of uh of its creator so many people have looked at multiple ways through which ethereum is actually not decentralized yeah but really if you look at ethereum ethereum is decentralized uh because it is if you look at the consensus protocol yeah is there an individual making the decision yeah uh is the creators or the the ethereum foundation are they the people making decisions on transactions no rather it is the validators yeah decentralized independent validators yeah they're the people making decisions as to the transactions within ethereum and ethereum during the match they moved now to what you call uh from proof of what now to proof of stake of course if you look at the number of weaknesses that they were talking about the ethereum platform they said that when we moved to proof of stake that there were a certain click of people that had a lot of