There are places around the world in severe crisis, a sad truth which has caused citizens to flee in search of a fair chance at life, or life in general. When we think about immigrants, we often discuss their plight, dangerous journeys, separation from comfort and loved ones… but we often don’t discuss food, a basic human need. Regardless of your stance on immigration, we can all agree that, in order for a human life to be sustained, they must have food. And the innovators at the United Nation’s World Food Programme are meeting this need with blockchain technology.

A Goal to End Hunger with Technology

At the Zaatari Jordanian camp for Syrian Refugees, the people often don’t have identification, resources, access to banking, or assets to utilize. They’ve fled their home country, and many of them have left everything behind. This begs a simple question: how do they eat? Houman Haddad, recipient of a 2018 Excellence in Innovation award from ChainxChange, utilized iris scanning technology and blockchain ledgers to get resources to the right people, fast and in the simplest way possible. This program, aptly named Building Blocks, shows us a real-life application for the blockchain, and people need to see this, to understand what the potential applications are, for this technology to take a strong foothold in ordinary and extraordinary circumstances.

GoDaddy, Meet NASGO

NASGO is essentially the GoDaddy of Blockchain. Co-founder Eric Tippetts is thrilled that NASGO is offering infrastructure where you are fully in control, by way of cloud servers, app stores, third party payment gateway, and blockchain. Their goal is to bring global e-commerce into a new age, free from regulations and restrictions, and I imagine this is the tip of their iceberg.

Paragon Offers A Seed-to-Solutions Sale

What do an Iowa Beauty Queen and a Russian technocrat have in common? The answer is Paragon Coin, a new cryptocurrency, designed to facilitate cannabis-related transactions, on Paragon, their blockchain platform. Jessica VerSteeg and husband, Egor Lavrov, are revolutionizing the cannabis industry, with a suite of blockchain based solutions to provide stability, verification, and legitimacy, in a market where nothing seems to be on solid ground just yet. “Paragon Chain sits at the core of our seed-to-sale solution. Every stage of the seed-to-sale process is recorded by the responsible parties, be it a cultivator or a dispensary. The input data is stored with Paragon and launched as a smart contract – insuring immutability and easy access.”

Don’t Forget to Check Back

Because, who could limit their social good causes to just three, here are a few other use cases to put on your radar. The next 365-days is going to be radical.

• Borsetta by Pamela Norton: Their secure platform protects physical assets using blockchain and nanotechnology, making it easy to inventory, authenticate, and securitize physical assets with unique, tamper-proof signatures.
• Lottery.com by Tony DiMatteo: With a lucky URL and a heart for service, this is not your grandmother’s lottery. Allowing others to play on their phones and working with the states was more like phase one, whereas now, in what seems like phase 100, they are holding a global raffle with a billion dollar jackpot. They are also setting out to end hunger with these raffles, and I can’t wait to see where this goes in the future. Oh, did I mention their lottery is on the blockchain?