Alipay's first blockchain charity project is launched

Previously, Alipay's Love Donation Platform under Ant Financial announced the full introduction of blockchain technology and opened it to public welfare organizations. After review, the contracted organizations can publish public welfare projects based on blockchain by themselves. One Foundation and China Red Cross Foundation (hereinafter referred to as "Red Cross Foundation") were the first to submit applications. Among them, the first blockchain public welfare project of Red Cross Foundation, "Say Goodbye to Aplastic Anemia", has been successfully launched and realized real-time account disclosure.

As an "immutable digital ledger" technology, blockchain technology can help donors have more confidence in the use of donations. Its use can minimize human errors and provide great convenience for public welfare organizations to conduct data statistics and project execution tracking. At the same time, the disclosure of capital flows on third-party platforms can also help public welfare projects gain more public recognition.

In July this year, when Ant Financial and the China Social Relief Foundation tried out blockchain charity on a small scale, some commentators believed that this technology would help solve the pain point of financial transparency in charity.

It is reported that the "Say Goodbye to Aplastic Anemia" project of the China Red Cross Foundation is based on blockchain technology. Users can click "Love Transmission Record" on the page to view the flow of donations, and in the list items such as "Fundraising" and "Donation Record", the donation time and amount of all donors after privacy processing are clearly visible. After the fundraising is completed, the payment time and the time when each beneficiary receives the money will also be announced one by one.

After the fundraising is completed, the payment time and the time when each beneficiary receives the money will also be announced one by one.

Hu Ling, director of the crowdfunding project center of the China Red Cross Foundation, told China Economic Net:

“The reason why we chose to launch the blockchain charity project is that we hope to take advantage of the trend and dividends of the technological revolution to allow more people to have an intuitive experience of our project execution process and gain more understanding and trust.”

The online fundraising platform relies on convenience and traffic to quickly popularize public welfare. When citizens' awareness and funds for donations are no longer a problem, how to ensure that "the money is used to its full potential" has become the focus. Everyone wants to know when and to whom the money in their hands was donated. On traditional online fundraising platforms, it is difficult to track the flow of donations after they enter the foundation's account, while public welfare projects supported by blockchain technology have solved the problem of the "last mile" of publicizing donations.

Donating money, goods, and insurance, blockchain technology can solve all problems in the future

"Ant's blockchain technology is constantly improving and upgrading, and it already has the ability to be deployed on the cloud." Ant Financial senior architect Zhao Zunkui told reporters, "Ant is building an open 'trust chain'. As a cloud service with trust as its core, it can provide trusted databases, trusted fund transactions, trusted asset transactions, trusted link services, and can also provide trusted public welfare services."

Industry insiders believe that this means that Ant Financial's blockchain will gradually expand its accounting nodes to its partners. What does this mean? In addition to donations, more non-traditional public welfare projects with diverse forms, many participants, and complex processes will be expected to use blockchain technology to solve operational, financial, and information disclosure issues.

Zhao Zunkui gave the reporter an example, such as e-commerce platforms and logistics companies in international rescue projects, claims agencies in public welfare insurance projects, and even national audit agencies, etc., can all synchronize their "ledgers" to the cloud. The "ledger" information will take effect after being jointly confirmed by all participants. "If anyone secretly tampers with it, sorry, it will be considered invalid by default."

Blockchain technology is not a premature development

It is reported that the Alipay Charity Donation Platform is capable of accepting all public fundraising qualified charity organizations to self-publish blockchain projects, but charity organizations can still choose to "use or not" this technology independently.

"We hope to be the driving force for transparency in China's public welfare, rather than forcing things to happen. The charity donation platform on Alipay has been operating for many years. We have seen that the execution and financial capabilities of public welfare organizations are constantly improving. Maybe one day, this option can be removed," said Liu Qin, social responsibility director of Ant Financial.

Hu Ling told reporters that blockchain technology provides a solution for transparent public welfare operations, but the allocation of funds is not the end of a project. The tracking and feedback of the beneficiaries' situation after receiving help is not only an explanation to the donors, but also a way to continuously pay attention to the development of social issues. This process requires the participation of more social forces.