ixo.world, a Swiss not for profit foundation has launched a digital system that aims to impact the world of development funding and ensure that intentions are met.
Dr Shaun Conway, ixo.world founder and president, comments: “We all want to create a more sustainable, prosperous and fair world. The time is now, as we are on the threshold of the greatest economic opportunity and potential for profound positive social change in our lifetime.”
By launching projects on the ixo.world website or app, development project owners can help to accelerate the progress to achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets while funders can see the exact benefit of their funds. This transparency enables any project to cost-effectively collect, verify and measure its impact, enabling funding to be linked to Proof of Impact.
ixo provides an audit trail that documents claims about service delivery and outcomes. Verified impact data is tokenised as digital assets called Impact Tokens, which represent proof of achievement of a project-defined impact metric, milestone or outcome.
“Software developers, development agencies and fintech innovators will be able to use ixo to build powerful new types of financing and data applications that have not previously been possible. Impact Blockchain startups and AI-for-good tech companies can build on the data processing, storage and sharing infrastructure that is provided by ixo, to fast-track their own applications into the marketplace,” says Conway.
The site went live on Friday and a number of pilot projects have been launched. Anyone can now become a project owner, service provider or evaluation agent by becoming a member of ixo.world. The blockchain project allows members to subscribe for tokens which can be used on the platform to fuel projects.
Privately funded, ixo aims to be the blockchain for impact and to help to solve the planet’s burning issues.
ixo.world’s first project in South Africa, Amply, was UNICEF’s first blockchain investment, and since November 2016 has tokenised more than 55 000 pre-school attendance records that are exchanged for government subsidies.
Ixo.world has been awarded technical partner with the first social impact bond in South Africa to fund home-based education services. It is working with UBS Optimus Foundation on tokenising an impact bond for girls education in India and is also working with Gold Standard Foundation and Nexleaf to originate carbon tokens from cookstove projects using IoT sensors.
Ixo.world also has developed a mobile identity SDK with Microsoft that enables anyone to create digital identities.