Blockchain and Sustainable Development Goals: From Blue Skies Estimates of Impact to Bottom-Up Essentials

This chapter takes a “Theory of Change” approach in examining the opportunities and challenges of blockchain in sustainable development and social impact. It addresses the manner in which both the discourse and the use cases of blockchain and initiatives related to sustainable development and social impact have evolved, from the discourse of the Pillar of the 4th Industrial Revolution and the effects of the silicon valley “style” ventures, the overestimation of “market opportunity”, the conflation and confounding of different of types of blockchain initiatives and offerings combined with key assumptions about readiness and capacity not only of the technological elements—as blockchain as a “ready service”—but also within the social impact and sustainable development landscape. It then examines key use cases and loops back to address the key needs and barriers for scaling up (As opposed to the issues surrounding technical transactional scaling issues related to the need for blockchain platforms to process hundreds of thousands of transactions per second as well as the increased need for miners, developers, businesses and other stakeholders) of blockchain solutions and impact in sustainable development.