A few weekends ago, we were lucky to attend the Community Ethereum Development Conference in Toronto. One of the best parts about attending such a conference is the bevy of really exciting projects on display. Blockchain has developed an undeserved early reputation for being nothing more than a buzzword, so it’s great to see blockchain being used for some really important causes. Specifically, we saw the most potential in projects that delivered on overarching themes of decentralization, financial inclusion, and scalability – all in the name of making a significant social impact.
Meet our four favorite projects from EDCON 2018.
Toshi
Toshi aims to give the billions of unbanked and underbanked people in developing economies universal access to financial services. Their browser makes it easier to build and use Ethereum apps, while chatbots allows users to seamlessly send funds around the world. Many people in developing economies are mobile only, so Toshi’s mobile-friendly user interface is designed specifically with these people in mind.
OmiseGO
Decentralized exchanges are hot, particularly when centralized crypto exchanges are increasingly vulnerable to hacks and transparency issues. OmiseGO is rolling out a decentralized exchange to allow the trading of major currency pairs. This offering complements OMG’s payment gateway services that will benefit unbanked mobile users. OMG is also the first project to implement Plasma to scale with guidance from David Knott and other core Ethereum researchers.
Alice
Alice aims to bring transparency and trust to charity. Folks may know Alice for its conditional donation pilot in London where the charity helped people find shelter and mental health services. Donor funds are held in escrow, which would only be released if an independent validator verifies certain metrics have been met by the charity. Beyond donations, Alice is incentivizing nonprofits to build granular impact data streams that could attract larger funds and investors.
Maker
Maker is a cryptocurrency with price stability, which is sorely needed in this volatile market. The Maker platform stabilizes the DAI coin via two mechanisms. First, it uses incentive schemes to adjust the demand and supply side to balance out price movements. Second, to guarantee the price, for all stable coins outstanding, it can adjust the collateral amount. These types of projects will be a strong theme in 2018 as users want stability without trusting a third party (e.g. Tether).
That completes our coverage of EDCON 2018. If you’re interested in reading our full recap of the event, you can find it here. Otherwise, keep it tuned to our Twitter and Telegram channels for the best content, company news, event coverage, and tech deep-dives in the industry.
