The worlds 1st Smart Contract for UNICEF: opprotunities and challenges

Disruptive technologies like blockchains are a double-edged sword. They bring efficiency and independence from third-trusted parties but they are a danger to entire industries like auction houses and centralised, server based auction platforms.

Here is the story why i made the first Ethereum smart contract for UNICEF

I am the producer of the worlds first Ethereum funded movie: The-Pitts-Circus which is about a family with three children. And when I saw UNICEF adopting Ethereum i thought we have to support them right away.The world's first Ethereum funded movie The-Pitts-Family-Circus has a limited and numbered serigraphy poster edition made by a french artist. Poster number 1 is being auctioned with a Ethereum smart contract with the UNICEF Ethereum address as beneficiary. Poster number 2 is being auctioned on eBay. Poster number 3-50 are being sold with PayPal.

Here are the advantages of a poster auction with Ethereum

Transparency 1.Me you and everyone else can see what will be done with the Ether, where it goes what it is used for. Personally i think that is a good thing, particularly in charity organisations. A big up to UNICEF that they want to embrace this challenge, i am sure not every charity organisation is willing to avow to this level of transparency.

Transparency 2The auction process is transparent. I can see the verified contract, see what is happening under which conditions and I have a very big consensus system (the Ethereum blockchain) that ensures that the code is being respected.

EfficiencyAll the Ether bid on the auction goes to UNICEF. If I bid, I have full control over gas, over the auction process. There is no need for an company - infrastructure. Ethereum Virtual Machine EVM is the only structure needed.

Learning process 1Going through the auction process you as a consumer can learn a lot about smart contracts, how wo interact with them, what interfaces there are to interact with the blockchain and what are the thresholds on for mainstream consumers to interact with the blockchain. Check the tutorials on youtube

Learning process 2Institutions and company can look at this use case and learn from this arts-based process. Are there enough people involved in Ethereum to actually get an auction running or are most people interested in Ethereum only keen on trading them on centralised exchanges? Also we will report in our newsletter on how the auction worked out.

Here are the challenges that are all typical to disruptive innovation.

From monopolists to competitorsA entire sector (auction houses, auctioning platforms in this case) have now to compete with SmartContracts. There is a variety of ways to react to that. Regulators can either protect the monopolist or foster innovation technology and create new jobs. But whichever way regulators act, there is no stopping a running blockchain. Digitalisation is being accelerated with blockchains even more.

Digitalisation & Conesquences:There will be less jobs. But if I can have one child saved from starvation because i use a Ethereum based auction rather than classical auctioning operator I am much more than happy. And let’s think this through: if digitalisation is accelerated, more people in the developed world lose jobs: maybe they find time to think about the society, the structure of our system. And maybe the even find the energy to start changing our society. Because I grew up in Switzerland with a system where individuals have a lot of political power and stable legal certainty i believe in non-violent changes in society and I hope that we can create changes by commitment, dedication and individual contributions to the system we are living in. So maybe this time disruption does not lead to revolution but hopefully to evolution.