DIDI

Financial inclusion and blockchain ecosystem developing in Argentinian slums. Digital identities, property certifying and social inclusion for the people that is living out of the regular system.

These are the main blockchain categories involved in the project: self-sovereign digital identity, land titles, digital wallet and training certificates. The US $ 2.57M project sponsored by the NGO Bitcoin Argentina (or DECODES), the IDB Innovation Laboratory (MIF), Accenture and RSK seeks to reduce barriers, which arise in conditions of poverty, for access to products and services that they are denied or disposed of at very high cost, due to the lack or nullity of documentary records. We want to prove that the implementation of a digital identity can help residents of Villa 31 or any neighbourhood to access cheaper credit, for example, demonstrating their transactions in a digital wallet we are developing, publicize their training with digitally signed certificates or the possession of their homes, even in the early stages of urbanization. All this, in Blockchain. To grant ownership of the data, guarantee security, privacy, veracity, immutability and the decentralization of the power of information. Here are the details of the project, if you are curious: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fxRkTLizUip7qZedVQ0SqMP7INM860JG

According to the most recent figures from the General Bureau of Statistics and Censuses of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires (GCBA), approximately 3,059,000 people live in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (CABA), and the poverty and indigence rates there are 16.2% and 3.7%, respectively. According to the National Population and Housing Census, 163,000 persons lived in vulnerable neighborhoods (villas de emergencia) in the CABA in 2010. Upon comparing these data with the findings of the 2014 study by the GCBA’s Habitat and Inclusion Department—which indicate that 275,000 people live in this type of vulnerable neighborhood, we see that in four years’ time the size of this population increased by 68.7%. Likewise, in 2016, the Argentine State, in conjunction with various organizations, conducted a study that counted 4,100 vulnerable neighborhoods in the country, with an estimated 1,340,272 residents, of which 38% are children or young people up to 20 years of age

DEMO: Done a deep requirement analysis, the app prototypes (cell phone screens and flows) in Invision and several tests in the field. Documentation is ready to start with the development but we need the funds to do do it. On March we planned to do the first pilot and by the end of June we would like to make the first roll out. After this, we plan to have 2 more experiences more in another 2 different informal neighbourhoods.

Blockchain is being used together with cryptographic algorithms in protocols defined in the Decentralized Identity Foundation. We will use those types of protocols. The identity information (credential) will be digitally signed by Issuers and sent encrypted to the identity owners. The blockchain will be used to publish the Issuers' identity with DIDs (Decentralied Identitfiers), credential definitions and revocation registry. The objectives couldn't be met without blockchain and open source technology as the system is open for everyone both to receive credentials and to issue them. An open Blockchain allows this and brings trust to the system without the need of any centralised party. This could have never been done in the past without blockchain technology.

Gerónimo Tutusaus (Project coordinator) Javier Cerra (Analysis and designing) Ivania Luyo (Community coordinator) Milton Berman (Technological coordinator)