#waterblockchain

Blockchain can open the water industry to more entrepreneurs by creating a new funding mechanism using tokens and smart contracts. Individuals can fund new water enterprises by purchasing tokens in a blockchain-secured marketplace, in exchange for a share of the profits. It’s similar to investing, but removes the middlemen in favor of an open exchange. And blockchain verifies transactions to guard against fraud and theft.

Think about how places like Flint and hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico could be served by an influx of independent water companies who don’t rely on individual, already strained citizens to operate or be profitable. And that’s just in the US. Across the world there are many water experts and entrepreneurs with the ability to help and just as many willing to be a part of that mission by investing in these projects.

Blockchain has the potential to change the way many industries operate by creating a decentralized platform for data sharing – be it financial or otherwise. This means more ways for individuals to securely invest in important causes. In the particular case of water, more avenues of funding mean that existing on-site projects can be supported and new entrepreneurs will be drawn to the clean water industry. Helping people can also be a successful business model and decentralization through a blockchain platform can help circumvent the bottlenecks and corruption within the infrastructure that got us here in the first place.

There is a growing need for the water sector to address global water scarcity and water quality challenges through new approaches. Water utilities face acute challenges at a local scale to meet the needs of growing urban populations. Costly centralised systems might not be the way forward and if (or when) the predicted trend towards decentralisation and digitalisation becomes a reality, then blockchain technology will be fundamental to this new digital water world.

Some fascinating projects are coming about, facilitated through blockchain, that aim to build decentralised, resource-based economy networks. Blockchain technology can help mediate payments between producer and consumer, as well as record exact exchanges of water resource assets and payments through new digital financial systems like cryptocurrencies. This technology has the potential to decentralise and democratise the use and management of resources and put communities at the centre of sustainable development. If this seems like a far way off, think back to the early 2000s – how many people had a mobile phone?

Cutting costs and speedy transactions

Even for our current centralised systems, blockchain can help to create more efficiencies and cut fees by providing a system through which transactions are quickly settled at a low cost. Santander found that implementing blockchain into bank transactions dramatically cuts costs while allowing for relatively immediate payments, reducing the delays and fees incurred by traditional banking systems. Utilities that automate their processes through blockchain and remove the intermediaries that distribute payments and process transactions would benefit from improving speed and efficiency of payments for customers as well as reduce their own operating costs and risks of errors. By providing a secure, immutable system, blockchain could help to streamline transactions for water utilities.

With so many unique issues to tackle, it’s important to begin small by working on problems that can be immediately solved. Once smaller successes are achieved, it becomes easier to work on larger, complex issues. In time, blockchain may help reshape social structures and paradigms to reflect more favorably on laborers around the world.

Blockchain, the technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum offers the possibility of improving upon the current efforts being made to solve the global water shortage. Centralized processes tend to be bogged down by transparency and security issues. Lack of trusted information flow showing how funds are being utilized disincentivizes donors from continuing to contribute to these worthy causes.

BANKEX has decided to apply blockchain technology to create a robust and comprehensive decentralized platform that restores transparency and ensures judicious use of charitable project funds. WaterCoin is a blockchain-based token that allows people from all over the world to donate money in support of clean water initiatives across the globe. WaterCoin is a utility token in the truest sense of the word meaning that it can only be used within the clean water initiative ecosystem.

During the pilot project, one WaterCoin costs only $0.02, the price of the drinking water from water pipes.

Blockchain could revolutionise the non-household water retail market, MOSL’s digital strategy committee chair Nick Rutherford has claimed.

The potential for blockchain technology in the non-domestic water market, which opened to competition in April last year, is huge, he told attendees at a meeting of the Utility Week-Wipro Innovation and Technology Council.

Blockchain could streamline processes such as new connections and customer switching and settlement – which are currently laborious and “admin-heavy”.

By cutting out certain parts of these processes, the use of blockchain – a digitised, decentralised, public ledger of all cryptocurrency transactions – could make them instantaneous, Rutherford suggested. Currently, the settlement process can take anywhere between 30 and 60 days.

He suggested the water market is ripe for the take-up of the technology, as it is “centralised and new”. “We’re heavily reliant on asset and meter read information, which is shared across multiple stakeholders across the industry.”

He added: “We’re a small market which is simple in comparison to the energy sector – there are only retailers and wholesalers in our marketplace.