Kiba Gateaux on how blockchain can facilitate peace

[caption id=”attachment_24273” align=”alignnone” width=”600”] Kiba Gateaux (Photo: Brian Jamie)[/caption]

Kiba Gateaux is the founder of Blockchain for Peace, an initiative started by Peace Accelerators, a New York City non-profit using data and their technology network to “co-create a peaceful future for our planet as efficiently as possible.” The organization includes a community of more than 2,000 thought leaders, futurists, and creators that hosts technology, culture and social impact events.

Kiba shares his thoughts on the role blockchain can play in making the world a more “hospitable and prosperous place for everyone,” and how others can get involved.

How can blockchain facilitate peace?

In my opinion, peace is about working together and having everyone be in exactly the place they want to be in. (see my article about “What is Peace?”) Blockchain facilitates this because any blockchain can only exist by having a group of people working together to create a shared ideal outcome. You do not need to know who they are, their background, skills, capabilities, or any personal values. All a blockchain cares about is that all participants shares a common goal and are willing to put in effort to achieve it.

A lot of people see blockchain as a savior that will fix all of our problems. I don’t think it will solve anything, it is just a tool. The only way to change society is to change our people, not the technology that surrounds us. What blockchain, and other forms of distributed ledger technology such as Holochain or IOTA, do is help us facilitate the type of behavior that we would like to see in the world. What that behavior is depends on the person so we can just as easily use blockchain to entrench the current system (which is happening right now) as it can build a more peaceful one.

You’re hosting a Blockchain for Peace hackathon in New York City. What’s your objective with this?

Our events bring together creative technologists, impact investors, industry experts, and multimedia artists for a highly curated weekend of ideation, creation, and inspiration. This hackathon is about Law & Governance and will  be focused on local communities. Hackers will be making decentralized autonomous organizations, futarchies, participatory budgeting systems, and more over the course of three days. At the end they will present to judges and the most promising projects have the opportunity to be incubated and mentored further by Bushwick Blockchain Alliance, Peace Innovation Lab, or Future of Humanity. You can find more info on our blog post about the hackathon.

We use our events to recruit more people into the Blockchain for Peace initiative. Blockchain for Peace is a community resource center for social entrepreneurs, researchers, and impact investors to create a global open-source knowledge library. Our objective is to help the international peace community understand the global landscape, form business relationships, coordinate more effectively, and share critical information such as research reports, impact data, and best practices.

What are some ideas for using blockchain to hack peace?

Peace can and should be integrated into every aspect of life. Personally I don’t think blockchain should be, so finding the line where blockchain should stop is important. Master brainstorm doc

Some ideas:

• Tracking supply chain to verify product origins and track emissions data
• New forms of government that are evolutionary vs dogmatic, direct vs delegated, etc.
• Open currency trading in restricted markets e.g. Iran, Greece (inherent in cryptocurrencies)
• Social reputation systems that obviate the need for money by facilitating trust in peer-to-peer systems.

How can folks interested in blockchain and peace related efforts learn more or get involved?

Participate in our events, starting with the Blockchain for Peace hackathon, join our slack, contact Malik directly, follow Peace Accelerators on Facebook and Instagram or visit Peace Innovation Lab.