Elastos: The Visionary Web3 Project Using Cryptocurrency to Create Social Impact

Elastos is working on a project in Indonesia where the solar power generated by a community is traded for carbon credits.

Harvard Innovation Labs will soon begin incubating the New Bretton Woods Project (NBW), a DeFi-powered initiative tackling the global debt crisis. The DeFi infrastructure will be powered by the Bitcoin Layer 2 Network (BeL2), an auxiliary blockchain creation of the Elastos foundation.

The New Bretton Woods program aims to create a BTC-backed stablecoin, ensuring its legality in all US states despite varying state laws. The tokenomics of the stablecoin will be available in a few weeks, according to Hargreaves.

In an interview with Varuni Trivedi, Coin Republic’s Editor-in-Chief, discussed Elastos’ vision, mission, RWAs, decentralization, and more with Jonathan Hargreaves, who leads the Business Development and ESG aspects of Elastos. Here are some key highlights:

The Wait for a Decentralized World

Describing himself as part of the ‘2% of the world’s population that finds joy in solving the complexity of web3,’ Jonathan Hargreaves is from the era that saw the change happen before their eyes. He was an advisor to the Web Science Trust, then overseen by Tim Berners Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web (at Europe’s Particle Physics Laboratory CERN).

According to Hargreaves, decentralization is a fundamentally radical change, and he emphasized its potential with several examples.

“Fundamental tech takes longer to implement. Fundamentally, changing the infrastructure takes time. When you do, it really changes everything. That’s the journey we are on,” said Hargreaves.

A tipping point will be reached when decentralized infrastructure becomes a clear alternative to existing infrastructure, which he estimates will happen in around 3 to 5 years. Over the next two years, Elastos will focus on materializing data ownership and decentralized finance solutions.

Elastos’ Vision and Mission

“It’s your money, it’s your bank, you’re the person in charge using these technologies with how you get rewards from the system. And that’s really the crux of it.” However, John added that that’s just Finance; their vision extends to commerce and much more.

There’s a credit crisis in developing countries such as Brazil. Hargreaves pointed out that in Brazil, farmers were paying interest rates as high as 90%. He added that street vendors in India could benefit from a peer-to-peer financial network.

“In this model, it’s really about how do you incentivize people using the basis of crypto to actually change behaviors or be educated so that they can get access to a better credit rate.”

According to Hargreaves, NBW is a project that envisions using cryptocurrency as an instrument to create social impact.

“The vision at the highest level is really about how we use cryptocurrencies in a positive way to actually impact global economies.”

Elastos is working on a project in Indonesia where the solar power generated by a community is traded for carbon credits. Hargreaves makes it clear that Elastos wants to create social impact and is sharply focused on the weakest communities.

The point was, he said, that the system of rewarding value in the form of crypto extends to other sectors, such as education, not just sustainability.

“How do you build a decentralized system in the community so that the solar energy can be taken from that community and put into a crypto token and actually then convert it into a carbon credit, which is then exchanged with those people. So those people who are building mines and airports exchange with the community… “

He noted that since Elastos is Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible, the benefits of crypto can be extended across verticals. Hargreaves stressed that decentralization must be looked at from the community perspective.

Regulations, Complexity, and FUD are Major Roadblocks

Regulations, the complicated user interface of web3 applications, and fear, uncertainty, & Doubt (FUD) are major roadblocks to adoption, notes Jonathan

While discussing major roadblocks to adopting decentralized systems, Hargreaves referred to the case of India. Demand for credit services in India is high. However, the regulatory environment in the country is ‘cautious.’ Regulators in countries like India have to protect citizens from being exploited or cheated while they gradually educate themselves about new technology.

However, a cautious regulatory approach shouldn’t curtail the inflow and growth of innovation, Hargreaves noted. He emphasized that a stubborn stance would prevent citizens from accessing the benefits of decentralization and crypto.

There are examples of these new radical technologies not being used well, ‘often actually in centralized models,’ he noted.

While regulations are necessary, so is empowerment. Hargreaves highlights a potential use case of web3 technology with an example of decentralized identity or DID in Nigeria. In Nigeria, Football scouts are on the lookout for children, offering opportunities in Sports in Europe. Parents can scan the decentralized identity and confirm if the scout is an officially registered one.

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