Giving Compass' Take:

• The development sector needs to start thinking about how they can leverage blockchain to achieve their missions, even if they don't fully understand the technical aspects of the technology. 

• How can early adopters help spread the new technology to hesitant users? What potential pitfalls do organizations need to keep in mind as they begin to use blockchain technology?

• Find out how one entrepreneur is using blockchain for EdTech. 

As development professionals consider ways technology can help scale their impact, blockchain often comes up. But while it is widely discussed, it is poorly understood, said experts in a recent Devex webinar. The potential of the much-hyped technology is yet to be observed — but experts urge that now is the time for the global development community to understand how the technology works, the potential use cases, and if it could add value to their work.

Sheila Warren, head of blockchain and distributed ledger technology at the World Economic Forum, and Ric Shreves, senior advisor for technology for development at Mercy Corps, joined Devex for “A Practitioner’s Guide to Blockchain” on March 20.

While most people do not understand how email renders on their screen, they can still use their email, and similarly, as more applications are built upon the blockchain over time, the conversation will shift toward those applications rather than blockchain itself.

Blockchain is a “distributed ledger technology,” or in other words, a decentralized system of record keeping for a series of transactions. It’s often conflated with bitcoin, the digital currency, in which it plays a role, but it can bring trust to transactions of all kinds. The data that is stored can be seen and verified by all parties, in a system that is hard to hack, so participants can transact directly and securely with a trusted system that removes the need for third-party intermediaries.

Read the full article on blockchain for development by Catherine Cheney at Devex International Development