WaterChain ICO aims to fund clean drinking water projects
WaterChain seeks to accelerate development of water projects as the world faces a looming shortage.
It's a staggering statistic. 6000 children die each day from the effects of unclean drinking water. In the time it took you to read that sentence, a child died, lacking something most of us take for granted.
WaterChain is a new ICO that aims to convert the funds generated from the sale of a new coin into clean drinking water.
OriginClear, the creators of WaterChain, say the new token will allow cryptocurrency investors to stake tokens and facilitate the funding of water recycling projects. Participants in the ICO will have the chance to buy tokens and then reinvest in the water projects they believe in.
Following on from the recent announcement by UNICEF Australia, it's interesting to see humanitarian causes looking at cryptocurrency as a tool to support new initiatives.
The company saw the problems in the water industry first hand. While researching blockchain they found they could create something not just to improve their own business but to dramatically improve the scale at which we treat water globally.
Water supply is set to be a global issue according to OriginClear's CEO Riggs Eckleberry.
“By 2030, there will be much more demand for water than there is supply.”
He suggested demand could outstrip supply by as much as 30% with half of the world living in water stressed areas by then, noting the US only recycles about 1% of its water supply.
Eckleberry noted that it takes the water industry around 12-14 years to adopt new technologies. So, when he looked at how the industry could adopt blockchain to address the issues, he realised the industry's typical development and commercialisation cycles weren't going to cut it.
"We realised we could simply power our own, ideal systems using the power of crypto-funding," he said.
The aim was to start by using the ICO to fund one project in order to show how it could be used to accelerate the usual development cycles, which are constrained by a number of important regulations.
WaterChain is still in its early days but the humanitarian drivers behind the project make it an ICO worth keeping an eye on.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author holds XLM, BTC, ETH, EOS, NEO and XRP.
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Picture: WaterChain
