Africa is a curious region when it comes to cryptocurrency and blockchain. It would obviously benefit from more dedicated efforts across these industries, but one shouldn’t lose track of the ethical aspect either. Watr Foundation and Parity Technologies have devised a way to tackle that aspect through ethical commodities.
Rooting Ethical Commodities In Africa
When people hear the terms “blockchain” and “cryptocurrency”, they immediately make the connection to financial tools and trading. It is a straightforward mental connection, but there is a missing piece: ethical commodities. Like other regions, Africa produces and trades commodities designated as ethical or sustainable. It is a thriving industry and one that deserves more attention. Combining ethical commodities with blockchain technology is a very exciting frontier that is only now being explored.
Watr, through Watr Foundation, the ethical commodities specialist, and Parity Technologies are joining forces to tackle this new hurdle. Watr will provide the public blockchain protocol and decentralized app ecosystem for a new breed of ethical commodities without losing sight of financing and trade. Through this partnership, developers, teams, and digital ventures can explore this thriving market and explore retail and enterprise-grade use cases.
Parity Technologies Global Head of Ecosystem Growth & Business Development Omar Elassar adds:
“This collaboration will bring Water’s deep commodities’ expertise to the Polkadot ecosystem and kick-start a platform for Web3-enabled solutions that solve pressing industry issues. This is a big first step on the path towards greater adoption of Web3 within a massive industry that’s crucial to the global economy.”
The partnership between Parity Technologies and Watr will fuel the co-development of the Watr protocol and its various key applications. In addition, there will be joint research and development to provide the necessary functionality and infrastructure to service the $17 trillion commodities industry. Polkadot’s community and decentralized security will be leveraged as a parachain by Watr, with a DevNet ready for developers.
Lingering Inefficiencies Need To Go
It is no secret that ethical commodities have suffered from the same lingering inefficiencies all value chains had to deal with. Whether it is across agriculture, metals, minerals, or energy, there has been much-increased volatility, supply chain shortage, and inflation. The net result for the commodities market is a $1.5 trillion capital shortfall, most of which can be attributed to Environmental, Social, and Governance concerns by financiers and resource buyers.
Developing new tools for consumers and suppliers is of the utmost importance. Those tools will help establish responsible supply chains that prove economically viable under all conditions. In addition, this market is ripe for crossovers with decentralized finance and supply chain digitization, which will help establish new and improved business models.
Watr Foundation Council President Maryam Ayati states:
“The opportunity to create new classes of ethical commodities and traded supply chains is tremendous. We are thrilled to have the legendary team at Parity join us and our existing partners in enabling commodities’ transition to Web3 business models and liquidity while safeguarding the security and decentralized ethos of a public blockchain servicing both retail and regulated institutional users.”
The new applications developed by Watr’s partners will provide decentralized identity and KYC, provenance-tracing across a commodity’s ESG attributes, and tokenization – and exchangeability – of new ethical commodity supply chains, including carbon credits.
All of this is made possible through curated liquidity pools focused on ethical commodities, initially in Africa. As a result, global entrepreneurs have the power to innovate and build new applications and ventures to grow the Watr protocol and the ethical commodities industry.
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