The Canadian government has announced that they have launched a trial that will explore that use of blockchain technology in funding transparency.
The National Research Council (NRC) will be using the Catena Blockchain product. This was built on the Ethereum blockchain. They will use the technology in order to publish information on the grants that they are receiving directly on the blockchain.
Moreover, when the grants are used and are allocated to particular projects then the information is logged and it is uploaded onto the Ethereum blockchain. Given that this is a public blockchain, Canadians can see where the funds are been spent.
In a blog post, the NRC explained the benefits of the blockchain and how they will be using it for their purposes.
These are early days yet, but the experiment is expected to provide constructive insight into the potential for blockchain technology and how it may be used for more open and transparent function of public programs
The technology that the NRC will be using has been built by an Ottawa based company called Bitaccess.
How it Will Work
When there is a grant that is handed out by the NRC, this information will be shared with Bitaccess. They will then take this data and will store it on the blockchain. This is an immutable and secure way to store the information.
This will also be posted online so that ordinary Canadians can browse those grants that have been uploaded to the blockchain. Once they have located a particular grant, they can use website such as Etherscan.io to see the exact specifics of that transaction.
For example, a there was a large grant in 2016 to Ryerson university of $11m. This was uploaded onto the blockchain by Catena blockchain. You can see the details of the transaction on the blockchain.
Positive Development for Ethereum
This will no doubt also be a positive development for the Ethereum community. It shows one of the first cases where blockchain and public services are used effectively.
It also shows the robustness of the Ethereum smart contract ecosystem and further illustrates the numerous use cases for the technology. This is something that Ethereum's founder, Vitalik Buterin has no doubt also taken note of.
He has previously described his interest in Ethereum technology being used by governments as it would add further weight to the importance of the technology for supposed crypto "enemies" in centralised parties.
It is also a great step for Canada as the country is becoming really friendly towards cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology in general.
For example, Quebec is becoming one of the best places for mining in Canada as Chinese miners are forced out of their home countries.
