Cardano & Blockchain: a view from Venezuela

Venezuela is going through a series of difficulties that reach all scopes of the nation, starting from the economy side. In this article we will deliver proposals which we believe may help dodge those difficulties and might help us get over them in the long run.

The national currency -the Bolivar- loses its value at such an accelerated pace that makes it barely useless for any transaction scheduled for more than 24 hours in the future.

Amid this reality, some venezuelans have recurred to the most accesible fiat alternative at the moment: United States Dollar. Undoubtly more stable than Bolivar, but presenting a new challenge: the lack of access to payment methods in foreign curriencies due to the economic sanctions imposed by US and EU.

Almost the only unrestricted way to access foreign currency is cash, which provides new challenges. Cash its more dangerous to carry. Besides, the lack of supply of low denomination dollar bills makes it impossible for businesses to give change, so they force consumers to spend round ammounts. That and other more complex challenges to analyze such as income, cost of life, and so on.

Recent opening to venezuelan bank accounts in foreign currency plus the initiative to link salaries in the public administration to Petro — the venezuelan state cryptocurrency, offer venezuelans options that might improve their living conditions and provide access to financial tools.

Cryptocurrencies are a tool to dodge some of these challenges, for instance:

• One can transfer money from person to person, and person to commerce.
• They are out of reach from sanctions and goverment regulations.
• Despite market high volatility, hold cryptocurrency might be much better than holding USD, and far much better than holding Bolivars.

Yet, the market leader projects — Bitcoin and Ethereum- have two main disadvantages at the moment of writing this article: network congestion and high transaction fees. This advantages have been workaround by several other blockchains, wether because of more scalable architecture or low transaction volume.

Cardano is a third generation blockchain, which has been developed under scientific standards. Highly scalable, relatively low fees, no minimun investment for staking, and with a mission of helping entire countries improve their technology.

With the help from educational campaigns and a proper legislation, Cardano and other cryptocurrencies might be commerce boosting platforms, benefiting consumers and business owners equally. Plus, the possibilities that blockchain technology provides are valuable from the educational and state/goverment view.

Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), the developer organization of Cardano, along with a team of scientists have made so far the biggest academic contributions than any other blockchain. You can read their 103 papers in their Research Library. Plus, Cardano is the only peer-reviewed blockchain.

IOHK has funded and colaborated with many blockchain labs, such as:

• University of Edinburgh (UK)
• Wyoming University (US)
• Zurich University (Germany)
• Genove University (Italy)
• Oxford University (UK)
• Full list: https://github.com/input-output-hk/essential-cardano/blob/main/essential-cardano-list.md#blockchain-labs-and-education-institutions

The open source feature of blockchain projects plus the contributions made by IOHK make of Cardano a perfect study case for the development and implementation of blockchain in Venezuela. We can then propose the possibility of a blockchain lab in the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research (IVIC), dedicating its labor to make contributions in order to strength Petro proyect -the venezuelan state funded crypto-, and help build foundations for other projects for the state and productive sectors of the economy.

Recently, Wyoming University announced that it’s going to invest $4 milion in cryptocurrency staking. The earnings will be destinated to cover internal costs. It is expected that some of that funding goes to Cardano nodes, given the fact that IOHK has made previous partnerships with the university, including a $500.000 donation for the creation of a blockchain lab.

This news is a wake up call for the use of PoS as funding activity for public educational institutions in Venezuela. We imagine UNETI or UNEFA investing in infraestructure improves or new labs funded with staking rewards and DeFi.

It’s a reality at the reach of political will for the propagation of the knowledge and mixed state-private startups funding.