The ongoing technological and digital change that is altering businesses, economies, and
communities are known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The fusion of several technologies, including artificial intelligence, robotics, blockchain, the Internet of Things, and others, defines it. In order to address environmental issues, assure long-term sustainability, promote social responsibility, adhere to rules, and satisfy customer demand, the blockchain ecosystem must be sustainable. Blockchain technology can be combined with sustainability concepts to build a system that is more accountable and effective in the future.
Pratik Gauri, Co-founder and CEO of 5ire speaks with Express Computer about the future of cutting-edge technologies like blockchain, web3, and cryptocurrencies and explains how sustainability is their next step.
1. Can you tell us about the inspiration behind founding 5ire and how it has evolved since its inception?
The lack of sustainable practices in blockchain has been a significant area of concern for
stakeholders across the globe, and this has kept blockchain as technology from being widely
accepted and adopted. Like platforms and companies that enabled bad behavior that got us to the current ecological emergency, we must enable the communities/ companies and reward good behavior. I saw sustainable development as the next big thing, and one day my co-founder Prateek Dwivedi and I were having a conversation over a cup of tea at a tea shop near a hotel where both of us were staying, and the idea struck us. We have taken on a mission to impact a billion people across the globe, and the plan is still on track.
2. According to you, which industries are likely to adopt blockchain as a revolutionary technology in the next few years?
Blockchain is an ideal technology wherever there is a need for a trustless distributed system without a single point of failure. This is true for most functions from governmental to financial institutions, supply chain management, healthcare, and anything you can imagine.
We have been actively involved in partnering with governments and public institutions across three continents and formed partnerships across various verticals to prove their worth.
3. Kindly throw some light on the need for a sustainable blockchain ecosystem
The Fourth Industrial Revolution held the promise of increased productivity through the automation of manual tasks. It envisioned a world of unleashing human creativity and unlocking technological potential. While the jury is still out on whether it will meet its promise, what is alarmingly obvious is the disastrous impact it has had on climate change and sustainability. The Fourth Industrial Revolution’s for-profit paradigm has caused excessive depletion of natural resources, climate change, and biodiversity loss. The need for a paradigm change from for-profit to for-benefit is pertinent.
Sustainability is an integrative, holistic, and long-term approach that advocates a balance between economic, social, and ecological dimensions. Businesses of today cannot just look at profit maximisation as the only metric of success. Building relevant businesses needs an intrinsic connection between sustainability and profitability. Sustainability in the New Age tech can be driven through disruptive innovation buttressed by societal transformations toward a more sustainable and equitable world. Blockchain is one decisive way of doing this.
4. How has 5ire contributed to enhancing the green supply chain?
The key issues with making supply chains efficient and environmentally sustainable relate to resource rights, product origins, and behavioral incentives. Blockchain technology can successfully address them all: who owns the resource, where the product came from, and what incentives exist for providing the resource.
The possibility of supporting food safety is another significant step towards sustainability. 5ire is working to enhance the creation of a sustainable environmental supply chain: monitoring and reducing CO2 emissions along the supply chain, monitoring the exchange of dangerous waste, creating a system of incentives favoring recycling, improving circular economic practices, and monitoring the use of natural resources, especially in the agri-food industry.
5. How 5ire transforms sustainability reporting consumers and investors to make better- informed decisions?
On the other hand, in recent years, non-financial reports that are either voluntary or mandatory have proliferated. Not only has there been a quantitative upturn of information. It seems that this quantitative increase is being followed by a qualitative increase in the information demanded by various stakeholders. More than ever, various stakeholders have shown greater interest in evaluating firms’ contributions, beyond just their financial bottom line, to sustainable development. This hike in demand for sustainability and its impact on the environment has also begun influencing academia to consider the market value of a business, beyond its numbers in dollars and cents, as an accurate measure of shareholder welfare. What we need are the ESG scores that are designed to transparently and objectively measure a company’s relative ESG performance based on publicly-reported data in compliance with the underlying ESG data framework and are a transparent, data-driven assessment of companies’ relative ESG performance and capacity, integrating and accounting for industry materiality and company size biases.
Also, the ESG performance should be based on verifiable reported data in the public domain, including the most comparable company assessments and scoring processes. Included in practice must be the data that is refreshed on products more regularly, like every week, including the recalculation of the ESG Scores, unlike that of the overwhelming practices by corporations where ESG data is updated once a year in line with companies’ own ESG disclosure.
6. How 5ire is transforming the carbon markets?
According to Ecosystem Marketplace, the market for voluntary offsets came close to $300 million. It traded almost 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2018, the latest year for which data is available, estimates of the size of the global carbon compliance offset market range between $40 billion and $120 billion.
On its way toward its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, Norway is cleaning up the remaining carbon-heavy sectors of its economy right now with offsets. It’s paying countries like Brazil and South Africa under the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism to help industrial plants switch to cleaner fuels and destroy potent heat-trapping gases. In 2021, an international aviation offsetting scheme known as CORSIA will go into effect, generating $40 billion over 14 years and offsetting 2.6 billion metric tons of carbon. Carbon pricing is one of the most powerful tools for guiding economies toward low-emission paths within an integrated policy mix. Carbon price signals must be sustained, strengthened, and extended to a more significant portion of global emissions to maximise the benefits.
7. How the future looks like for the emerging technologies for Crypto, web3, and blockchain?
In recent years, there has been a growing movement towards promoting creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the country, which may encourage more people to pursue their passions and chart their own course. It is essential to continue this trend and provide a supportive environment for individuals who wish to take an untrodden path in their careers. India’s rapid adoption of new-age technologies, its growing startup ecosystem, and large-scale digitally skilled talent potential is cementing the country’s position in the global Web3 landscape.
8. Kindly tell us about the 5ire’s partnership with NITI Aayog for blockchain education for the masses and how it’s adding value to ecosystem.
I have made it a point for the unicorn I founded to develop, groom, and retain Indian Web3 talent and groom them. In the context of Web 3.0 learning, the use of decentralised applications (dApps) rewards users for participating in educational activities or completing tasks. These rewards can be in the form of cryptocurrency, tokens, or other digital assets that can be used for further education or traded on decentralised markets. In retrospect, we want children and youth to build the future and believe that education on Web 3 will be an enabler
9. How is blockchain helping in industries like finance and healthcare?
As far as financial services are concerned, identity management is a cornerstone of governmental services, but legacy data management tools fail to provide secure yet rapidly accessible and updateable identity. 5ire is the first blockchain network that comes equipped with local governance solutions from the provenance of private property and title records and recording private business transactions from business agreements, licenses, registration, and intellectual property registration, to personal
credentials like passports, visas, driver’s licenses, and birth records that are securely stored in blockchain systems.
It is not that the people around the world cannot be identified. Rather over 1.2 billion people lack access to officially sanctioned and verifiable identity documents, such as national identity cards, passports, licenses, etc. Most of these people are displaced due to conflict, famine, or other global problems, but the issue remains the same. They cannot utilise financial services, buy property, or travel and are economically dependent on charity or other forms of financial assistance.
Providing financial services to the bankless is one of our top priorities. The recent pandemic taught us a lot about healthcare and how having a trustless system to retain healthcare, especially immunisation records, is mandatory. Like land records and their provenance,
blockchain’s distributed ledger technology (DLT) is also ideal for tracking human vaccination records accurately.
Even in the US, Dr. Tom Frieden, former head of the Center for Disease Control, voiced serious reservations about the safety of the pandemic vaccination records and stated clear reasons why it is not safe. From maintaining accuracy by utilising a computerised immunisation information system, i.e., an online record of vaccinations received by people, the need to implement proper assurances and safeguards to ensure everyone’s personal data security and privacy, the availability of other forms of identity for instance where computer records are not accessible, data privacy for patients, where the system only verify vaccination records and avoid adding information about previous tests and results to prevent clustering data, and of course real-time accessibility.
10. Top focus areas and priorities for 2023-24
We’re going full steam ahead with launching our Mainnet, Token launch for 5ire, and focusing on massive adoption of our level 1 blockchain technology via 5ireChain. This, in turn, requires improving awareness of Web3 technologies, giving grants and finding suitable partners in our mission to make Sustainable blockchain a reality.