Category: Digital transformation and emerging tech

During the fifth session of the UN Blockchain Talks series, the discussion moved beyond whether blockchain can support digital identity. A more useful examination was what kind of identity system would give people greater control over their data without making implementation harder for governments and service providers.

Hosted under the UN Blockchain Community of Practice, led by UNDP AltFinLab in collaboration with the UN Innovation Network, Blockchain Talks #5: Digital Identity, Privacy and Impact brought Aya Miyaguchi, President of the Ethereum Foundation, Jigme Tenzing, Secretary of GovTech Bhutan, and Peter Frandsen, Founding Partner of Partisia and the Partisia Foundation.

Together, they explored Bhutan’s national digital identity journey, the role of Ethereum in that architecture, and why privacy-enhancing technologies need to be part of the conversation if digital identity systems are to work in practice.

Bhutan’s starting point was privacy

Bhutan’s case stood out because the discussion began with a policy choice, not a technical one. As Jigme Tenzing explained, Bhutan’s move toward a decentralized, self-sovereign identity model was shaped by a concern many governments now face as they digitize services: efficiency can move faster than privacy protections when those protections are treated as secondary.

“In our hurry, we were kind of forgetting about privacy,” he said.

That concern pushed Bhutan away from the idea of a single centralized government database holding all citizen identity data. Instead, the country pursued a model in which verified information can be issued by the government, while remaining under the individual’s control.

In one of the clearest lines of the session, Tenzing described the shift this way: “The government functions more like a notary.” In other words, the role of government changes from holding and managing data to validating credentials that citizens can then use with explicit consent. That distinction gave the discussion real weight. 

Why Ethereum fit Bhutan’s model

Aya Miyaguchi placed Bhutan’s approach within a broader set of design values that the Ethereum ecosystem seeks to protect: decentralization, open-source development, privacy, security, and resilience.

Bhutan’s digital identity system was not presented as an imported product, but as national infrastructure developed with external support and strong local ownership. “We are a supporter, not a builder,” Aya said, describing the Ethereum Foundation’s role in Bhutan’s process.

She also noted that Bhutan has become the first country to anchor national digital identity on Ethereum at national scale, with the current system supporting more than 30 government services.

Privacy cannot be solved by blockchain alone

If Bhutan’s case showed why decentralization and user control matter, Partisia’s contribution in the session clarified why privacy still needs additional tools. Peter Frandsen focused on Multi-Party Computation (MPC) and the role it can play alongside blockchain in identity systems.

“Everything on the blockchain is public, and everything in MPC is private.” 

That line by Frandsen helped cut through a common confusion in digital identity discussions. Blockchain can provide integrity, immutability, and a shared trust layer. But when systems need to verify something sensitive without exposing the underlying data, privacy-enhancing technologies become essential.

Frandsen illustrated this through concrete examples. In one case, a person can prove they are allowed to access a building or collect a parcel without disclosing unnecessary personal information. The system confirms the right to act, rather than forcing the user to reveal more data than the transaction actually requires.

What this session clarified

Blockchain Talks #5 made clear that digital identity decisions are also decisions about trust, data control, legal readiness, and public understanding. Bhutan’s case made that visible. Ethereum’s role clarified the infrastructure logic behind it. Partisia’s contribution showed why privacy needs to be designed at the computational level, not simply promised at the policy level. 

The session also served as a useful reminder that the hardest part of digital identity is rarely the interface. What matters most are the governance choices and technical architecture underneath.

Missed our talk? Watch the recording here.  

You can also explore previous Blockchain Talks sessions in our YouTube Playlist.

Get involved

The UN Blockchain Community of Practice (CoP) works best when colleagues bring real examples, practical questions

Join the UN Blockchain CoP

For more details or suggestions, contact:

Ben Thompson Coon, UN Blockchain CoP Lead

ben.thompsoncoon@undp.org

Blockchain work across the UN system has grown steadily, but not always in a coordinated manner. Some teams are piloting real solutions; others are still assessing whether the technology fits their operational reality. This creates momentum, but also fragmentation; lessons sit in separate corners, and colleagues often struggle to find the right use case, the right focal point, or the right evidence at the right time.

Between existing blockchain projects and use cases across the United Nations, the UN Blockchain Talks add the missing layer: a regular space to compare approaches and learn from cases that have faced real operating constraints. The series continues in 2026 with a monthly rhythm as topic-specific sessions designed to stay practical and collaborative. 

Timeline and topics of upcoming UN Blockchain Talks:

Each talk is followed by shared materials and a lightweight prompt for participants to share interests and propose ideas to move beyond the talks into peer support, working groups and practical collaboration.

The UN Blockchain Community of Practice

Blockchain projects across UN agencies and regions tend to face the same early hurdles, such as finding the right partners, navigating governance and risk issues, or demonstrating that the approach improves delivery in real operating conditions. And when teams work in isolation, lessons travel slowly, and the same design mistakes repeat.

That’s why the UN Blockchain Community of Practice (CoP), hosted under the UN Innovation Network (UNIN) and managed by UNDP’s Alternative Finance Lab (AltFinLab), brings this work into one shared space with a focus on practical knowledge sharing – a regular learning series, a live repository of initiatives, and pathways that keep the work moving beyond the Talks.

COs, UN Agencies working in isolation/silos, the CoP creates a shared space where colleagues can find real examples, learn from what has already been tested, and connect with the right people. Through the Core Group, the live repository, and the Blockchain Talks and other activities, the CoP reduces duplication, helps avoid common mistakes, and improves the quality of new initiatives.  

Journey and momentum

Since early 2025, the CoP has relaunched its learning cadence through the Blockchain Talks series, with the first set of sessions focusing on building a shared foundation while staying grounded in real implementation. Each talk was designed to be useful for both newcomers and practitioners, and featured expert speakers from across the UN system and external technical partners.

Those early sessions helped reset the community around a practical baseline: what kinds of problems blockchain has been used for inside the UN ecosystem, what enabling conditions matter (policy, partners, user adoption, and operational constraints), and what colleagues should ask before they commit time and resources to a pilot.

A living repository of UN blockchain initiatives

Aiming to build a reliable knowledge base of what has been tried, where, by whom, and for what purpose, a major workstream behind the CoP was building a live repository of UN blockchain initiatives that can serve as a working reference point. As part of this wider effort, 150+ blockchain-related initiatives were mapped across the UN ecosystem. 

In parallel, 80+ cases were validated directly with project focal points (to correct details, add context, and confirm status), building toward a repository that is usable as a working tool for programme teams, innovation units, procurement colleagues, and policy teams alike.

What becomes easier

The repository also helps the community see patterns. Over time, it becomes a live tool that makes it easier to spot clusters of work in areas where the UN is already active, such as payments and financial inclusion, supply chain traceability, digital identity, climate-related applications, and new governance or fundraising models.

Get involved

What makes this CoP work is the people who show up with real examples and honest questions. If you are attending a Talk, your input is what makes it valuable. Registration links will be shared through the CoP space and mailing list.

Join the UN Blockchain CoP

For more details or suggestions, contact: Ben Thompson Coon, UN Blockchain CoP Lead

ben.thompsoncoon@undp.org

At the Western Balkans Digital Summit 2025 in Skopje, we asked six regional experts¹ from across the Western Balkans 6 (WB6) two questions: what works, and what is missing in digital skills in the region? Through lightning talks, an interactive “harvest” workshop and a collective vision-boarding exercise, we left with three essential insights. 

1. Institutionalization must replace projectism 

The Western Balkans do not lack good pilots. Non-formal programmes have achieved significant penetration, filling gaps that formal curricula have left open. Individual classroom interventions, like an IT professional spending a day with students or a short-term coding bootcamp, can inspire, but they rarely produce durable change. 

As Dalibor Todorović, a Computer Science Educator from Belgrade, put it: “AI entered all spheres of our lives, so AI entered also in classrooms uninvited and found the teachers completely unprepared for using it.” The technology is already there. The systems to support it are not. 

The critical question is no longer “how do we launch more programmes?” It is “how do we structurally move from pilots to systemic change?” The answer lies in formal anchoring: embedding digital skills into national curricula, teacher-training pathways and vocational structures so that gains survive political cycles and funding windows. 

2. Credentialing and portability unlock motivation and mobility 

Training supply alone is insufficient. Without trusted, portable proof that a learner possesses specific skills, learner motivation stalls, employer hiring decisions rely on guesswork and cross-border mobility remains a promise. The region’s investment in digital training risks diminishing returns if skills remain invisible to labour markets beyond the country where they were acquired. 

As Ilija Serafimov, CEO of the Serafimov Group, noted: “The private sector is hungry for digital literacy and digital skills and they are searching for them everywhere. So we must create and give those to them.” The demand is clear. What is missing is the infrastructure of recognition. 

A regionally recognized, portable credential, a WB6 digital skills passport, could fundamentally change this equation. Such a framework would make competencies visible and verifiable across all six labour markets, creating a common language between educators, employers and learners. Combined with the formalization of AI, cybersecurity and digital curricula at the national level, credentialing becomes a lever for both individual mobility and regional workforce integration. 

3. Teachers, real workplaces and project-based learning 

Sustained workforce relevance emerges from aligning three elements that are too often treated in isolation: 

  1. Teacher capacity: Educators must be reskilled so they can demonstrate and guide technology in the classroom as a continuous professional practice. 
  1. Workplace-based learning: Employers must open workplaces for practical learning and internships, creating the bridge between classroom knowledge and labour market demands. 
  1. Project- and challenge-led curricula: Learning must be structured around real problems so that graduates leave with applicable experience ready for the regional context. 

Milan Simic, Director of Petlja Foundation, captured this well: “We should as IT experts actually get into classrooms and connect education with real-life problems and motivate both teachers and kids that this makes sense.” The synergies between government, private sector and education institutions are essential to making this triad function. Equally critical is that lifelong learning for adults and educators is treated as a permanent priority. Digital and AI literacy should be embedded through trained professionals and anchored in real work. 

Meanwhile, signs of momentum start to emerge. As Lejla Ibranovic-Mulahasanovic, Portfolio Manager at UNDP Bosnia and Herzegovina, observed: “Youth is really stepping forward and is willing and eager to embrace those digital and new technologies, and as a consequence we see a rise of tech startups in the region, which is a really important development.” 

The collective vision 

We closed the session with a collective vision-boarding exercise. Across countries and sectors, independently and on post-its, participants converged on the same structural priorities: teacher reskilling at scale, regional EdTech innovation labs, stronger Centres of Vocational Excellence, project-based learning co-created with industry, portable regional credentialing, and inclusion initiatives focused on rural, low-income and marginalized groups. 

At the Innovation and Digital team at UNDP Europe and Central Asia, we will carry this collective vision forward together with the broader regional community by raising awareness, translating shared priorities into action through our digital skills work in the region. We invite governments, universities, private-sector leaders and funders to join us. Together, we can develop solutions that address the core tensions surfaced at the workshop. By working together and designing with local ownership, the region can build a future-ready workforce that is inclusive, mobile and prepared for an AI-enabled economy. 

¹ Nikica Mojsoska-Blazevski (Macedonia2025), Stefan Thomas (European Training Foundation), Milan Simić (Petlja Foundation), Dalibor Todorović (Computer Science Educator), Lejla Ibranović-Mulahasanović (UNDP Bosnia and Herzegovina), Ilija Serafimov (Serafimov Group). 

There’s a question that doesn’t get asked enough in digital finance: what does “working” actually mean when you’re operating at the last mile?

Digital payments solve obvious problems on paper: instant settlement, lower fees, and transparency. But the last mile doesn’t operate on paper. It operates with patchy connectivity, cash-based economies where trust is built face-to-face over years, and the weight of someone’s entire month’s survival sitting in a transaction that may or may not go through.

Across Haiti, Guatemala, and The Gambia, three teams from Cohort 2 of the SDG Blockchain Accelerator ran pilots testing whether blockchain-based digital payment flows could function under real operational constraints, not ideal conditions, in partnership with Stellar Development Foundation.  What they found was more specific and more useful than a simple yes or no.

What were we actually testing?

For many households and microbusinesses, remittances and small transfers mean survival. Payment friction compounds at every step: transfer fees, currency exchange losses, physical distance to payout locations, and the opportunity cost of a day spent traveling to collect money. When people are forced to cash out immediately because holding digital value feels precarious, there’s no room for saving, building credit, or investing in community. When programmes can’t see where money actually goes, accountability becomes a reporting exercise rather than a feedback loop.

The question these pilots tested wasn’t whether blockchain can handle payments. It was narrower and more practical: can digital rails reduce friction while widening access to financial services in contexts where traditional banking infrastructure doesn’t reach, or doesn’t bother to reach, because the volumes don’t justify the cost? 

This is fundamentally a design question, not a technology question.

Each pilot ran an end-to-end flow with bulk payments initiated by partners, received in participating wallets, and used in real economic activities like merchant payments, community fund governance, and informal business recordkeeping. In Haiti and the Gambia, two pilots used the Stellar Disbursement Platform to send bulk payments directly to end user wallets. UNDP Guatemala Country Office collaborated with  Amero Exchange to test a community investment feature tied to remittances, with an interoperability roadmap outlined in their product plans.

Proof-of-concept success meant demonstrating three things: funds could be delivered digitally to the last mile, users could transact in ways that reflect daily realities rather than ideal conditions, and partners could view a trustworthy record of what happened. Three different contexts, each on a different platform, revealed a shared signal.

Haiti: When the contingency plan becomes the test

In Haiti, most day-to-day transactions still happen in cash. ‘The Prosperity Loop’ pilot asked whether digital payments could function reliably when infrastructure fails, not just whether they could work in principle.

The pilot enabled households, merchants, microfinance institutions, and nonprofits to receive transfers in digital wallets from Kura and Bousol, make local payments, and build a trusted transaction record. The model combined these wallets with point-of-sale infrastructure designed for low connectivity, and those design choices got tested faster than anyone planned.

With flights disrupted, the UNDP Haiti team and the solution makers from Kura and Bousol reached Cap-Haïtien by last-minute helicopter. The next day, the cellular network went down completely. A Starlink Mini carried as a contingency plan became the only source of connectivity. What was supposed to be a controlled pilot became a stress test of whether “designed for low connectivity” was more than a feature claim, and the pilot recorded a 100% transaction success rate with near-instant performance across both wallets under the conditions that actually exist.

What made this more than a technical achievement was what happened next. Maxime, a monitoring and evaluation specialist for a national malaria project, initiated a live bulk disbursement through the Stellar Disbursement Platform during the test, sending payments directly to recipients’ wallets.  He saw it work under constraint and is now exploring pathways for scale-up in Spring 2026. The signal here isn’t just that blockchain works, but that when you design for the constraints that exist rather than the infrastructure you wish existed, traditional program implementers start seeing how this fits into what they already do.

Guatemala: What gets designed out

In Guatemala, remittances from abroad are a key source of income that’s usually spent immediately, not because people don’t want to save or invest, but because the friction of doing anything else with that money is too high.

Blockchain-based digital payment tools can be laser-focused on specific populations with specific needs. The value isn’t in disrupting the entire financial system but in filling the gaps that the system can’t economically justify serving. When you design for simplicity, instant settlement, and visual clarity, you create pathways for populations that existing infrastructure excludes not by policy, but by design assumptions.

UNDP Guatemala partnered with Amero Exchange, whose platform was specifically created for Spanish speakers. Through the Stellar Development Foundation’s approach of matching solution makers to challenges presented by UNDP Country Offices, Amero’s remittance and community investment capabilities aligned with Guatemala’s particular context. This matching wasn’t accidental but reflected the reality that “the right tool” means linguistic fit, cultural context, and functional alignment, not just technical capability.

The pilot tested whether remittances could support longer-term community priorities without making people choose between immediate needs and collective investment. Families could direct a small percentage of each transfer to a community fund governed by community members back home, where members could propose and vote on local projects with all contributions and payouts recorded transparently.

During testing, both diaspora senders and receivers engaged quickly once they understood the model. But one interaction revealed something the team hadn’t explicitly designed for. A woman with a hearing and speaking disability was in the testing group. She’d used banking services before that required extensive verbal communication, follow-up visits to confirm transactions, and waiting periods with unclear resolution times. When she went through Amero‘s onboarding process, the visual interface was clear and the instant settlement meant no ambiguity about whether the money had arrived. She found sending money to loved ones more manageable, with less friction and more confidence.

This wasn’t a special accessibility feature but simply what happened when you designed for simplicity and clarity as defaults. Current banking solutions often overlook populations like women with dependencies in diaspora, people with disabilities, and people whose needs don’t generate sufficient volume to justify traditional banks’ infrastructure costs. Not because the need isn’t there, but because the business case isn’t there under existing models.

The broader value wasn’t just expanding what remittances could do but lowering barriers to participation in household and community-level financial decisions for people, particularly women and young people, who are often excluded from those conversations entirely.

The Gambia: Where flexibility actually lives

In The Gambia, “last mile” isn’t just about geography but about the gap between informal livelihoods and formal financial systems.

Women and youth entrepreneurs keep local markets moving, but many operate outside formal finance with no bank accounts, no collateral, and no credit histories. They track sales in notebooks and remain invisible to services that could help them grow, not because they’re not economically active, but because that activity doesn’t produce the data formal systems recognize.

The pilot, led by UNDP staff from the Istanbul Regional Hub working with FreedomPay Wallet, paired a mobile-first wallet with simple digital recordkeeping to help entrepreneurs build usable business profiles and access fair microfinance over time. FreedomPay Wallet leverages Moneygram Access to provide cash-in and out options directly from the app interface, available in over 180 countries worldwide. During testing, something unexpected happened.

A MoneyGram agent noticed unusual, sustained demand for cash-outs in his area. After investigating, he discovered people were using FreedomPay Wallet. Rather than requiring people to travel to his established location, he closed his shop for the day and traveled with the team to a remote community. This wasn’t customer service but a traditional financial services provider recognizing value in an emerging tool and adapting his operations to meet people where they were.

Here’s what matters about that moment. We talk about legacy financial systems as if they’re monolithic and inflexible, but at the last-mile level, individual agents often have more discretion than the systems they represent. The agent’s decision to collaborate with FreedomPay Wallet showed that traditional players are ready to engage with emerging technologies when they see tangible demand from communities they serve.

The constraint isn’t technical compatibility but whether decision-makers higher up the chain will create frameworks that let last-mile providers collaborate across traditional and emerging systems without jeopardizing compliance and AML requirements. The infrastructure for reaching unbanked populations already exists. What’s needed is agile policy that empowers the people already embedded in those communities to use the tools that work. In this case, established cash-based systems and new digital tools worked together, demonstrating how collaboration rather than replacement can expand access for people who need better options.

What matching actually means

These three pilots used different platforms for specific reasons. The Stellar Disbursement Platform, leveraged by implementing organizations in Haiti and The Gambia, offers enterprise-grade ease of use for bulk transactions and provides transaction-level traceability for accountability purposes while limiting access to beneficiary personal data.

Amero, purpose-built for Spanish-speaking users, brought linguistic and cultural fit to Guatemala’s remittance-focused model. Language isn’t just translation but how financial concepts map to lived experience, which makes this choice more significant than it might initially sound.

Through the Stellar Development Foundation’s process of matching solution makers to specific challenges presented by UNDP Country Offices, each platform was aligned with context beyond just technical requirements. The real alignment happened around the actual shape of the problem: Who needs to use this? What literacy can we assume? What connectivity can we rely on? What does trust look like here? What does failure cost?

When those questions get answered honestly, you end up with different tools for different contexts because the people and places demand it, not because the technology does.

Incremental, not disruptive

There’s a narrative about blockchain that needs to be challenged: that it’s disruptive technology. It’s not. It’s incremental technology, and this distinction matters for how we invest and scale.

The value of these pilots isn’t that they replaced existing financial systems but that they filled specific gaps those systems either can’t or won’t address. The woman in Guatemala didn’t stop using other financial services but gained access to one that worked better for her particular need. The MoneyGram agent in The Gambia didn’t abandon his business model but extended it by collaborating with a tool that served demand he was already seeing.

If blockchain is disruptive, the strategy is to build parallel infrastructure, wait for adoption tipping points, and replace incumbents. That’s expensive, slow, and in last-mile contexts it ignores the reality that existing infrastructure, however imperfect, is what people currently rely on. If blockchain is incremental, the strategy changes to identifying specific gaps in existing systems, building focused tools that integrate rather than replace, scaling gradually based on demonstrated demand, and allowing traditional and emerging systems to collaborate.

This requires different expectations: multiple innovation cycles, gradual volume increases, and patience for solutions to prove themselves in real conditions over time. It also requires something harder, which is a unified approach from blockchain partners in digital payments. Right now, not all wallet projects will succeed, and that’s fine because that’s how markets work. But the proliferation of incompatible solutions creates scattered efforts that make it harder for traditional implementers to understand what’s actually viable at scale.

What’s needed is clearer signaling around which use cases have demonstrated traction, what volumes are realistic in year one versus year three versus year five, and how solutions integrate with existing remittance channels, mobile money, and local finance partners. Matching supply to transaction demand matters, and that matching needs to happen incrementally with realistic volume expectations rather than with disruption narratives that promise transformation but deliver fragmentation.

What needs to happen

A successful pilot doesn’t mean the project is complete. The next phase is operational readiness, which involves aligning with financial institutions and program owners, ensuring compatibility with local cash and connectivity conditions, establishing user support and safeguarding, and clarifying how solutions adapt to regulation and market realities.

But operational readiness isn’t just technical. It’s strategic, and these three pilots demonstrated that digital payment rails can reduce friction and open pathways to financial inclusion in last-mile settings when designed around real constraints. The question now isn’t whether this works but whether the investment approach will support the incremental scaling that actually drives adoption.

That means funding multiple innovation cycles rather than expecting immediate scale. It means supporting gradual volume increases that allow solutions to prove viability. It means enabling traditional and emerging systems to collaborate without prohibitive compliance barriers. It means creating frameworks that empower last-mile providers to adopt tools flexibly. And it means measuring success not by disruption metrics but by specific gap-filling outcomes.

These pilots aren’t standalone experiments but build the evidence base for what deployment readiness looks like: tested workflows, defined partner roles, proven performance under constraint. The UNDP SDG Blockchain Accelerator exists to move solutions from proof of concept to real-world adoption, and insights from these pilots feed directly into that mission by turning individual country experiences into transferable patterns other teams can apply.

The infrastructure is emerging and the use cases are clarifying. What’s needed now is an investment strategy that matches the technology’s actual shape: incremental, context-specific, and designed to integrate rather than replace.

UNDP has released a new publication, “New Tech, New Partners: Transforming development in the digital era – A snapshot of UNDP’s blockchain practice,” offering a practical look at how blockchain technologies are being tested and applied across development contexts to strengthen public systems.

The publication addresses a growing knowledge gap regarding the responsible use of rapidly evolving digital technologies. Drawing on more than 40 real-world pilots implemented with governments and partners globally, it demonstrates how blockchain can support more transparent, inclusive, and trusted methods for managing payments, data, and shared rules.

Rather than focusing on technology in isolation, the publication examines how blockchain is being used as part of broader digital transformation efforts – complementing public institutions, policy frameworks, and existing infrastructure. The cases explore applications across several key areas, including:

The publication does not present a single model or blueprint. Instead, it captures an emerging practice, documenting lessons from early experimentation and pilot deployments. Each case highlights the specific development challenge being addressed, the scale of the pilot, the technology stack involved, and the partnerships that make these initiatives work in real-world conditions. Together, the cases illustrate how blockchain – when designed with safeguards and public purpose in mind – can help improve transparency, reduce fragmentation, and build trust in public systems, while also surfacing risks, trade-offs, and governance considerations.

Policymakers, development practitioners, and innovators will find this snapshot particularly useful for understanding where blockchain may add value to future-ready public systems, and where careful design, regulation, and institutional capacity remain essential.

Find the full publication on UNDP global website.

This publication was prepared by UNDP’s Alternative Finance Lab, part of the Innovation and Digital Team at UNDP Europe and Central Asia, with contributions from UNDP Country Offices, the Bureau of Policy and Programme Support, and the Istanbul Regional Hub. UNDP acknowledges the partners supporting the pilots featured in the publication, including Algorand Foundation, Blockchain for Good Alliance, EMURGO Labs, Cardano Foundation, Project Catalyst, FLock.io, Stellar Development Foundation, and Sui Foundation.

The UNDP Alternative Finance Lab (AltFinLab), in partnership with the Algorand Foundation, has launched the second global cohort of the Blockchain Academy, drawing unprecedented interest from across the UN system. Designed to strengthen practical understanding of responsible blockchain use for sustainable development, the call attracted strong engagement from colleagues across UNDP, UNCDF, and UNV (within UNDP), signalling growing interest in applied learning on emerging technologies. 

The second global cohort attracted 533 applications from 111 countries. Following the eligibility screening process, 497 participants were selected, including 416 colleagues from UNDP, 69 from UNCDF, and 12 from UNV (within UNDP), spanning diverse functions, regions, and levels of seniority. 

Learning profile of the cohort

The composition of the cohort underscores the Academy’s role as an entry point for learning as well as a space for deeper exploration. More than 80 percent of participants self-identified as newcomers or beginners in blockchain, while a smaller share reported intermediate or advanced familiarity. This mix reinforces the Academy’s design philosophy: meeting colleagues where they are, while building a shared baseline for responsible use. 

Participants’ stated interests point to concrete delivery challenges rather than abstract technology. The most common areas of interest include decentralized finance (DeFi), blockchain for donors, supply-chain traceability, decentralized digital identity, payments, and carbon credit markets, alongside growing curiosity around tokenization and NFTs for impact. Together, these priorities reflect where blockchain is increasingly intersecting with development practice – from financial flows and trust in aid delivery to climate-linked systems and accountability. 

The academy programme at a glance 

Building on the experiences of Cohort 1, the learning journey is structured and designed to adapt to the participants’ schedules. Running from January to May 2026, the Academy incorporates self-paced modules with live expert sessions, case studies, and workshops. Four core modules cover blockchain fundamentals, responsible use, governance, and sustainability, followed by optional deep dives into areas such as digital identity, digital payments, carbon markets, tokenization, and supply-chain traceability. Live sessions and office hours create a collaborative environment where participants can test assumptions, ask foundational questions, and receive practical guidance. 

Delivered in English and Spanish, the Academy is intentionally accessible to colleagues at different starting points – particularly those seeking to explore how blockchain might apply to real development challenges. Participants engage directly with practitioners and experts from a growing network of blockchain-for-good organizations, while peer exchange remains central to the learning experience. Beyond the formal programme, participants stay connected through the Academy forum, the UNIN Blockchain Community of Practice, and post-Academy pathways designed to support further exploration and implementation. 

A growing ecosystem of responsible practice 

The Blockchain Academy is designed to build practical, long-term capacity for engaging with emerging technologies such as blockchain across the UN system. Learning is anchored in real delivery contexts, with attention to governance, safeguards, and public-interest considerations. The Academy helps connect colleagues working across payments, identity, traceability, and climate-linked systems – supporting a shared understanding of what responsible experimentation requires and how early ideas can progress toward well-governed pilots and implementation. 

Follow UNDP AltFinLab on LinkedIn (and X/Twitter) for Academy highlights and more. 

Governments are under pressure to move on digital transformation and AI. But many don’t know where to start – and honestly neither do we much of the time. And that’s OK. Landscapes are shifting quickly, institutional capacities vary enormously, and the gap between a promising pilot and something that actually works at scale is wider than it looks.

Over the past year, the UNDP Istanbul Regional Hub worked with six Country Offices to try something a little different. Through the Digital Transformation Acceleration Facility (DTAF), each received USD 30,000 and technical support to run small, early-stage experiments testing digital ideas. These “Trojan Mice” experiments were low-cost tests designed to surface actual conditions before resources get locked into solutions that may not fit. 

Here’s what we found:

The experiments

Colleagues in Albania tested ways to build AI literacy inside municipalities. Through focus groups in three cities, the team discovered that officials were already using AI tools informally but often without fully understanding the related risk and safety issues. The team developed a simple curriculum mixing demonstrations with hands-on prompting, helping staff to move from tentative experimentation to more confident, deliberate use.

The team in Kazakhstan explored how to strengthen the country’s digital health system. They assessed two public health laboratories used for diagnostics and testing, looking at how day-to-day operations could be improved. Based on this, they developed business cases for IoT sensors and digital twins, which could help monitor equipment performance, environmental conditions and energy use in real time, making laboratories more reliable and easier to maintain. They also brought Ministry of Health officials to Copenhagen to see open-source logistics systems in action.

The Country Office in Montenegro partnered with the city of Podgorica to prototype three small tools: an AR feature for tourist sites, an AR visualization for spatial planning, and an AI-powered chatbot designed to help residents and visitors access basic city information and services. The technology was simple, but it sparked wider conversations inside the city about how emerging tools could support municipal services, with clear potential to be upgraded and expanded with additional functionalities over time.

The team in Serbia mapped the country’s fast-growing but loosely coordinated AI ecosystem. Working with local researchers, the team built an interactive map of actors, strategies, and projects, and drafted priorities for a National Language Technology Programme. The goal was to create a shared picture of the ecosystem that could support more coordinated policy decisions, clearer investment priorities, and future collaboration across government, academia and the private sector.

Colleagues in Uzbekistan designed a navigation mobile app to improve mobility for people with disabilities. Testing with users with disabilities revealed practical constraints: gaps in open-source maps, challenges developing in the local language, and the technical limits of what a pilot can achieve in a short amount of time.

The Türkiye Country Office convened a multi-stakeholder AI workshop during institutional restructuring, engaging key ministries, agencies, academia, and the private sector. The discussions sparked concrete interest in applying AI to government grant evaluations and informed the national AI strategy process. Building on this momentum, UNDP Türkiye supported targeted AI trainings for development agencies and municipalities, helping build trust, strengthen capacities, and set the foundation for follow-on pilots.

What these experiments revealed

Governments often approach digital transformation as a set of discrete tasks: an app, a dashboard, an AI pilot. But these requests frequently mask deeper challenges – coordination failures between institutions, missing data, and accountability gaps.

DTAF was designed to surface what’s actually going on before committing to large-scale solutions. In Albania, the AI literacy workshops revealed how uneven internal processes and skills were across municipalities. The Uzbekistan team’s navigation app exposed gaps in open-source mapping data. The colleagues in Kazakhstan discovered how fragmented the health data ecosystem was only after they began mapping it. In each case, the DTAF experiment worked more like a diagnostic, showing teams the structural challenges that any digital layer would ultimately rest upon.

The work is political, not just technical

Several teams had to adjust their projects not because the technology changed, but because the institutional ground shifted. Serbia reoriented its approach amid political changes. Türkiye slowed down when national AI structures were reorganized. Montenegro’s prototype depended heavily on one overstretched person inside the city administration.

Digital transformation ultimately deals with questions of authority, resource allocation, mandates, and legitimacy. Every decision about data flows, procurement, or system ownership reveals political sensitivities that the use of technology alone cannot resolve. Teams that made progress did so by building trust with shifting actors and staying anchored in the practical public value of their experiments.

Relationships moved work forward when structures couldn’t

Across countries, the biggest enabler was relationships. The progress with the Ministry of Health in Kazakhstan moved well because trust and collaboration were already established. Serbia’s ecosystem mapping came together because organizations voluntarily shared information. The AI workshop in Türkiye created enough cross-institutional trust that new ideas emerged organically. In Uzbekistan the team learned that their app could only sustain if a national body agreed to maintain it. 

What this changes

These projects were small by design. Their value was in creating clarity: helping teams see where data actually sits, which actors matter, where the real bottlenecks are, and which ideas are worth developing further.

That clarity is now shaping where Country Offices invest time, who they partner with, and how they frame digital work with governments. It’s also a reminder that digital transformation is a continuous process of testing, learning, and working with political realities – one that demands patience, relationship-building, and a willingness to let small experiments reveal what large plans sometimes obscure.

For teams starting similar work: don’t mistake the quick ask for the real question. An app, a dashboard, an AI pilot. These are entry points, not endpoints. Use them to get inside the system, to understand its dynamics, to find where energy and momentum already exist. That’s where the real work begins.

Photo by Conny Schneider on Unsplash

As the world moves closer to 2030, achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires not just new resources and tools, but new forms of collaboration. UNDP’s most recent Strategic Plan recognizes digital transformation as a key accelerator for progress, with up to 70 percent of SDG targets potentially advanced through technologies. Against this backdrop, blockchain technology is emerging as a potential enabler of greater transparency, accountability and trust in development systems.

Over the past months, UNDP has brought together key partners from across the blockchain ecosystem to explore how this technology can help deliver fairer, more inclusive and more sustainable outcomes, and to identify which development goals could be accelerated with blockchain-powered innovation. Through a series of dialogues – from high-level discussions to hands-on workshops,these efforts are helping to shape a shared vision for using blockchain to advance the public good.

Building common ground

In September 2025, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, UNDP convened the High-Level Strategic Dialogue on Blockchain for Development. It brought together more than 25 leaders from major blockchain organizations and foundations to discuss a simple but urgent question: How can blockchain’s strengths in transparency and traceability accelerate progress on the SDGs?

What emerged was a strong call for coordination and to move from experimentation and pilots to shared missions. The conversation marked the first step toward creating a UNDP Blockchain Advisory Group – a platform for ongoing exchange, shared standards, and joint innovation.

“It is important to build a common understanding of where blockchain can meaningfully contribute to sustainable development. Technology should save people and institutions, not the other way around, and responsible innovation depends on open dialogue and cooperation.” – Haoliang Xu, UNDP Associate Administrator

Turning principles into practice

In November at UN City in Copenhagen, UNDP’s Alternative Finance Lab (AltFinLab), a flagship programme pioneering new ways to fund sustainable development at the intersection of innovation, technology, and finance, hosted the first technical working meeting to refine the advisory group’s structure and identify key areas for collaboration. Participants worked across five thematic areas: public trust and digital governance, inclusive society and legal identity, financial inclusion and digital financial services, sustainability and traceable responsibility, and digital labor and future skills. 

Building on experience of implementing a Blockchain Accelerator with 50 different experiments, UNDP’s approach goes beyond standalone pilots. Early experiments showed how transparency can strengthen markets and improve livelihoods. The next step is applying these lessons at scale and systematically. This means supporting the development of interoperable, ethical digital public infrastructure rooted in local ownership. In practice, UNDP aims to “wire” innovation directly into institutions, policies, and delivery systems, ensuring blockchain is used responsibly and sustainably, not as an isolated add-on.

Several cross-cutting themes emerged: overcoming institutional risk aversion; mapping and building on existing pilots, protocols, and standards; and ensuring that new tools strengthen rather than replace current systems. Financial inclusion remains a central focus, with existing use cases such as blockchain-enabled cash transfers in crises or low-cost cross-border remittances showing promising results, while also revealing fragmentation and regulatory uncertainty. The groups will continue working to identify where blockchain can support broader systemic reforms aligned with UNDP’s strategic priorities.

To expand our capacity to work with digital assets, UNDP is also exploring a dedicated digital wallet through partner banks, enabling us to receive stable coins and digital assets. In parallel, we are assessing with partners how digital assets and blockchain could strengthen transparency and efficiency across selected UNDP financial processes.

Aligning innovation and investment

Also in November, the conversation expanded to a broader stage at the Cardano Summit in Berlin, where UNDP joined WFP and UNHCR for a panel on Harnessing Blockchain for Sustainable Development. The session highlighted how blockchain is already transforming humanitarian and development efforts, from aid delivery and financial inclusion to digital identity and new funding models. 

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has gained experience through initiatives such as cash-based intervention using stablecoins and Impact Staking for Refugees and associated ETP, the first regulated exchange-traded product that converts blockchain staking rewards into continuous funding for humanitarian relief. In addition, UNHCR with United Nations International Computing Centre have established a Digital Hub of Treasury Solutions where other UN agencies participate; while UNDP has been coordinating UN Blockchain Core Group and UN Innovation Network for blockchain technology. WFP has been using pioneering blockchain-based innovative financing for several years through Building Blocks, fundraising with cryptocurrencies and NFTs and staking digital assets.  

In UNDP, we would like to see this going further as we continue investing in local capabilities, identifying use cases across different areas of work, and exploring how digital assets can modernize our own operations, our goal is to use innovation and technology to transform systems. This will mean more focused collaboration across the UN, emerging tech ecosystems, and governments. We are designing integrity and new rails that allow remittances, climate funds, public budgets and private capital to reach thousands of community-level actions with clear rules and verifiable performance. At the Cardano Summit, we invited the blockchain community to engage more with international development partners and ensure technology is designed for context, built for human needs and embedded in transformative interventions. 

As the Cardano Foundation explores new funding mechanisms co-led by UN agencies that could channel part of Cardano’s community-governed treasury toward development and humanitarian impact, UNDP can contribute to such initiatives by connecting partners to development expertise and networks on the ground.

Such partnerships go beyond technology, reimagining both how innovation is financed, and how to scale pilots so that the benefits of technology can reach those most often left behind.

Building a framework for the future

Today, we are experimenting with new approaches, we are prototyping how payments and investment are taking place, building transaction systems from the first to the last miles; and quickly learning in the process. As blockchain moves from experimentation to real-world use, the challenge is now how it can work responsibly, inclusively, and at scale, focusing efforts where the impact will be highest.

UNDP sees its role as a bridge between blockchain innovators, governments, UN agencies, and communities – aligning new financing models with real development needs and ensuring that technology delivers measurable public value.

The UNDP Blockchain Advisory Group is being developed as a multi-stakeholder forum to help make this possible: ensuring that blockchain solutions are ethical, interoperable, and practical, and supporting their integration into public systems such as climate and nature finance, digital identity, transparent aid delivery and inclusive financial services. It will also promote shared learning and capacity-building, so that countries can harness blockchain for the public good.

Through the UNDP Blockchain Advisory Group, we also want to understand and manage risks from this emerging technology. Risks like interoperability issues, or how to keep accountability while working across different jurisdictions; legal/regulatory frameworks on blockchain, and on maintaining public interest and a technology agnostic viewpoint while working with the private sector.

For UNDP, this effort is about utilizing efficient tools and tactics amid a rapidly changing world to uphold our “leave no one behind” mandate – ensuring that innovation translates into more transparent, inclusive, and effective systems that deliver tangible benefits. 

Originally posted on UNDP.org.

Electronic waste, or e-waste, is one of the fastest-growing environmental and economic challenges of our time. According to the UN’s Global E-waste Monitor, more than 62 million tonnes of discarded devices were generated in 2022 alone, a figure expected to surge by a third, reaching 82 million tonnes by 2030. Less than a quarter of this valuable strategic resource is properly collected and recycled. As a result, only 1% of global demand for rare earth elements is met through e-waste recycling, while an estimated US$62 billion worth of recoverable resources simply go to waste each year. [Source: World Bank 2021]

Georgia faces similar pressures. The country generates from 900,000 to 1.1 million tonnes of waste annually. Its domestic material consumption (DMC) is close to the EU average, but the circularity rate remains just 1.48%, far below the EU’s 11.5%. Inadequate infrastructure, low public awareness, and limited investment in recycling technologies are key barriers holding back progress. [Source: Circularity Gap Report 2023]

Important reforms have laid the groundwork for change. The 2020 adoption of extended producer responsibility (EPR), the Waste Management Code, and commitments under the EU Association Agreement represent crucial steps towards a more circular economy. But e-waste management on the ground remains wholly insufficient. No official data exists on e-waste volumes or recycling rates, making it difficult to establish baselines and track progress. Municipalities lack formal collection systems, forcing residents to rely on unsafe, informal disposal methods that expose communities to toxic substances such as lead and mercury.

Meanwhile, weak enforcement of EPR means companies face little pressure to take responsibility for the products they put on the market. The result is a growing mountain of hazardous waste—one that communities are left to handle alone.

To understand why recycling policies weren’t translating into real action and how this gap was shaped by people’s attitudes and behaviours, UNDP, through our Accelerator Lab (AccLab), launched a behavioural experiment in the Zugdidi municipality. 

The findings were striking. As we studied how residents handled e-waste, institutional gaps and economic barriers became clear, and one unexpected solution emerged: harnessing technology to rebuild trust and create a transparent, community-driven e-waste system.

UNDP and Wasteless made e-waste recycling easier for Zugdidi residents, starting with new collection bins at the Zugdidi Central Library and other central spots.
UNDP and Wasteless made e-waste recycling easier for Zugdidi residents, starting with new collection bins at the Zugdidi Central Library and other central spots.Photo: UNDP/Atinati Radio

Understanding bins and behaviours

Our initial goal was simple: to test whether more collection bins and basic awareness could encourage safer e-waste disposal. Between June and October 2024, we reached out directly to the community, holding interviews and workshops with more than twenty stakeholders, including internally displaced persons (IDPs), women, youth, civil society representatives, electronics retailers, schools, academia, and local authorities. We listened to their experiences and mapped the factors shaping their decisions around e-waste. What emerged was a deeper challenge: not a lack of willingness to act, but a gap between intention and action.

People wanted to recycle but didn’t know where or how, and many doubted that collected waste would be handled properly. So, we reframed our question: how might we change behaviours and social norms, not just build infrastructure?

Together with the IDP Women’s Association ’Consent’, ‘Behaviour Science For Social Impact’ (BISC Partners), and the producer responsibility organisation Wasteless, we designed a set of behavioural experiments:

Over three weeks, 436 e-waste items – mostly small electronics such as phones, chargers, and batteries – were collected across eleven sites. The results were revealing:

Still, it was clear that behavioural nudges alone couldn’t fix an e-waste system, which continued to struggle with limited infrastructure, missing data, low public participation, and weak private sector engagement, hampered by minimal environmental commitment and few financial incentives. 

Sustainable change would require stronger incentives, more transparency, and a management model that communities could truly trust.

At a community workshop, expert Ketevan Gomelauri explains how everyday choices shape circularity
At a community workshop, expert Ketevan Gomelauri explains how everyday choices shape circularityPhoto: UNDP/Irakli Dzneladze

From behaviour to blockchain

That insight led us to our next big idea: could technology help build trust and offer incentives to make circular waste systems truly work at the local level?

In 2025, the Zugdidi experiment evolved into a blockchain-powered model through the SDG Blockchain Accelerator, UNDP’s global innovation platform that helps promising ideas grow through potential targeted funding, mentorship, and technical expertise. Zugdidi’s pilot was selected as one of the programme’s challenges, developed in partnership with Creative Operations (Kenya) and Wasteless (Georgia) to test how blockchain-powered tools can transform community-based e-waste management.

The concept is simple but powerful:

By combining behavioural insights with technology, we are testing a new model of community governance that can align incentives, build trust, and grow sustainably.

Looking ahead

From June to October 2025, we built a blockchain platform demo and tested it across the Zugdidi municipality, engaging a focus group of up to 15 individual users and partners from the Zugdidi Central Library and a local retail store. 

As this pilot initiative nears completion, we aim to take it to a new level – expand e-waste tokenisation, onboard more retailers, and test a digital cooperative model in Zugdidi. If successful – with residents using the platform, retailers engaged, and blockchain ensuring transparency and incentives – the system could be replicated across Georgia and beyond, offering the scalable, transparent, community-based solutions to one of today’s toughest environmental challenges.

When in doubt, innovate! Because the boldest ideas often begin as experiments. Sometimes, the reward is not just in the outcome, but also in the courage to try.

Background information

Established in 2019, UNDP’s Accelerator Labs serve as agile incubators for bold ideas that tackle some of the world’s toughest sustainable development challenges. Co-created with the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany and the Qatar Fund for Development, the network connects 90 Labs worldwide, a global community of innovators, “the fast and the curious,” working together to turn local insights into transformative change.

In Georgia, the Accelerator Lab drives innovation across green transition, climate action, circular economy, and community resilience. Through its experimental mindset and pioneering spirit, the Lab helps UNDP discover, test, and scale new solutions, bringing our work ever closer to the realities and opportunities of the 21st century.

Published originally on UNDP Georgia’s website.

Transform the future of the SDGs with hands-on blockchain skills

Are you ready to harness the power of blockchain to accelerate innovation and solve real-world challenges? If you’re part of UNDP, UNCDF, or UNV (within UNDP), this is your opportunity to be at the forefront of digital transformation in development. 

The Blockchain Academy, powered by UNDP’s Alternative Finance Lab (AltFinLab) in partnership with the Algorand Foundation, invites you to embark on a learning journey that demystifies blockchain and equips you with the skills to apply it for social impact. 

APPLICATIONS CLOSED

From advancing financial inclusion and climate action to strengthening transparency and accountability, the Academy explores how blockchain can transform the way we deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – creating more inclusive, trusted, and sustainable systems for all. 

Our programme

The Academy runs for approximately three to four months, combining hands-on learning, and a strong community network to help participants understand how to apply blockchain for sustainable development. It includes recorded lectures, interactive live discussions, case studies, and workshops. As part of Blockchain Academy, you will be invited to other events and opportunities in the blockchain space. 

Participants complete four mandatory modules followed by optional deep dives on specialized topics. To receive certification, participants must successfully finish all mandatory modules, assignments, and at least two optional modules.  

What we offer

Post-Academy opportunities

Top-performing projects from the Blockchain Academy can gain entry to the SDG Blockchain Accelerator – a programme designed to provide hands-on mentorship and access to partners and resources needed to move promising ideas toward real-world deployment. 

Participants also join the broader UN Blockchain Community of Practice, gaining access to ongoing learning opportunities, peer exchange, and collaboration across the UN system. 

Eligibility criteria:

No prior knowledge of blockchain is required – just curiosity and a desire to learn.

Meet our cohort

Since its launch in 2024, the Academy has trained 500+ participants from 134 countries across the UN system. Each cohort brings together diverse participants united by a mission: using technology to create a fairer, greener, and more inclusive world. 

How to apply:

To apply, please fill out the application form by Monday, December 22 (APPLICATIONS CLOSED). We will notify you of your acceptance by January 13, 2026. The Academy onboarding will take place in mid-January, with further details to be included in your acceptance email. 

To find out more about the Academy and the application process, watch the recordings from our recently held information sessions: 

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us via burcu.mavis@undp.org.

We are happy to explore further collaborations with other UN agencies and partners. For inquiries, please contact: burcu.mavis@undp.org or teodor.petricevic@undp.org.

UNDP’s Alternative Finance Lab (AltFinLab), in collaboration with the Algorand Foundation, is excited to open applications for the second global cohort of the Blockchain Academy – a flagship learning programme equipping UNDP, UNCDF, and UNV (within UNDP) personnel with the skills to understand, test, and responsibly deploy blockchain for sustainable development.

Running from January to April 2026, the Academy offers a structured, practice-driven curriculum combining self-paced modules, live expert sessions, case studies, and hands-on project work. Participants complete four mandatory modules covering blockchain fundamentals and real-world use cases, followed by optional “deep dive” modules on topics such as digital identity, carbon credits, tokenization, supply chain traceability, and more.

Applications close on Thursday, 18 December 2025. Successful applicants will be notified by mid-January 2026, with onboarding taking place at the end of January 2026.

To help potential applicants learn more, UNDP will host two open information sessions:

“Blockchain is no longer experimental – it is a practical tool transforming how we deliver impact,” said Burcu Mavis, Blockchain Academy Lead at UNDP AltFinLab. “With this second cohort, we continue building a community across the UN ready to explore innovative, responsible, and meaningful applications of blockchain to advance the SDGs.”

“When UNDP and the Algorand Foundation launched the Blockchain Academy last year, we saw a powerful opportunity to show how blockchain can solve real-world challenges UN staff face every day,” said Matt Keller, Director of Impact at the Algorand Foundation. “By teaching more efficient and transparent ways to deliver humanitarian payments, as just one example, we can demonstrate practical solutions to some of the development community’s toughest problems.”

Since its launch in 2024, the Academy has already trained 500+ participants from 134 countries, creating a global community exploring how blockchain can strengthen transparency, inclusion, climate action, financial innovation, and trusted public systems.

Personnel from UNDP, UNCDF, and UNV (within UNDP) are invited to apply – no prior technical background is required. Find out more about the academy and how to apply here.

The SDG Blockchain Accelerator has concluded its 2025 virtual global hackathon sprint with 37 winning teams selected to join Cohort 2. Over the next four months, these teams will pilot and scale blockchain-enabled solutions designed to tackle some of the world’s most complex sustainable development challenges.

The global initiative is led strategically by UNDP’s Alternative Finance Lab (AltFinLab) in partnership with the Blockchain for Good Alliance, EMURGO Labs, FLock.io, Stellar Development Foundation and Sui Foundation. The Accelerator is made possible through catalytic funding from the Cardano treasury, through Project Catalyst, alongside contributions from other partners.

A Two-Week Sprint to Co-Create Real-World Solutions

Held from 25 August to 8 September 2025, the SDG Blockchain Accelerator Hackathon brought together 50 matched teams of UN Challenge Owners and blockchain Solution Makers from around the world. The teams worked intensively over an 11-day virtual sprint to co-develop solution roadmaps to address real-world issues – ranging from climate finance and carbon markets to humanitarian aid delivery, public sector transparency, digital identity, and inclusive financial services.

Each team pitched their roadmap during a high-energy Demo Day, where solutions were evaluated against criteria such as impact potential, feasibility, scalability, and stakeholder integration.

Breakthrough Solutions Across Sectors

The diversity of solutions emerging from the hackathon demonstrates blockchain’s potential for impact. Following Demo Day, 37 teams were selected to advance to Cohort 2:


From Concept to Pilot: Cohort 2 Begins

During the Accelerator, which runs from September to December 2025, teams will receive:

  1. A dedicated program of expert guidance, hands-on technical support, and workshops to refine their prototypes and implementation plans.
  2. Opportunities to showcase their progress through UNDP and partner networks – helping attract stakeholders, investors, and additional partners crucial for scaling impact.
  3. Access to post-accelerator funding opportunities (pooled across partners) for the most successful pilots, ensuring teams can sustain and grow their solutions beyond the Accelerator.

By the end of Cohort 2, the selected teams are expected to have pilot-ready solutions tested and deployed in real-world settings. Many of these pilots will be hosted by UNDP country offices and local partners, helping to address identified development challenges while generating valuable evidence for wider application and replication across countries, sectors, and even different blockchain platforms.

Towards a New Model of Responsible Innovation

More broadly, the Accelerator marks a shift in how UNDP approaches development challenges – bridging grassroots expertise with frontier technology to deliver real humanitarian and sustainability impact.“The hackathon shows what’s possible when development practitioners and blockchain innovators work side by side,” said Hajdana Imrovic, UNDP AltFinLab Hackathon Lead. “Cohort 2 is where these ideas turn into real-world impact.”

By co-creating solutions with those closest to the problems, and applying blockchain where it truly adds value, the initiative is looking to redefine how systems are built to serve people and the planet .