In 2025, the SDG Blockchain Accelerator delivered 46 pilot- and implementation-ready solutions, with 12 already entering real-world testing. Developed across two global cohorts, 70% of these solutions are embedded within ongoing national and regional programmes – positioning them to move beyond standalone experiments and into active use.
The SDG Blockchain Accelerator was created to connect innovators with development challenges and turn ideas into impact. While interest in blockchain has grown in recent years – from traceable transactions and auditable data to improvements in payments and service delivery – a persistent question has remained: how to design solutions that can operate within institutional, regulatory, and operational realities. To address this, the Accelerator brings together UNDP, technical partners, and innovators into a structured, multi-partner platform that supports solutions from concept to deployment.
Strategically led by the United Nations Development Programme’s Alternative Finance Lab (AltFinLab), in partnership with the Blockchain for Good Alliance (BGA), EMURGO Labs, FLock Technology Holdings, Stellar Development Foundation, and Sui Foundation, the global initiative helps scale blockchain and decentralized AI solutions to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
In many innovation efforts, the challenge is not generating ideas or prototypes, but ensuring that solutions can function within existing systems. The Accelerator links demand, solution development, and implementation planning into a single process, helping move ideas from exploration to practical application.
It is built around a demand-led model, where UNDP Country Offices define concrete development challenges grounded in ongoing programmes and national priorities. Across the portfolio, blockchain is being applied to address a consistent set of system-level issues – from inefficient financial flows and weak data integrity to fragmented supply chains and low-trust governance environments – where verification, transparency, and coordination are essential.
From there, UNDP AltFinLab matches challenge owners with solution makers and technical partners through a structured process – moving from problem definition to roadmap, and from roadmap to pilot readiness. Open calls and hackathons serve as mechanisms for aligning different actors around a shared problem, allowing ideas to be tested and refined before entering acceleration.
The programme operates through a multi-partner, track-based model that brings together multiple technical ecosystems while maintaining a coordinated and neutral approach. This allows challenges to be matched with the most suitable solutions and platforms. By working across multiple blockchain ecosystems, the Accelerator reduces dependency on any single technology stack and increases adaptability across different country contexts. Interoperability is also a defining feature of the portfolio, with nearly 90% of solutions either already supporting or planning cross-chain integration.
Crucially, teams are expected to define how solutions would function under real conditions, including governance, budgeting, and integration into existing processes. At the core of this process is the roadmap – a structured output that translates a development challenge into an implementable pathway, aligning stakeholders, technical design, governance, and financing considerations. This emphasis on operational readiness helps address a common point of friction in innovation efforts.
The portfolio of solutions that has emerged from this process also reveals where blockchain is beginning to demonstrate practical value.
Digital payments and financial inclusion account for the largest share of solutions, followed by climate finance and environmental integrity, and transparent and responsible production. Together, these clusters make up the majority of the portfolio, pointing to areas where systems rely on trust, coordination, and shared data across multiple actors – and where existing approaches often struggle with fragmentation and limited transparency.
The portfolio spans a diverse set of solutions – from payment systems designed to improve last-mile delivery, to carbon registries that strengthen climate market integrity, supply chain platforms that enable traceability across production networks, and digital identity and credentialing tools for verifiable impact tracking.
For example, in contexts where financial systems rely on cash, manual processes, or fragmented infrastructure – as in Haiti and Syria – blockchain-based payment solutions are being designed to deliver funds directly to individuals. This reduces delays, improves traceability, and increases transparency in how resources are distributed. In one pilot, a government disbursement process that currently requires waiting up to six months for loan guarantee payments is being automated, helping small businesses – particularly women-led enterprises that are disproportionately affected by such delays – receive funds faster and more reliably.
Many of these are designed as components that can be integrated into broader public systems, strengthening core functions rather than operating in isolation.
Beyond solution development, the Accelerator is strengthening institutional readiness to engage with emerging technologies. For 82% of participating UNDP Country Offices, this was their first direct experience with blockchain or similar technologies. By the end of the programme, the share reporting high or very high understanding increased from 21% to 60%, indicating a clear progression from initial exposure to practical capability.
This growing readiness is reflected in how solutions are developed and adopted. UNDP Country Offices act as “challenge owners,” grounding each solution in national priorities and convening stakeholders around it. This ensures alignment with government strategies, regulatory environments, and operational realities from the outset.
Public-sector engagement is therefore built into the process. Government and public-sector entities are involved in 73% of solutions, with more than half engaging policymakers or regulators directly. This creates clearer pathways toward adoption, with solutions shaped in close interaction with the institutions expected to use them.
The model also expands the ecosystem around these efforts. More than 120 external partners contributed across the portfolio, with solution makers being able to work directly with public institutions – a connection that is often difficult to establish in practice. This strengthens the link between innovation and implementation environments.
A selection of use cases and pilots developed through the Accelerator are featured in the newly released New Tech, New Partners publication, which brings together more than 40 blockchain applications across regions.
This report highlights the geographic spread and diversity of blockchain applications across development contexts. Across it, blockchain is increasingly used as a coordination and trust layer – supporting how data, payments, and decisions move across systems in more transparent and verifiable ways.
Together, these examples point to a growing body of practice around how blockchain can support digital public infrastructure and public-purpose systems in concrete, applied settings.
The main constraint is no longer whether these solutions work, but whether they can be sustained and scaled. Many are ready to move forward but lack the financing, partnerships, and operational support required to move beyond pilot stages. The challenge has shifted from designing viable solutions to ensuring they are taken up and maintained within public systems.
Building on these lessons, Cohort 3 of the Accelerator will aim to anchor each solution in an existing country programme or programmatic framework with at least one year of operational runway, and a clear implementation context. This shifts the centre of gravity from innovation showcase to institutional delivery: Country Offices and UN agency teams bring the development challenge and the programmatic home, Solution Makers bring production-ready technology, and the Accelerator provides the structure to connect the two. The opportunity now is to move from “proof that it works” to “proof that it scales”, embedding solutions within the programmes, partnerships, and budgets that already exist, so they can deliver tangible, sustained impact.
Stay tuned for our Cohort 3 open call!
The Accelerator is powered by catalytic funding from Cardano’s treasury via Project Catalyst, with support from other partners.
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