COIN

This application is the submission of a blockchain solution for social good, the result of a partnership between ScanTrust SA and Quorum Control GmbH. Our submission has the following characteristics:

1. It demonstrates the origin of raw materials and products
2. It supports fair trade and fair monetization of labor
3. It is expandable for direct contributions to worthy causes and farmers, paid for by brands or consumers

Main objective:

Our main objective is to improve lives of smallholder coffee farmers by empowering European consumers to learn about and validate the origin of their coffee and interact directly with the farmers via donations or other mechanisms. The impact generated via our solution occurs in three categories:

1. Transparency in the coffee industry is increased by providing consumers with information on coffee provenance and smallholder farmers to raise consumer awareness and establish transparency and fair practices as a standard
2. Tracking coffee provenance helps to justify price premiums consumers pay for sustainably and ethically sourced coffee, which helps to influence consumer behavior towards more consumption of fair trade and certified coffee
3. Consumers are empowered to directly interact with farmers via financial contributions or other mechanisms to directly improve farmer’s lives

Implementation:

Our solution uses unique and secure QR codes on coffee packaging to make information accessible to consumers with an intuitive mobile interface. The coffee provenance information displayed to consumers is securely and immutably stored in a blockchain.

Relevance to prize:

There are three main reasons why the solution is relevant to the prize:

1. The solution is an application using blockchain for social good by improving lives of smallholder farmers and making the coffee industry fairer and more transparent
2. Europe is the world’s largest coffee market and some of the world’s largest coffee roasters are European companies – our solution enables the European coffee industry to continue growing
3. Our solution is designed for large scale and mass adoption to reach as many European consumers as possible irrespective of gender, background, or financial situation