On January 4, 2019, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced that its Innovation Fund had invested in six blockchain-based startups from emerging markets, marking one of the most significant endorsements of distributed ledger technology by an international humanitarian organization. Each of the six selected companies received $100,000 in funding, with a mandate to deliver open-source prototypes within 12 months. The initiative represented a growing recognition that blockchain technology could address real-world problems far beyond cryptocurrency speculation.
TL;DR
- UNICEF Innovation Fund invested $100,000 each in six blockchain startups from emerging markets
- Projects selected from a pool of 100 applications spanning 50 countries
- Focus areas include government transparency, healthcare, financial inclusion, and supply chain integrity
- All projects required to deliver open-source prototypes within 12 months
- Initiative came amid the brutal crypto winter, with ETH trading at approximately $154
The UNICEF Innovation Fund and Blockchain
The UNICEF Innovation Fund was established to specifically finance open-source, early-stage technology projects in emerging markets. By early 2019, the fund had already been supporting 20 technology startups across fields including machine learning, data science, virtual reality, and drone technology. The addition of six blockchain projects represented a deliberate expansion into distributed ledger technology.
Chris Fabian, Principal Adviser to UNICEF Innovation, offered a measured perspective on the initiative: “Blockchain technology is still at an early stage — and there is a great deal of experimentation, failure, and learning ahead of us as we see how, and where, we can use this technology to create a better world.” This pragmatism stood in stark contrast to the hype-driven narratives that had characterized much of the blockchain space during the 2017 bull market.
The Six Selected Projects
The six blockchain startups chosen by UNICEF spanned a diverse range of applications, all aimed at solving concrete problems in developing countries:
Atix Labs (Argentina): This Buenos Aires-based startup designed and developed solutions built on Bitcoin, Ethereum Classic, Cardano, and tokenization platforms. With UNICEF funding, Atix Labs set out to build a platform for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that would provide transparent traceability of fund usage and measure the impact of investments — a critical tool for ensuring accountability in development finance.
Onesmart (Mexico): A smart city platform focused on sustainable solutions for emerging urban areas. The project specifically addressed the misappropriation and corruption of government funds, a persistent challenge in many developing nations. The prototype aimed to ensure transparent distribution of government-issued social services, particularly those benefiting children.
Prescrypto (Mexico): Another Mexican startup whose flagship application focused on prescription tracking and healthcare transparency. By leveraging blockchain technology, Prescrypto sought to combat counterfeit medications and ensure that patients received authentic pharmaceutical products — a life-threatening problem in many parts of the world.
The remaining three projects similarly targeted critical infrastructure challenges in emerging markets, ranging from financial inclusion to supply chain verification. All six shared a common requirement: their solutions had to be open-source, ensuring that the technology could be freely adapted and deployed by other organizations working on similar challenges.
Blockchain for Good: A Counter-Narrative
The UNICEF announcement arrived at a moment when public perception of blockchain technology was at a low ebb. The crypto winter had wiped out hundreds of billions of dollars in market value, and the ICO boom had left a trail of failed projects and disappointed investors. Headlines about cryptocurrency were dominated by price crashes, exchange hacks, and regulatory crackdowns.
Against this backdrop, the UNICEF initiative served as a powerful reminder that the underlying technology had applications extending well beyond digital currency trading. The focus on transparency, accountability, and open-source development aligned with the original ethos of blockchain as a tool for decentralization and trust — values that had sometimes been overshadowed by speculative fervor.
The timing was also significant for the Ethereum ecosystem. On January 4, 2019, Ethereum was trading at approximately $154, down more than 90% from its all-time high. Yet the Ethereum network continued to be the primary platform for decentralized application development, and several of the UNICEF-funded projects were built on Ethereum-based infrastructure.
The Constantinople Backdrop
The UNICEF announcement came just days before Ethereum was scheduled to undergo its Constantinople upgrade, a major network enhancement set to activate at block 7,080,000, predicted for around January 16, 2019. The upgrade had already been delayed from its original target in late 2018 after consensus issues emerged during testing on the Ropsten testnet.
Constantinople was designed to make the Ethereum network more efficient and pave the way for larger changes ahead, including the eventual transition to proof-of-stake consensus. The upgrade included several Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) aimed at reducing gas costs for certain operations and improving smart contract functionality.
However, the Constantinople rollout would ultimately face further delays. On January 15, security researchers from ChainSecurity identified a vulnerability that could have allowed reentrancy attacks on certain smart contracts. The Ethereum core development team made the difficult decision to postpone the upgrade pending a fix — a responsible, if frustrating, choice that underscored the challenges of upgrading a live blockchain network.
Security Concerns Loom Large
The blockchain security landscape was further complicated by the Ethereum Classic 51% attack, which was detected by Coinbase on January 5, 2019 — just one day after the UNICEF announcement. The attack involved 15 deep chain reorganizations, 12 of which contained double-spend transactions totaling approximately 219,500 ETC, worth roughly $1.1 million at the time.
Coinbase immediately suspended all ETC transactions to protect customer funds. The incident served as a stark reminder that proof-of-work blockchains with relatively low hash rates remained vulnerable to majority attacks — a fundamental security concern that the cryptocurrency community was still grappling with.
The juxtaposition of these events was telling: while UNICEF was betting on blockchain’s potential to solve humanitarian challenges, the technology’s security foundations were being tested in real time. Both developments pointed to a common theme — blockchain was maturing, but the path to maturity was neither linear nor without setbacks.
Why This Matters
The UNICEF Innovation Fund’s investment in blockchain startups in early January 2019 was a watershed moment for the “blockchain for good” movement. It demonstrated that even during the depths of crypto winter, organizations with real-world mandates were finding genuine value in distributed ledger technology. The requirement for open-source development ensured that the benefits of these investments would extend beyond the individual projects, creating a knowledge base that other humanitarian organizations could build upon. Looking back, the initiative also foreshadowed the growing intersection of blockchain technology and institutional adoption — a trend that would accelerate dramatically in the years that followed. The security challenges exposed by the ETC 51% attack and the Constantinople delay, meanwhile, reinforced a crucial lesson: technological potential must always be matched with robust security practices.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.
UNICEF funding blockchain projects in emerging markets while everyone else was panicking during crypto winter. thats the kind of institutional conviction that actually matters
100 applications from 50 countries and they picked 6. curious what the selection criteria looked like beyond just the tech
The open source requirement is what makes this legit. too many blockchain projects in the aid sector are proprietary black boxes
Atix Labs building on Cardano AND Ethereum Classic in 2019 is a wild combo. wonder how that worked out