| Notes |
4. ALIGNING GLOBAL TECHNICAL PROTOCOLS – IXO
SNAPSHOT OF IXO’S APPLICATION
Established: 2014 (Open-source Foundation established 2017, Public Network launched December 2018 ) Operational footprint: International
Funding approach: Tokenised debt fund with share of network revenues
Primary frontier tech used: DLT, Decentralised web standards (Web 3.0), decentralised databases, IOT compatible, verification oracles, automated payments
Evidence of uses: 3 strategic partnerships being implemented, including for impact bonds Impact focus: Renewable energy, Reforestation, Citizen Engagement, Education

KEY CONSIDERATIONS:
Approximate timeline to scalability: 18 months (assuming positive funding and legislative factors eventuate)
Plan to address scale constraints: Decentralised Internet Standards (Web 3.0) and distributed network
Platforms the application is built on: Ethereum, Cosmos-Tendermint (custom blockchain)
Public/privately available: Public with membership sign-up
Use of or intention to ICO, name, amount and value of token: IXO fee tokens. No ICO.
Addressing token volatility: Not Applicable.
White Paper: https://ixo.foundation/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/ixo-Technical-White-Paper-w-Cover-Version-3.0-8- December-2017-1.pdf
Why DLT?
Dr Shaun Conway is a medical doctor, development professional and a technologist, who has worked on accountability and data-driven development initiatives - including as founder and director of IHP+Results, the monitoring and accountability mechanism for the International Health Partnership – his entire career. He saw the blockchain as a way to bring rigour and transparency into a field that was often obfuscated by noble ideals, but without the accountability the serious endeavour of international development requires.
ixo.world is a Web 3.0 18 network built by the open-source non-profit ixo Foundation, founded by Shaun. It is based on research and development into core technical protocols and internet standards for digital identification, data verification and impact quantification that he began in 2014.
ixo is a public blockchain network secured by delegated proof of stake, custom-built with Tendermint-cosmos for interoperability with the future vision of the ‘Internet of Blockchains’. For project implementers, ixo provides a highly configurable shared data infrastructure that is relatively easy to deploy and scale for most types and sizes of projects.
18 See Glossary of Key Terms
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For software developers, ixo provides protocols and a shared platform on which to build data-driven applications and services, such as smart impact bonds that are programmed to autonomously allocate capital to optimise sustainable development results with financial returns.
The ixo Foundation originated from a project called Amply, where in partnership with Innovation Edge (backed by Omidyar Network) and with funding from UNICEF Innovation, a mobile application and school attendance tracking data platform was built using ixo protocols to demonstrate how the paper-based attendance claims for a national pre-school early learning subsidy scheme from the South African government could be replaced using private and secure digital tracking, with automated claims submissions and processing. Amply was piloted in 87 Early Childhood Development centres with over 80,000 attendances registered. Although verification of these claims was still manually performed through supervisory visits to centres, the system demonstrated how duplicated claims could be eliminated and real-time attendance data could be used to improve service management by reducing costs associated with the claiming of a per child subsidy. Scale-up of this platform is now dependent on government procurement processes.
The ixo foundation was established in Switzerland to internationalise the protocol which has evolved from the Amply product research and development, to provide an open-source governance mechanism (on the model of the Linux Foundation in the US).
ixo created a blockchain-based infrastructure to manage and fund projects, using Web 3.0 technologies (i.e. DLT, 5G, digital currency, sensors, etc.). ixo has released open-source modules that include decentralised project data stores, a web explorer module enabling anyone to launch projects, search and view all network projects and transactions, with real-time performance dashboards, project libraries, a mobile App and Wallet, IoT sensor integrations, smart contracts for impact bonds, and other ‘building blocks’ for a comprehensive decentralised digital platform. ixo – like WWG and
Sela – created their own blockchain – although ixo has also built a two-way bridging mechanism between their blockchain (the ixo-Cosmos blockchain) and Ethereum, with plans to integrate ixo into other blockchains over time. A comprehensive description of ixo’s offering is contained in their white paper (link in box above).
The products key features include:
Launching a project: this provides a customisable data management and storage solution for projects of all sizes to quickly deploy their own project requirements from the standardised libraries. Includes strong privacy, data protection and sovereign ownership. Project data stores are hosted in whatever hosting territory or infrastructure a project owner chooses.
Coordinating and incentivising agents to deliver services: with a mechanism to identify and authorise (using self- sovereign digital identity credentials) people, machines or software services to perform work on projects and submit digitally signed claims. Once claims are verified (approved), the agents can be paid (on or off-chain) for their results.
Investing for impact: programmable capital applications such as simple escrow or more complex impact bond instruments are built on the ixo protocols, using the ixo network as an oracle that triggers (signs-off) on transactions once claims have been verified. Other fundraising (such as crowd-funding) and decentralised finance applications (DApps) on the Ethereum and other networks will extend the capabilities of projects running on the ixo network.
Verifying results: claims are recorded in a high-definition data format that is evaluated by traditional mechanisms, or with the assistance of algorithmic evaluation and predictive analysis, referencing external sources of information. Verified claims include a digital proof and are uniquely identified as digital assets that have a value.
Building applications: developers create customised or new solutions using the standard ixo protocols, shared data and network infrastructure
Sharing data: ixo serves as an index to all projects and data resources that can be explored and accessed through the network in a safe and privacy-preserving way that (with permission from project owners). ixo is collaborating with the Ocean Protocol to build an incentivised decentralised data marketplace sourced from all projects using the ixo network. This will enable training of machine-learning, meta-analysis across geographies or sectors and many other data-driven applications.
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What does the future hold?
ixo has played an active role in the establishment of the new internet standards that will govern these various platforms. As described by Shaun in a recent blog post launching ixo.world,
“Participating in community groups across the world, we have discovered and contributed to core internet standards for self-sovereign digital identity and verifiable claims, using high-definition data. As these new standards become part of the web we use every day, this could enable people, organisations and machines to coordinate more effectively to scale impacts through decentralised webs of trust. By applying these new information technologies in the ixo protocols for sustainability, we believe that it is now possible to change the rules for how impacts are identified, measured, factually verified and valued.”
This approach captures ixo’s perspective on tackling the entrenched ecosystem constraints. Shaun, as a medical doctor who has worked with normative agencies such as the WHO, is very familiar with standards-development processes and how standards and protocols are used in practice - for instance to treat patients in a consistent and high-quality manner using normative guidelines. Similarly, ixo is working as part of a global community of technology experts to hardwire standards into all internet browsers that will be able to securely communicate impact data in a standardised manner, using the W3C protocol. Diagram 10 below demonstrates some of the technical protocols ixo contributed to establishing. The approach is highly technical, working in a systems approach with high-end partners including Rebooting the Web-of- Trust and borrowing engineering-based approaches to the development of technical standards that do not look out of place in robotics.
DIAGRAM 9 ixo Technical Protocols
ixo is also starting to work with the Global Impact Investing Network’s Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (GIIN IRIS) and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), to translate their indicator frameworks and impact management rubrics
in semantic, interoperable standards that will interconnect data graphs. This standardisation will be key to enabling processes that enable public good uses of data, such as research, benchmarking, etc. which now are all very much custom-built to each exercise.
ixo is implementing a range of use cases and has established many partnerships with recognised development agencies and enterprises. The ‘showcase partnerships’ demonstrate the various functionalities of the ixo.world platform. A recent Medium post 19 describes how for the three projects, users can register either as funders – by purchasing subscription packages of ixo tokens, or service providers.
Extremely relevant to this report is a piece of work that ixo has been contracted by the UBS Optimus Foundation to demonstrate how their programmable capital mechanisms can be used to implement development impact bonds, in the context of in the Quality Education India DIB. The hypothesis is that this results-based financing instrument can
19 https://medium.com/ixo-blog/welcome-to-ixo-world-194dc17cb6d9
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be unitised and decentralised to level of individual intervention sites (schools, in this instance), to enable bottom-
up origination and scaling. The work began in early 2019. This will include token systems engineering, application development, consensus-building on technical standards, reference code implementation and field-testing of
the application in a pilot number of schools, with the contracted independent evaluator in the DIB (Gray Matters International). The emphasis of this work will be very focussed on verified claims data collected and integrate this with smart contract triggers, providing performance tracking. Value-transfers of payments to service agents and contractors using crypto-tokens will be possible, but is unlikely to be adopted immediately by financial institutions, with this likely to still be three to five years away.
At this point the platform is largely about having impact data captured in a high-definition standardised format, with verification results recorded for posterity and transparency. Funds need to be raised in order to build out the rest of
the capabilities, but ixo does not want to do an ICO as there is a concern about the value of ixo being undermined by speculative investors. Similarly, grant funding will not be enough for their growth needs, as donors are generally reluctant to fund core operations and tech build-out. This remains an open question to be resolved, and may impact on the planned go-live of the full suite of capabilities, including the programmatic capital raising function and the retail investment option, by the end of 2020.
The potential to trade tokenised outcomes, which are the digital assets produced using the ixo protocol, will be critically dependent on the regulation of security tokens that are linked to the issuance of impact financing instruments such as impact bonds. Lack of flexible untied funds and delay in this legislation could significantly push out the development and roll-out of the ixo vision to provide a new mechanism for financing development outcomes through tokenised and programmable funding mechanisms.
In the next phase of implementation, to grow into a global public utility, ixo plans to reconfigure the organisational structure to form a networked cooperative that is funded through a tokenised debt fund. This will provide a share of network revenues to the holders of ixo staking tokens. A public Security Token Offering (STO) may be launched during 2019. As of February 2019, ixo has had to scale back on its team due to funding constraints while the new funding mechanism is put into place. |