A lot of the world takes water as a right. And far of the world has so little water that it’s a matter of life and demise.
So how can we ship water from areas of surplus to areas of want? That is the mission of Atlantis, a venture dedicated to fixing points stemming from local weather change, focusing totally on water. They usually’re attempting to crack this drawback by utilizing blockchain.
Irthu Suresh is a speaker at this yr’s Consensus competition in Austin, Texas, Might 29-31.
Atlantis is not only theoretical. Throughout 50 villages within the area of Chikmagalur, India, Atlantis deployed a Web3 resolution that incentivized folks to successfully switch water from the Haves to the Have Nots. A intelligent system of “bounties” inspired villagers to carry out duties that enabled this new distribution. And the pilot program labored. “We’ve exchanged greater than 21,000 kiloliters of water,” says Irthu Suresh, CEO of Atlantis.
Giving a sneak preview of what he’ll share in Austin at Consensus, Suresh explains why Atlantis adopted blockchain, the challenges they needed to overcome for onboarding, and why he needs the world to know that Web3 is not only for buying and selling however that “we are able to use this to battle water issues, to battle poverty.”
Interview has been condensed and frivolously edited for readability.Atlantis didn’t begin out as a blockchain group, however finally you integrated the tech. What led you to this?Irthu Suresh: We had been attempting to construct options for local weather change — primarily by means of water — as a Web2 firm, however a personal entity attempting to construct for the commons was not likely placing a chord. And we bumped into every kind of challenges with current energy buildings, all the things from rules to unregulated mafia in India. It’s very simple to deliver down an concept if it’s constructed by a personal entity. All you want is a bunch of legal professionals.
And that led us to suppose, “How can me and my co-founder turn into insignificant over time as this technique scales?” And that led us to take a look at decentralized distributed methods. We figured that if this works, nobody ought to be capable to deliver it down.
Then we realized that there have been individuals who had been prepared to reap extra water after which provide it into the community. This was creating extra swimming pools of surplus assets. And we had been like, “What if we might construct this complete system on blockchain?”
So what does that appear to be precisely?
In most elements of the world, issues like water are closely regulated. And you’ve got these centralized grids. However as cities and areas broaden, typically these centralized grids wrestle to catch up.
However India is a good instance of being constructed, traditionally, on decentralized communities. You have got small pockets of villages taking good care of their wants. It is hyper-local. So for us, it was a no brainer to deliver some type of idea that solves for useful resource allocation issues.
There are some elements the place water is ample, and no one cares about it. And there are different locations the place entry to water is life and demise. So for the pilot, after we partnered with Mercy Corps Ventures, we selected a particular location in India the place on one aspect of this hill there’s an abundance of water, and on the opposite aspect of the hill there’s a drought. And the way might folks on this area alternate this extra water? How might we create the infrastructure domestically itself? So for our pilot program in Chikmagalur — a rural area with 50 villages — we began with folks in numerous water stress zone.
Fascinating. What did your system do?
First we had folks domestically volunteer to unfold consciousness, then we had native folks signal as much as turn into water harvesters. As soon as we had these harvesters and there was a rain that was captured, there was a possibility for it to be exchanged.
How does blockchain match into this?
We constructed the product on a cell native app. On this app, all people might create a profile, enroll, and first point out what their talent is. And primarily based on the talent, we begin supplying you with duties. And these duties are just about to construct up this peer-to-peer water community.
You possibly can participate in surveying, you possibly can participate in water pattern testing, you possibly can enroll as somebody who needs to unfold consciousness by means of workshops, or you possibly can turn into a harvester. All of those duties are gamified; we name them bounties. Folks enroll after which they do the required steps which might be required, after which they get incentivized. We knew this primary required a distributed ledger that’s tamper-proof, and we knew that blockchain is beneficial for that.
Superb. Are you able to quantify the affect to date?
Yeah. We’ve exchanged greater than 21,000 kiloliters of water. The community has over 3,000 folks and it is masking 50 villages. Out of the three,000, predominantly most are shoppers who’re coming into the community to entry water. However we now have nearly 150 harvesters within the community. After which we now have a bunch of surveyors and validators.
What’s a validator on this context?
Let’s say you plug into the community and say, “Hey, I am a harvester.” Then we put out a bounty for somebody within the locality to turn into a validator, who goes to your home and simply validates that, “Hey, these guys have the infrastructure for it.” So what occurs, in essence, is we’re making a bunch of those native inexperienced jobs. And all of those completely different duties are gamified utilizing our bounty system.
What issues did you run into?
One was off-ramping. Particularly in India, it is robust to off-ramp, as a result of the rules are nonetheless in a grey space.
After which ranging from the primary MVP we designed, on the very onset of onboarding, each time we requested folks to hook up with a pockets, that did not work. As a result of folks had been like, “What’s a pockets?” And I acquired an absolute education on UI and UX. We needed to actually determine when is the suitable place to introduce blockchain or the Web3 terminologies.
And we needed to take further steps to teach folks about it. As a result of individuals are like, ”Oh, it is crypto. Which means it is a rip-off.” And we’re like, “No, no, maintain on!” Proper? Like, there’s a lot extra to it!
What tokens are you utilizing to drive the mechanics?
We do have an inside token, which we’ll sometime launch. Throughout the pilot we actively used it. However seeing how the Web3 market works, we’re robust believers that until we hit a robust product-market match, launching a token would not make sense for us.
So we’ve built-in a mechanism through which completely different tokens will be introduced into the platform. If somebody needs to fund a water venture in Africa utilizing Solana they will, whereas if any individual needs to do a water venture in Vietnam utilizing Optimism, they’re ready to try this. We actually labored on the interoperability facet of it as a result of local weather change doesn’t care which chain you’re on.
Nicely stated. Final query: What are you most trying ahead to at Consensus?
So, one of many largest lifelines for our venture has been Bitcoin. And I do know that Consensus is a good place to go and meet individuals who have pioneered a few of these applied sciences we’re utilizing as we speak.
I am hoping that we’re in a position to come and discuss in regards to the issues that we’ve been doing with blockchain, which isn’t essentially simply DeFi buying and selling. We actually need folks to know that, “Hey, we are able to use this to battle water issues, to battle poverty.” The concept of distributed ledgers is tremendous highly effective. Extra folks must know that there is precise examples of this being performed out.
Nice sentiment. Congrats on what you’ve constructed and see you in Austin.
