The world at large has been reeling from a tiny virus that has turned into one of the largest social and economic disruptions of the modern era.
As the year winds to a widely welcomed close, it’s worth asking what blockchain tech has contributed to humanity’s efforts to cope with the pandemic.
The short answer is, despite some large gaps that blockchain is very well suited to fit and some serious efforts, so far, the contribution of blockchain to combating COVID-19 has been, honestly, minimal.
What we can learn that might be helpful in enabling blockchain to play a more critical role in addressing the next global crisis, whatever it might be.
To be fair, centralized efforts at privacy-preserving contact tracing by Google and Apple haven’t fared much better.
Blockchain tech provides the option for privacy-preserving track and trace, and for broader privacy-preserving gathering and aggregation of personal data for collective analysis for the common medical good.
In the next months, we may well find some forward-thinking jurisdictions interested to use our AI modeling methods to understand the best way to manage COVID-19 during the phase of initial vaccine rollout.
It’s worth noting the same basic situation has occurred as regards application of AI to help with COVID-19.
However, AI, like blockchain, has been on the margins rather than at the core of society’s COVID-19 response.