EXCLUSIVE: ETH Foundation lead Aya Miyaguchi on the origins of UNICEF’s bold crypto move

Ethereum Foundation President Aya Miyaguchi sat down with UNICEF innovation unit builder and Giga founder Christopher Fabian and talked about how the UN’s Children Fund came to embrace crypto and the blockchain.

On May 28 at ETHPrague, Fabian and Miyaguchi took the audience back to 2018 and 2019 when United Nations Children’s Fund first began working with blockchain technology and cryptocurrency through the creation of its CryptoFund.

Fabian, who had previously worked in startups and other technological projects before working with UNICEF, recalled how it took a while for him to convince the organization that the technology was going to bring about a revolutionary shift in the way it would receive and distribute donations across the globe.

“And it was, remember it was 2018. So if you think about who was out there in space, that was a particular moment,” said Fabian.

“All of these misunderstandings about what the thing is made it take a lot longer than it should have, and I think they still stop governments from adopting certain types of blockchains,” he continued.

To explain how the blockchain and crypto worked, he used the analogy of a motorcycle being used to deliver vaccines to remote areas and compared it to how crypto was essentially a vehicle or a medium used to store and circulate funds.

“It’s just another thing like a motorcycle, so it’s an intangible version of motorcycle and it was like that type of learning and that type of work figuring out that a smart contract isn’t a contract getting the lawyers to relax on that,” said Fabian.

Another metaphor he used to describe cryptocurrency was the fungus growing on trees, whereas governments and organizations like the UN were the trees that were “very hard to move.”

“You can’t force the trees to change the way they do it. You have to do it subtly and then it has to be organic in the same way that the trees work, but it’s not exactly the trees. It’s another, it’s another part of the ecosystem,” he said.

President of Ethereum (ETH) Foundation, Aya Miyaguchi, said that she met Christopher Fabian in Japan when they happened to be in Osaka for DevCon. After talking to Fabian for awhile, she realized that he had a deep understanding of the crypto space and how it can be utilized to help UNICEF and other organizations.

Because his vision aligned with what she believed Ethereum could do in the long-term future, she decided to bridge a collaboration with the UN agency through Chris and his team.

“I think I made the decision to work with UNICEF. Just because of the name of UNICEF, of course it strategically helps to work the UN for for our purpose. But at the same time it was, it had to be the right team because we’re not gonna be the one to drive in a ship inside the organization,” said Miyaguchi.

Ultimately, UNICEF launched its CryptoFund in October 2019, calling it a “new financial vehicle allowing UNICEF to receive, hold, and disburse cryptocurrency,” which was a first for the UN. Initially, the UNICEF CryptoFund provided funding for eight emerging technology companies in the form of 125 ETH. However, it has since moved on to bigger projects, such as Fabian’s own venture, Giga, a company designed to bring Internet and technology to underserved populations.