Talking with BFlow/Noble Profit founder & CEO Amy Seidman about using better reporting and token economics to promote UN Sustainable Development Goal (UN-SDG) projects and ecosystems.Today’s announcement of BFlow joining the Sweetbridge Alliance Network continues our efforts in working toward sustainable development and positive environmental and economic impacts for supply chain projects. We had a chance to catch up with BFlow (a Noble Profit startup) founder Amy Seidman about how token economics can incentivize better data collection on outcomes, and help refer other positive projects and funding sources in this space to get involved.Listen to and download the BFlow podcast interview on SoundCloud:https://medium.com/media/05040208bdd97afbbb9b1a45351b6fba/hrefWatch the vCast version on the Sweetbridge YouTube channel:https://medium.com/media/dab14df41c251841dcdb3a1b8a5f0b1d/hrefComplete transcript of the podcast:Jason: Well, hello, and welcome to SweetTalk where we cover the latest trends in blockchain, IoT, 3-D Printing, new decentralized economies and everything that surrounds them. Today I’m joined by Amy Siedman of BFlow. BFlow is the name of the project and Noble Profit is the parent company. Welcome to the show Amy. It’s great to have you on today.Amy: Thanks for having me Jason. It’s lovely to be here and to be working with Sweetbridge.Jason: What is BFlow?Amy: BFlow is a technology that we’re developing and building that involves blockchain to enable the reporting and validating of sustainability claims, and we’re focusing on the UN SDGs as our top-level metrics.Jason: Yeah, it’s pretty exciting. We’re seeing a lot of energy around this particular space.Amy: When creating Noble Profit, we began with a media series interviewing people around sustainability impact and clean tech and began it was covered in the kinds of interviews from major corporations to investors to non-profits and experts in this space. And my background is in technology development. Primarily from the creative design perspective and I own the design firm in Los Angeles where I helped build some of the first websites and worked for many companies in web 1.0 and then it all evolved into web 2.0, creating different brands called incredible places and then to outside and basically projects that would help support connecting people to nature using the different aspects of technology.Amy: I realized it was very hard to engage the financial aspect which is important to the world in these things. And people, just their perceptions is how do I make money? So that’s kind of how Noble Profit was born and this media series, to really talk about the advantages and the opportunities around this business model because when people think of sustainability they think of philanthropy and that’s really just such a small sliver. And when I was designing this software and during this process, because it’s an evolving process, we really listened to these interviews and what was missing in this space and data is such a huge piece, and I knew that I wanted to create using new technology because my background has always been to be pushing that envelope of digital media and technology.Amy: That’s where BFlow was born because we realized that by taking BFlow out of Noble Profit and enabling it to be an open source project on some levels. We’re still defining what those levels are, but we know that we want to enable everybody to participate in this as having to go to Noble Profit. The blockchain enables to do this in a decentralized fashion where it becomes less about Noble Profit than it does about the project, about using this technology to facilitate that.Jason: And how has that history led you to where you are now, and could you give me a little bit of your background in that space on how people evolve in the way that they approach this new kind of market?Amy: I’ve been an activist. I’ve been an environmental steward. I’ve created education programs and so that’s been a core of my heart and when I saw the potential for using digital media and technology within this space, it was just a bit passionate driver for me. And when I began going down that road, I spent many years working with the national parks, being an advisor, becoming an Artist Fellow in Sierra Nevada Research Institute in Yosemite and all kinds of wonderful experiences and opportunities, but it was very difficult to convince business and things have changed quite a lot in the past 10 years and even five years around this space.Amy: But at the time it was really, “Oh philanthropy, we need to know how we make money.” And so it became important to me and so I said, “Okay, this is the story I really need to tell, which is how money can really be transformative in business.” And when you look at major brands, sorry, when you look at major brands, and you look at all of the things happening in the investment space, money is big business and sustainability and divestment and we are talking about trillions of dollars. But people just aren’t aware of being a driver around this at this time. But you have laws, you have public pressure and brand awareness to kind of address the millennials and all of the different stakeholders within the system that seem to matter to the brands.Amy: But now you have investment and that then kind of creates a loop around it that … kind of a circle of all the different pieces that are important so we see major corporations with big sustainability departments. We see banks forming funds around good investments that don’t harm the world. And that’s pretty much the driver for me is to be a part of transforming this financial space of business and investment towards things that help the world.Jason: Yeah, so we’ve been talking with BFlow for a little while and now we’re talking about BFlow joining the Sweetbridge Alliance. So why would the combination of these two projects be of interest to our audience?Amy: When we see Sweetbridge, we see a tremendous value in the bridge loans that Sweetbridge is providing to small businesses. It essential for the success of what we want to achieve from a climate standpoint to empower small businesses. And there’s a massive pain point for small businesses in addressing these financial gaps between getting business and then delivering that business. And similarly supply chain is a very complex scenario to attract.Amy: So by providing these mechanisms we see tremendous value from Sweetbridge from helping empower these industries with this technology. And we see a tremendous added value for the customers that would be using Sweetbridge to help report and validate their claims within this space and the compliance aspects about it. So it’s really a win-win for both of us.Jason: Yeah. Excellent. I agree. It’s … Supply chain large complex beast to tackle and there’s a lot of challenges, especially amongst smaller companies who have a lack of liquidity and suppliers who have very tight margins in this space, so we definitely agree that there’s a lot of opportunity to encourage better behaviors and do so in ways that actually help their business.Amy: Yeah and actually it’s an incredible value to major corporations and to big banks that are investing in the space because they need these metrics and I think it’s just all of us together creating this map that we need to provide to be able to make these contextual decisions to create a different world that’s possible. All of the resources and the know-how and the technology is there. It’s really with the exception of the block chain systems that we’re developing right now which will be a part of our future very soon. It’s essential for us to collaborate and to create these mechanisms to solve these big blank spots. Glad to be working with Sweetbridge.Jason: We’re seeing a lot of momentum, global momentum appearing around SDGs right now. I mean besides the availability of funding, what else can you attribute all of this energy to and why do you see so many people being attracted to this space right now?Amy: That’s a great question Jason. What we’re seeing is actually activated by conversations around the Paris Agreement and that’s a meeting that happens that’s driven by the United Nations SCC, UNSCC, which is the climate arm of the United Nations. And the United Nations several years ago, I think five or six, had come up with a set of goals, 17 goals of how we can accomplish addressing these major issues around the world. Climate has become a major topic, particularly after Hurricane Sandy.Amy: So what we started to see is through these different agreements and through the pledges of corporations and banks and investments and all these different groups, cities, government, all kind of aligning with these 17 goals and beneath these 17 goals are these various other levels of accountability to accomplish those goals, depending on what they are. And so we started to see people singing, becoming signatories of the Paris Agreement. And we have jus about every single country in the world. Unfortunately the US is not a part of that at this time. And what’s happening is we have this commitment when the US pulled out we had a lot of companies saying, “Oh, you know, we’re still in it and doubled down.” And we had cities around the world step up and say, “We’re gonna be zero carbon. We’re going to be zero waste.”Amy: And starting to really look at their infrastructure despite the political alignment of our country for these different goals to look at how we can handle this from a central level, from the government perspective. You know from the state level or the city level, as well as the corporations. And so with this we have over 10,000 partners within the global compact which addresses climate change and that is significant when we start looking at that. And what happened with the UN SDGs is it created a common point for us to all rally around that we could all kind of lock into and use a common language. So that’s what I believe has been one of the great drivers of the adoption of this because it’s a very fragmented space when you look at all the different industries and you look at governments and business and investment, they’re all very different.Amy: And within business, you have many, many different industries, from chemical and manufacturing, food, agricultural, apparel business. It’s not just one industry and oftentimes one particular object might be a combination of many different types of extractions or creation of that particular material or thing that’s going in to build that product and in each industry has a different kind of driver around that. And so for us to have something that we can all agree upon and go towards within our own systems becomes a really powerful driver for the adoption of these principles.Jason: I mean it does carry over into almost every industry in every nation. Even in to the aspect of it being treated as a national security issue or ensuring peace. If you can eliminate poverty and pollution you actually promote peace because there’s less issues of lack of resources an inequities in the system so people are looking at this in a very broad scale. So taking it from this huge global perspective, how do you zoom that down into blockchain being relevant to some of these huge goals that we’re talking about here with the set of SDGs and resolving them.Amy: Blockchain has a lot of advantage and most people when they think about it, they think of bitcoin. They really don’t understand the potential around it. When I look at blockchain I see so many other aspects besides the currency aspect. And I think the currency is important because it’s representing a major disruption within our world within the banking systems and within creating equanimity within the unbanked and it’s not to be ignored. And that is actually one of the drivers of why I wanted to use blockchain within Noble Profit was to enable greater efficiency in the financial transactions and to lower the cost and increase the speed and also to enable many different sectors to participate.Amy: But when you start to look at the other advantages that most people don’t focus on, it really has to do with how can we create a model that involves everyone being a part of it and removing barriers. It also involves immutability, which is basically how do you ensure that this is a solid imprint? We’re living in a world where the internet is pretty much the source of news for many people, and that … all of the information on the internet is centralized. It goes into servers where that information is held and that information can be deleted. It can be eliminated and when we look at what was happening in the EPA and basically taking down all of this public data around climate change, this is an example of how I believe that blockchain can be disruptive of ensuring through a decentralized system that that information is there and that information cannot be fudged.Amy: If someone puts in a wrong report, that’s one thing. If somebody puts in a lie, it’s there and we can see it. So it creates transparency. It creates a possibility of transparency within really important aspects of our society and that can be used in voting, identity. It can be used in creating a new kind of Facebook and social media, and ownership of our own data. And when we start looking also in the space of that, particularly in sustainability. It’s a very complex space. Most of this is very hard to know where the source is. It’s very hard to understand what is supporting that data. Is the data true? Is this information that people and companies reporting true? Because the other thing is one company might have a really great footprint from a carbon perspective, but they might be a really negative company.Amy: They might be doing all kinds of things and not taking care of their employees and not really caring about the circular aspects of their product development. But when we start to look at some of these ways of revealing the truth around things, and inviting people to participate and engage in voting around that, or creating claims, it really puts people on the line to be more authentic, to have greater transparency, to have more data that is present to support those claims.Jason: That’s true. I mean transparency … you have to subject the data to the light of day in order to have a clear picture of what’s going on. And at the same time, I mean, is there a common language between all of these parties and are they even agreeing upon a common set of ways to describe things? It’s not just a matter of being honest and accurate. Do we have a common frame of reference for those and I think that is helping. Are there any other ways to kind of, in your opinion, to improve the quality of that data?Amy: It’s really interesting that you used the common language metaphor because I’ve been looking at the UN SDGs as a common language. And one of the issues that we’re having in the sustainability space is the volume and differences of the data sets. And there’s a reason of that difference We don’t want to homogenize every single industry because it just won’t work. Different industries have different mechanisms for what’s important for them. And so having this common language of the UN SDGs I think will help at least create a reference point for that.Jason: So I mean, once you’ve kind of established some of this data and you have all people reporting into it … can you talk a little bit about some of the financial incentives behind that? I mean you’ve mentioned that obviously crypto currency is still a big part of this but how od you align these positive impacts with financial incentives and other mechanisms like that?Amy: I think it’s a big topic and we’re probably playing less in that game than we are with providing a tool set that would be of value and help create a simpler approach to the problem, and because of the complexity and because of the benefits of the blockchain, these we believe are some of the really important things to focus on. In terms of incentivizing the marketplace, you have to look at what is incentivizing major banks and investment funds to start creating these kinds of funds that would satisfy customers. And when you look at the divest invest movement, if you go to divestinvest.org you would see a 6.57 or something trillion dollar commitment by major investment groups form pension funds to private foundations and private banks to take the wealth and ensure that this amount has been put into investment, and that is a big motivator.Amy: You also have major brands who are answering to their customers and they’re expecting millennials to take that divestment number up to $40 to $50 trillion dollars. And then you have the, we all know that many people really vote with their wallets. They will go out of their way to purchase a Prius, and that’s why we saw Prius become such a popular car is because so many people when it came out said, “I’m gonna spend a little bit more on this,” and then … and similarly with solar, and now we’re seeing the cost of solar, the cost of electric cars coming down because of the commitment of these people to be using their wallets to make that vote. So I think the incentive is there. I think there’s a lot of people who want clean water. They want clean air. They’re seeing what’s happening. We have a tremendous, tremendous loss from a real estate perspective from Hurricane Sandy. And I think these are the drivers that we need to look at and those drivers exist with or without the blockchain.Amy: It’s really looking at technology and how technology can facilitate these levers in a greater way. How can it become an added value to those who really are having to look at these numbers. When it comes to people using our system, it has to do with who are our customers and what are their needs and ensuring that we’re treating something of value to them from a technical capacity versus looking at some piece of money that we’re then going to incentivize some person on the other side of the world to use our system.Amy: We, of course, want to serve everyone in the system and when we start looking at things like complaints, we don’t think it’s ethical to remunerate people for that because we’re just gonna see a lot of false claims come out and similarly we definitely are looking at mechanisms to ensure that validators that are not experts are compensated and within the network and what we’re creating, our vision is to include a validator network and basically those people have fees that they’re being paid.Jason: Yeah and whatever coin in which realm it’s operating in, right, if it’s in a marketplace for this particular kind of a social good project it would be interesting to see how it’s going to play out. I mean, talking about some of these innovations, what are some of the next … Is there a next project aspect or something new you’re working on right now that you could talk about that’s coming up for you and your team?Amy: Well we’re focusing on used cases right now. We’re focusing on the practical applications of creating a relevant utility token that could be of service and really looking at the different industries and because of what we want to accomplish it’s important for us to ensure that the mechanisms around our utility token works for these different industries, so we’ve been gathering up used cases from ranging from apparel with indigenous clothing to volunteerism which is a very fuzzy kind of space to education which is also fuzzy, and then energy companies which are much easier and more quantifiable because when you’re dealing with the transfer of electrons, you’re actually, you know, it’s much easier than looking at something like education.Amy: But some of these claims might be actions. They might not have anything to do with a transaction. It might be a change of state within the city where they’re changing the flow of their traffic and there might be a wonderful result of carbon savings by just doing that. So we’re kind of looking at all of these different types of ways that this information will come to us and ensure that this utility and this technology that we’re creating is actually serving us, and that’s where our focus is right now.Jason: Excellent. Well, when you tie this kind of economics to both public and private sources of funding and interest it could be a game changer for resolving a lot of the issues we see in the world today, so I think that’s definitely a noble enterprise, aptly named. Where should our listeners go or our readers go to find out some more about this topic?https://BFlow.ioAmy: So, https://BFlow.io is our website and we have a telegram channel https://t.me/BFlow, and we have a Twitter channel as well, @BFlowtoken so that’s where people can sign up, subscribe and follow what we’re doing and learn more.Jason: Yeah, well that’s great. Thanks so much Amy for joining me. It’s been good having you on today on SweetTalk.Amy: Thank you for having me. It’s wonderful to be a part of the Sweetbridge Alliance. We’re looking forward to how we can work together.Jason: Yeah, definitely. Well that concludes our program for today.Watch the full vCast interview with BFlow’s Amy Seidman on YouTube: Watch on Sweetbridge YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/jDW4tjbEZ5kBflow: SweetTalk Podcast/vCast — Alliance Edition was originally published in Sweetbridge on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.