Turning principles into practice

In November at UN City in Copenhagen, UNDP’s Alternative Finance Lab (AltFinLab), a flagship programme pioneering new ways to fund sustainable development at the intersection of innovation, technology, and finance, hosted the first technical working meeting to refine the advisory group’s structure and identify key areas for collaboration. Participants worked across five thematic areas: public trust and digital governance, inclusive society and legal identity, financial inclusion and digital financial services, sustainability and traceable responsibility, and digital labor and future skills. 

Building on experience of implementing a Blockchain Accelerator with 50 different experiments, UNDP’s approach goes beyond standalone pilots. Early experiments showed how transparency can strengthen markets and improve livelihoods. The next step is applying these lessons at scale and systematically. This means supporting the development of interoperable, ethical digital public infrastructure rooted in local ownership. In practice, UNDP aims to “wire” innovation directly into institutions, policies, and delivery systems, ensuring blockchain is used responsibly and sustainably, not as an isolated add-on.

Several cross-cutting themes emerged: overcoming institutional risk aversion; mapping and building on existing pilots, protocols, and standards; and ensuring that new tools strengthen rather than replace current systems. Financial inclusion remains a central focus, with existing use cases such as blockchain-enabled cash transfers in crises or low-cost cross-border remittances showing promising results, while also revealing fragmentation and regulatory uncertainty. The groups will continue working to identify where blockchain can support broader systemic reforms aligned with UNDP’s strategic priorities.

To expand our capacity to work with digital assets, UNDP is also exploring a dedicated digital wallet through partner banks, enabling us to receive stable coins and digital assets. In parallel, we are assessing with partners how digital assets and blockchain could strengthen transparency and efficiency across selected UNDP financial processes.

Aligning innovation and investment

Also in November, the conversation expanded to a broader stage at the Cardano Summit in Berlin, where UNDP joined WFP and UNHCR for a panel on Harnessing Blockchain for Sustainable Development. The session highlighted how blockchain is already transforming humanitarian and development efforts, from aid delivery and financial inclusion to digital identity and new funding models. 

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has gained experience through initiatives such as cash-based intervention using stablecoins and Impact Staking for Refugees and associated ETP, the first regulated exchange-traded product that converts blockchain staking rewards into continuous funding for humanitarian relief. In addition, UNHCR with United Nations International Computing Centre have established a Digital Hub of Treasury Solutions where other UN agencies participate; while UNDP has been coordinating UN Blockchain Core Group and UN Innovation Network for blockchain technology. WFP has been using pioneering blockchain-based innovative financing for several years through Building Blocks, fundraising with cryptocurrencies and NFTs and staking digital assets.  

In UNDP, we would like to see this going further as we continue investing in local capabilities, identifying use cases across different areas of work, and exploring how digital assets can modernize our own operations, our goal is to use innovation and technology to transform systems. This will mean more focused collaboration across the UN, emerging tech ecosystems, and governments. We are designing integrity and new rails that allow remittances, climate funds, public budgets and private capital to reach thousands of community-level actions with clear rules and verifiable performance. At the Cardano Summit, we invited the blockchain community to engage more with international development partners and ensure technology is designed for context, built for human needs and embedded in transformative interventions. 

As the Cardano Foundation explores new funding mechanisms co-led by UN agencies that could channel part of Cardano’s community-governed treasury toward development and humanitarian impact, UNDP can contribute to such initiatives by connecting partners to development expertise and networks on the ground.

Such partnerships go beyond technology, reimagining both how innovation is financed, and how to scale pilots so that the benefits of technology can reach those most often left behind.

Building a framework for the future

Today, we are experimenting with new approaches, we are prototyping how payments and investment are taking place, building transaction systems from the first to the last miles; and quickly learning in the process. As blockchain moves from experimentation to real-world use, the challenge is now how it can work responsibly, inclusively, and at scale, focusing efforts where the impact will be highest.

UNDP sees its role as a bridge between blockchain innovators, governments, UN agencies, and communities – aligning new financing models with real development needs and ensuring that technology delivers measurable public value.

The UNDP Blockchain Advisory Group is being developed as a multi-stakeholder forum to help make this possible: ensuring that blockchain solutions are ethical, interoperable, and practical, and supporting their integration into public systems such as climate and nature finance, digital identity, transparent aid delivery and inclusive financial services. It will also promote shared learning and capacity-building, so that countries can harness blockchain for the public good.

Through the UNDP Blockchain Advisory Group, we also want to understand and manage risks from this emerging technology. Risks like interoperability issues, or how to keep accountability while working across different jurisdictions; legal/regulatory frameworks on blockchain, and on maintaining public interest and a technology agnostic viewpoint while working with the private sector.

For UNDP, this effort is about utilizing efficient tools and tactics amid a rapidly changing world to uphold our “leave no one behind” mandate--ensuring that innovation translates into more transparent, inclusive, and effective systems that deliver tangible benefits.