Case Study — Tracey
Towards sustainable & traceable fisheries
Streamr’s commercial subsidiary TX is tackling a complex set of linked environmental issues with an interesting new pilot project called Tracey. In partnership with WWF Philippines and UnionBank, TX aims to make fisheries in the Philippines more sustainable by establishing a chain of provenance over the fish caught and rewarding fisherpeople for providing the necessary data.
Historically, many fisherfolk are unbanked, and their seasonal profession means that, according to WWF, two out of five fishers in the Philippines live below the poverty line. To bridge the gaps between fishing seasons, Filipino fisherfolk need access to microloans that can support other business ventures, but they are often perceived as too much of a high risk for banks.
The Tracey app de-risks the lending process and provides UnionBank with sufficient information about potential clients. Fisherfolk receive accurate credit scores after frequently inputting verified catch and trade data. Checks and balances within the fisheries ecosystem mean that fraudulent data input can be mitigated with a variety of methods.
TX is consulting with fisherpeople at two WWF fishery improvement sites at Bicol and Malilipot in the Philippines, to develop an Android app for them that will allow them to photograph and geo-tag their catches, as well as recording the sale of the catch. The focus for the app is for it to be a simple tool tailored to make the data input process as easy as possible, as well as allowing for loan tracking.
What we have now is a paper base. We want to have electronic catch documentation which is why we are collaborating with providers like TX and Streamr.
The catch and trade data will be fed into the Streamr Network, where it will available for anyone around the globe. UnionBank will use this data it to assess eligibility for off-season loans to fishers, which are made using their own Peso stablecoin. They will also provide Know Your Client (KYC) support for the app, and a digital wallet to receive loans and revenue share.
During the concept development phase, the TX team conducted interviews with fisherfolk on-site to inform the future design of the Tracey app. The first pilot is now planned for mid-2020. This will take place at the WWF-Philippines’ Fishery Improvement Project (FIP) sites in Bicol and Mindoro. If the first pilot is successful, the aim is to extend to all FIP sites in South East Asia, in connection with local banks.
Streamr provides the infrastructure for Tracey. The app is to be built on top of the Streamr stack, leveraging the Streamr Network, an open source, decentralized data transportation layer for real-time data flows, connecting Tracey to The Hub where third parties can then subscribe to the data stream. The income generated from the data sales will be sent directly to the data producing fisherfolk, not via a third party.
Tracey is still in its early pilot stages, but it shows the potential for global scale problems to be solved with innovative applications of Streamr's open source Network and tools for sharing and monetising real-time data. If you would like to talk to us about how we could help you build something similar, please get in touch.