VXPASS, the first-ever blockchain-based digital COVID-19 vaccine card provider accredited by the City of San Francisco, is gaining valuable support from international organizations in implementing the digital vaccine monitoring program in the Kingdom of Lesotho, a landlocked nation in Africa.
The Sesiu sa Tšoele le beta Poho Fund (SESIU), the private-public partnership tasked to administer COVID-19 vaccinations in Lesotho, signed a contract with VXPASS in May 2021 to manage the records of the initial 560,000 vaccinations, with plans of completing 1.2 million vaccinations by the end of the year. However, VXPASS was caught unawares when bureaucratic issues arose during negotiations.
“So, we had some friction between this private organization that was set up to support the Covid effort and the public organizations that are set up to support all of the other healthcare in the country. We were excited to sign the deal. These people had the resources. They were in charge of the COVID response and we were just gung-ho. As we got closer to roll out, these friction points started to pop up in ways that we didn’t really plan for,” Zachary Weiner, founder of VXPASS, said.
And this is where the State Department of the United States, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank come in. With the help of these international organizations, VXPASS was able to change its approach to implementation by ensuring that all government entities involved, on top of the private firms related to the digital vaccination monitoring program, are updated every step of the way.
“Since we’ve taken the opportunity to reset, we’ve actually gotten some support from the State Department of the United States that’s helped us navigate with the right business partners in country, and from the WHO. and the World Bank, who have a vested interest in making sure that the money invested or technology brought from the West to Africa find their path to success rather than getting bogged down in some of the bureaucracy that may be unique to that continent,” Weiner explained.
Gaining the support of the U.S. State Department, the WHO and the World Bank means not only smoothing out the process of implementing the program in Lesotho, but also expanding the reach of vaccine on blockchain and letting more people around the world know of the real value of this innovative technology.
“From our perspective, that means that being as they can be advocates for what we’re doing, not necessarily our brand of or flavor of what we’re doing, but the principle behind separating identity and allowing patients to own their records and digitizing records that may have been analogue before, the interested invested parties are more than happy to kind of come alongside of us and say, ‘these are some of the benefits that we see from the commerce perspective or from the health industry perspective,’” Weiner pointed out.
VXPASS, which is built on the BSV blockchain, the largest and only limitlessly scalable public blockchain, not only equip vaccine records with immutability, security and transparency, but also allows governments a more efficient and cost-effective solution to vaccination tracking and monitoring, at the same time providing individuals with privacy and ownership of data.
“By using VXPASS, the Kingdom of Lesotho is ensuring from the outset that all data generated and captured is not only of the highest quality, but that it is publicly available on the blockchain in real-time—ensuring the utmost levels of transparency, validity, personal control and ultimately, confidence on this road to recovery,” Weiner revealed.
This is all made possible through the powerful capabilities of the BSV blockchain that has the ability to handle massive amounts of data at the lowest transaction fees possible. Because as the BSV blockchain is scaled, throughput also increase, which effectively decreases the price per transaction.
At present, 2GB blocks are already being mined on the BSV blockchain at a fee of less than a cent per transaction. The release of the Teranode update early next year will serve to boost throughput to up to 100,000 transactions per second (tps). When this happens, fees will further be reduced to mere fractions of a penny.
And this is only the beginning. As the network continues to scale, terabyte-sized blocks at millions of tps will be made possible. These numbers demonstrate why VXPASS has chosen to build on the BSV blockchain.
In comparison to other blockchains, such as the more popular yet unscalable BTC and ETH, which have current average fees per transaction of $1.99 and $24.43, respectively, it is obvious why BSV is the most practical solution. Blockchain is a technology that is not meant to be utilized only for the trading of volatile digital currencies. When developed right, it is a powerful tool that can improve global systems and processes.
“When blockchain technology is allowed to demonstrate its full-spectrum of capabilities beyond just enabling digital currency, it illustrates the game-changing potential that blockchain offers for enterprises and governments—and ultimately, society as a whole,” Jimmy Nguyen, founding president of Bitcoin Association, the global industry organization that advances the adoption of the BSV blockchain, said.
Barry Lachey is a Professional Editor at Zobuz. Previously He has also worked for Moxly Sports and Network Resources “Joe Joe.” He is a graduate of the Kings College at the University of Thames Valley London. You can reach Barry via email or by phone.
