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As president and co-founder of the Social Alpha Foundation (SAF), Nydia Zhang left a solid mark in the blockchain space and cryptocurrency, although, as a young student of art at the University of Washington in 2011, Blockchain was far from the direction she saw her life take.
Zhang earned his bachelor's degree in art history in 2015 and spent the following years carving out a career in artistic management. After working for several museums around the world, including Pearl Lam Galleries, Seattle Art Museum and Vermillion Art Collections in Hong Kong, she ended up at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, where she worked as a research manager and board member. of administration.
In a recent interview with Bitcoin MagazineZhang explained how she was involved in the blockchain arena, what started the Social Alpha Foundation, what the company's objectives are and how the blockchain is going to influence global operations in the future.
Founded in 2017 in Hong Kong, SAF is a non-profit platform, which seeks to support blockchain education and awareness raising, enabling communities to use blockchain technology for social good. The organization offers unrestricted funding to companies and projects that educate communities about blockchain technology for social change. SAF also provides non-commercial blockchain grants that focus on improving public health, education and the environment.
Selected candidates receive funds ranging from $ 10,000 to $ 100,000, depending on the size of their projects. Grants are generally offered in cryptocurrency by individuals and commercial platforms that have made successful token sales, creating a channel for donors who adopt corporate social responsibility practices.
Zhang first decided to be involved in the blockchain space after perceiving him as an aid to future philanthropic efforts.
"I felt that there was a need to connect forward-looking people who worked in areas that could have a positive impact on society with funds to complete visions and dreams," he explains. "This motivated me to become the co-founder of SAF and to allow blockchain leaders to use technology for the social good".
Interestingly, SAF was Zhang's first adventure in the blockchain community, although she claims it was one of the most rewarding experiences of her professional career. She is also very enthusiastic about the progress made by the company considering it is only one year old.
"Seeing how each Social Alpha Foundation grant is used to help with social projects is a great example of how we would like the ecosystem not only to exist, but to grow and progress," he says. "To date, the Social Alpha Foundation has had the privilege of awarding hundreds of thousands of dollars to beneficiaries who aim to have a positive impact on space."
So far, SAF has supported a total of six candidates since it was first opened. The most recent is Blockchain Trust Accelerator (BTA), which later created Impact Ledger, a definitive online register of social impact blockchain projects spanning non-profit, public and for-profit sectors. The Impact Ledger aims to raise public awareness of such projects among major publics such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) interested in pursuing blockchain ventures, lenders who explore the blockchain and profits considering the creation of blockchain projects or the collaboration with those of another sector.
In addition to his work with SAF, Zhang is also co-chairman of the Financial Inclusion Committee, a division of the FinTech Association of Hong Kong. The organization examines the new ways to use blockchain technology to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) such as global poverty reduction, inequality and environmental degradation.
Despite his power, Zhang states that there is still much uncertainty about the blockchain technology, especially since it is so new. He also noted the lack of opportunities that the public had to educate up to this point, but felt that it is slowly changing.
"Blockchain has evolved considerably in the last year," he comments. "As someone who works daily in space, I find that the evolution of the sectors in which blockchain can help is expanding, Blockchain is going beyond being connected to cryptocurrencies and financial aspects and in different sectors, but Uncertainty about the development of technology and the direction it is taking in. One of my concerns is that the lack of blockchain knowledge from initial investors leads to speculative investments and creates a very narrow vision ".
He continued by saying, "Education is what I see in the future as a positive change within the blockchain space." Universities and higher education institutions are now starting to offer courses on the blockchain, and not just by a technical point of view, but they also extend to business.All-round education on the blockchain can start in the classroom before work experience, but I think more cases of use in real life we see, more likely that companies and individuals will understand the myriad of advantages in blockchain ".
One of the other problems he has noticed is the gender gap and the delayed female presence in the blockchain arena. For the most part, it has been largely dominated by men, although it claims that women are becoming more attracted to its job prospects and continued growth.
"As the industry and the blockchain community are growing every day, I believe that a strong demand for great talent has attracted more women into space," he says. "Diversifying the blockchain industry and making it more gender-independent could have a positive impact on space as more and more companies are moving towards integrating technology into their business plans."
Zhang says that if the blockchain industry wants to achieve traditional status, it has no choice but to submit to regulation. At the beginning it could be difficult, but this will guarantee confidence in space and will give blockchain and cryptocurrency many more legitimate appearances.
"To build a healthy ecosystem, regulation is a must," he says. "The industry can only prosper with the support of the government and institutions, for example, South Korea is experimenting with a blockchain voting system and the United Arab Emirates government presents its national blockchain initiative. the highly centralized public sector also benefits from a distributed accounting system ".
In the long run, Zhang is confident that the blockchain will one day be widely adopted by governments, businesses and other initiatives around the world, and that its technology will be as common as the Internet.
"I think the blockchain will be widely adopted," he says. "It will become a back-end tool offering the best solution to the problems faced in a world of predominantly centralized systems.The views of different countries on blockchain, government regulation and bad actors within space are what 39; global adoption at this time, but the possibility of positive change is what ignites my desire and my desire to be in space, and I fully believe technology will change the world. "
