Polkadot Introduces Encointer: Making Web3 Truly Inclusive

Encointer was recently granted Kusama’s second common-good parachain slot by Kusama’s on-chain governance community, and began onboarding to the network on January 9th, 2022.

The potential of Web3 extends well beyond reshaping finance in the developed world — it can also be used to foster greater financial inclusion in developing regions and new forms of democratic decision-making. But to allow for greater adoption, the fees to access Web3 services must be linked to local purchasing power. Furthermore, additional voting mechanisms beyond coin voting are needed that operate on the principle of one person, one vote.

Web3 Faces an Inclusion Problem

Web3 services are often heralded as a potential driver of financial inclusion in the developing world. It’s easy to see why this is such an exciting idea. Take remittances, for instance: payments sent by migrant workers to households in their country of origin. Such payments form a vital lifeline for families in low and middle-income countries, amounting to triple the volume of official development aid and, outside China, 50% more than foreign direct investment. But these payments are subject to exorbitant fees, with the poorest regions hit hardest. For example, the average cost of sending a $200 remittance across international borders globally is 6.4%, while the average cost of sending the same sum to Sub Saharan Africa is 8%. Furthermore, research indicates that remittances sent through digital channels tend to cost less than those sent through banks. This would all seem to suggest that decentralized, peer-to-peer digital payments could play an important role.

About Polkadot

Polkadot is a next-generation, sharded, multi-chain network founded by Dr. Gavin Wood, cofounder and former chief technology officer of Ethereum and creator of the Solidity programming language. Polkadot is a metaprotocol solving many challenges that has hindered the growth of legacy blockchains, including scalability, governance, security, and interoperability. Polkadot is a project fostered by the Web3 Foundation and built by industry-leading developers like Parity Technologies. Applications from decentralized finance and energy to gaming and communications will thrive on Polkadot, challenging the centralized platforms of the current web.

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