OneLedger's International Health Passport, a blockchain platform that allows users to register their COVID-19 vaccine status and test record, is helping the fightback against the global pandemic.
A person's vaccine and test record status is recorded in the IHP app and can be checked and validated by international customs officials and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials in the United States.
As Covid-19 restrictions swept the globe in 2020 and businesses shut down, the travel industry took a massive hit as travel and tourism came to a screeching halt.
As vaccines begin rolling out and more people are getting vaccinated, travel is slowly coming back. The question remains, should travelers show they were vaccinated to travel.
So-called "vaccine passports" are records of a person who has received the full COVID-19 vaccination and is safe to travel to other regions.
How to implement these passports and who secures that data has been at the center of a heated debate about our medical data's security and privacy.
Speaking to USA Today, Andy Slavitt, White House senior advisor for COVID-19 response, said that vaccine passports should be private, secure, and be free. The rush to be the first to market with a working vaccine passport is on, and OneLedger believes blockchain is the key.
OneLedger has tested its IHP extensively in Windsor Essex spearheading a pilot project for a smoother cross-border flow of essential workers, while also reducing the risk of importing COVID infections. With partners Audacia Bioscience, the IHP Digital Health Passport plan was submitted to the Canadian federal and provincial governments in early December for study.
The pilot project is supported by an extensive advanced manufacturing sector in southwestern Ontario, as well as the WindsorEssex Economic Development Corporation, the Institute for Border Logistics and Security and the University of Windsor.
OneLedger's team is at an advanced stage of discussion with authorities in multiple Caribbean territories and with partners in Ghana and Nigeria.
Headquartered in Barbados, OneLedger was founded in 2018 by David Cao. OneLedger's founders say they built OneLedger to be a blockchain protocol that acts as a gateway between enterprise and public/private blockchains.
George Connolly, President & CEO of OneLedger, spoke with CryptoSlate about OneLedger, "Our purpose is to help businesses, governments, and people solve their most complex and important challenges using blockchain and other disruptive technologies."
OneLedger uses Tendermint as its consensus engine. Tendermint replicates applications across systems, building redundancy in case of failures in the network. OneLedger uses both public, permissionless, and private permissioned blockchain models.
Alongside the OneLedger protocol is its utility token, OLT. According to OneLedger, the OLT token is for interoperability, staking, delegation, governance, DApps, creation of custom tokens, and a domain naming service. Private blockchains can use the OLT for transactions on-chain.
"A future capability of OneLedger is the ability to create Custom Tokens, similar to ERC-20 for Ethereum," Connolly went on to say, "providing this service for businesses is critical when thinking about digitizing assets or for creating a credit system for loyalty programs."
OneLedger has its eye on the growing DeFi market with a decentralized exchange (DEX) planned for launch later this year. OneLedger has said the DEX would use proof of stake-based consensus mechanism. OneLedger wants to challenge Ethereum in the DeFi market by having lower fees and more stability.
More information on OneLedger and what they are working on can be found on the official OneLedger blog.
