Announcing Heritage: An Open Source, Public Blockchain Project

Project Overview

Heritage is a project of A​3​ by Airbus, the advanced projects outpost of Airbus in Silicon Valley. Airbus Foundation is the first strategic partner within Airbus to utilize blockchain technology developed by Heritage.
Heritage is a decentralized application for the Airbus Foundation to hold charity fundraising campaigns internal to Airbus. Through open sourcing Heritage, Airbus Foundation will help charities onboard cryptocurrency and smart contracts, opening them to a new class of donor. Heritage hopes to set a standard non-profits can replicate to continue to grow the ecosystem while aiding an underserved market.

What exactly is Heritage?

Heritage is an open source project on the Ethereum blockchain for charitable organizations. The project is being pursued within A​3​ by Airbus, Airbus’ innovation outpost in Silicon Valley. It consists of a collection of Ethereum smart contracts, a Web3 JavaScript library and developer tool, and decentralized Application (dApp) for managing and interacting with blockchain-based donations and donors.
The charitable branch of Airbus, the Airbus Foundation, will integrate Heritage with an internal fundraising platform to commemorate the foundation’s 10th anniversary. A​3​ plans to release the blockchain portions of the project as open source under the BSD3 license.
This will allow the project to be replicated and continue to expand the ecosystem.

How it works

Heritage records donation data as an ERC-721 token owned by the donor.
When donors make a donation through Heritage, the donation is recorded along with the donor’s Ethereum address and donation amount. Heritage can also record and issue 501(c)(3) donation certificate information, information required to file taxable deductions. This information will be issued as an ERC-721 non-fungible asset and will allow donors to easily build a portfolio of their donations.

Mission

Many of the organizations that could benefit most from blockchain are denied access due to resource, skill or knowledge gaps. Heritage wants to open these organizations up to a new class of donor. To do so they are creating a guided contract deployment and drop-in web integration. By releasing this project as open source, the project seeks to set or contribute to standards in this emerging space.
Charities are often constrained by a lack of resources that impacts the good they wish to accomplish. While they could greatly benefit from blockchain technology, they’ve often been overlooked. Heritage shortens their adoption gap and connects charities and cryptocurrency donors to accomplish their goals in new ways. Differentiator
While there are many use cases for blockchain, Heritage is working to expand on one particular application that can be worthwhile for these organizations — managing trust-based paper. The project will issue ERC-721 tokens that contain 501(c)(3) donation certificate information.
These non-fungible tokens have many potential use cases that have yet to be fully realized. Heritage will be one of the first to create an entirely new use case for the 721 standard by expanding to the non-profit community.

Milestones

The team launched and ran a successful pilot campaign, which consisted of an internal A​3 test of the donation platform. They collaborated with several local charities to achieve this:
Airline Ambassadors
Airline Ambassadors International is a non-profit organization that leverages partnerships with the airline industry to help vulnerable children. They provide medical escorts, humanitarian aid to communities around the world and is a leading advocate for awareness of human trafficking prevention in the aviation industry.
HartSong Ranch Animal Sanctuary
HartSong Ranch Animal Sanctuary is a non-profit animal welfare organization dedicated to providing a safe space for previously neglected and abused animals.The Museum of Art, Design, and Entertainment
The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment (MADE) is a non-profit center and museum dedicated to activities that engage participants in all forms of digital art and entertainment. Partnerships The team is currently working to collaborate with several other blockchain-based projects to integrate and enhance Heritage.

Maker

Maker is a decentralized autonomous organization on the Ethereum blockchain seeking to minimize the price volatility of its own stable token — the Dai — against the U.S. Dollar.
Heritage is exploring the advantages of Dai to protect charities that accept donations from price volatility and as a possible off-ramp for charities into fiat currencies.

0x Protocol

0x is an open, permissionless protocol allowing for ERC20 tokens to be traded on the Ethereum blockchain.
Heritage is exploring the ability for charities to create and issue donations using the 0x protocol without having to purchase, hold or use cryptocurrency beyond a custodial/exchange address.

Plasma/Plasma Cash

A second-layer scaling solution that provides thousands of transactions per second while the underlying assets are protected on a decentralized base layer. Plasma is a multi-channel off-chain scaling solution.

UNICEF

The United Nations Children’s Fund is a United Nations program that provides humanitarian and developmental assistance to families in developing countries.
Heritage is collaborating with UNICEF on an upcoming Hackathon event focused on blockchain development.

Upcoming Events

The team at Heritage is currently participating in and/or speaking at a host of different blockchain-related events.
● Endeavor / UNICEF Mexico Hackathon: September 22-23
● TruffleCON: October 5-7, Alex Sherbuck speaking
● DevconIV: October 30 – November 2

Team

Alex Sherbuck
Project Executive
Ieva Rukuizaite
Project Manager
Robert Keele
General Counsel
Kerry Sherman
Advisor
Justine Lucas
Advisor

About A​3

A³ by Airbus is the Silicon Valley outpost of Airbus. The mission of Airbus is to make things fly. A³ seek to disrupt Airbus and its competitors before anyone else can. And in the process, seeks to build the future of flight.
The team at A³ execute projects and fosters partnerships. Projects are ambitious, risky and time-constrained undertakings that culminate in a demonstration at convincing scale—something that’s more than a mere prototype, but somewhat short of a product.
A³ develops technology partnerships enabling work within the Silicon Valley ecosystem to meet project objectives while connecting Airbus to new developments and talent. A³ also strives to partner with different elements of Airbus to serve as transition targets and sponsors of projects that emerge from A³.

About Airbus

Airbus is a global leader in aeronautics, space and related services. In 2017 it generated revenues of € 67 billion and employed a workforce of around 129,000. Airbus offers the most comprehensive range of passenger airliners from 100 to more than 600 seats.
Airbus is also a European leader providing tanker, combat, transport and mission aircraft, as well as one of the world’s leading space companies. In helicopters, Airbus provides the most efficient civil and military rotorcraft solutions worldwide

Princess Ogono is a writer, lawyer and fitness enthusiast. She believes cryptocurrencies are the future. When she's not writing, she spends time with her adorable cat, Ginger and works out often.

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