The Gates' Partnership With Coil Could Be A Ripple Breakthrough

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Cryptocurrencies are all struggling for one thing – mass adoption. Due to their nature of being in a state of constant flux or say their volatility largely because they are unregulated, people are very much sceptical about investing in them. For all you do not know it may be the next scam – because there are several crypto scams out there. Thus, whenever reputable institutions or persons begin to endorse cryptocurrencies there is a whole lot of relief and also building of trust in that crypto. The Ripple XRP may have just become the next beneficiary of such endorsement after the Gates Foundation entered a partnership with a development firm closely related to Ripple.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has entered into a partnership with Coil, a blockchain firm in an effort to help bring payment services to people without access to banking services. The partnership is meant to use Interledger Protocol to support “pro-poor systems”. Deputy director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Miller Abel, made the partnership known to the public via tweet which read

We are partnering w/ @ripple and @coil to implement the #Interledger Protocol & explore ways #Mojaloop can support pro-poor payment systems. #githubuniverse

— Miller Abel (@MillerAbel_) October 17, 2018

Interledger is a protocol that enables cross payments from one cryptocurrency network to another. Stefan Thomas, former CTO at Ripple, is the developer of the Interledger Protocol technology during his tenure at Ripple Labs. His moved to start Coil marked a transition of the tech as it was going to be used as the basis for Coil’s major operations.

Miller did not give much details concerning the partnership. An issue that held initially was whether Ripple was really a part of the partnership or not. Ripple was mentioned in the tweet though. However, a year ago the Foundation set up by Bill and his wife Melinda also announced that it was going to partner with Ripple. This has led many people to believe that this is also a partnership with Ripple to co-develop the Mojaloop open source network which is also used to aid payment services of unbanked people.

Abel mentioned concerning Mojaloop that “payments are in national currency of the given country, so that the system helps include and integrate the people (usually poor) who have historically been left out”. A press release from Mojaloop’s developers last year described the technology as an

“open source software for creating payment platforms that will help unbanked people around the world access digital financial services.”

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the many institutions that have expressed interest blockchain technology and has been looking into how it can use the tech to transform operations.

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