Journalist
Sead Fadilpašić
Journalist
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Creu Roja (Spanish Red Cross) has revealed a novel, privacy-preserving, digital aid platform based on blockchain, with verifiable donor transparency.
According to the press release, Barcelona-based technical infrastructure company BLOOCK collaborated on the platform’s development.
The new product integrates enterprise IT systems with blockchain. Developers utilised Ethereum on the public blockchain side, as well as Solidity smart contracts for ERC-20-based credit issuance.
Among other tech points, they noted Ionic for the mobile wallet, and “role-based access control with digital signatures throughout.”
The announcement claims that the construction “ensures that even if external systems were compromised, the blockchain itself contains no exploitable personal information.”
Moreover, Creu Roja deploys the zero-knowledge technology by the human and AI verification platform Billions Network (formerly Polygon ID). The platform digitises the entire aid lifecycle from donation to disbursement, promising that “no personal data ever touches the public blockchain.”
The goal is to provide donors with complete traceability and financial transparency, while preserving the privacy and dignity of recipients.
Therefore, RedChain’s hybrid trust model enables all aid recipients’ information to be kept entirely off-chain in Creu Roja’s controlled systems. Spending data also stays off-chain, with corresponding on-chain verification hashes. “The complete audit trail can be reconstructed from on-chain proofs without ever exposing personal data,” the developers claim.
Francisco López Romero, CTO at Creu Roja, Catalunya, commented that “people seeking assistance shouldn’t have to choose between getting help and protecting their privacy.” Therefore, the organisation designed this new system “so donors can verify their contributions made a real difference, and beneficiaries can access support without fear of being tracked, profiled, or stigmatised.”
Replacing Manual and Paper-Based Processes
The announcement highlighted that the novel platform simplifies the entire process. It removes the traditional paper-based workflows and prepaid cards. Instead, a digital system “separates what donors need to know from what they don’t.”
Recipients do not need a bank account or credit history, Creu Roja says. They receive digital aid credits in the form of ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum smart contracts. These tokens land directly into personal mobile wallets.
Also, nothing marks these credits as “aid.” Recipients spend them via QR codes at authorised local merchants “in transactions indistinguishable from any normal purchase.”
At the same time, donors and administrators can follow aggregated aid flows in real time. This enables them to see the allocated amount, the spent amount, and where each euro went, the organisation says.
Why Is This Platform Needed?
Creu Roja noted that there is growing scrutiny of international aid delivery. Affected communities can’t receive proper and effective assistance due to a lack of transparency, corruption, and favouritism.
And even though blockchain solutions existed prior to this platform’s implementation, most require recipients to give up their personal data, including biometrics.
What this may lead to, even if unintentionally, is to vulnerable populations being exposed to surveillance, profiling, and discrimination, Creu Roja says.
“The BLOOCK’s approach demonstrates how humanitarian organisations can combine accountability, privacy, and digital efficiency without introducing new risks for the people they serve,” the press release says.
Moreover, per Evin McMullen, CEO and co-founder at Billions Network, Creu Roja built a credential system, not a surveillance one.
“Recipients hold proof of their eligibility in their own wallet. They present it when needed, reveal nothing else, and move on with their lives. That’s how identity should work everywhere and especially in humanitarian and public-interest systems. You own your credentials, you decide what to share, and no one builds a profile on you without your consent,” he writes.
Lluís Llibre, CEO of BLOOCK, added that “blockchain should certify truth, not store content.” This is what the platform’s architecture enables. “Every transaction generates a cryptographic proof that’s permanently anchored and independently verifiable, but the proof contains no personal information.”
Meanwhile, the announcement said that the BLOOCK platform processed more than 952,000 cryptographic transactions and over 257,000 data validations to date.
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