Share this article
Gates Foundation Partners With Former Ripple CTO's Blockchain Project
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has partnered with Coil, a startup founded by Ripple's former CTO, to provide payment services for the unbanked.
Updated Sep 13, 2021, 8:30 a.m. Published Oct 18, 2018, 2:05 p.m.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has partnered with blockchain startup Coil as part of its mission to provide payment services for the unbanked.
The news comes via a tweet from Miller Abel, the foundation's deputy director and principal technologist, on Oct. 17. Abel indicated that the organization and Coil will work together to implement the Interledger Protocol and explore ways to support "pro-poor payment systems."
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
Interledger is an interoperability protocol that allows payments across different crypto networks. The technology was initially co-developed by former Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas while he was still with the distributed ledger payments firm. The same tech now being used as the basis of Coil, which Thomas founded earlier this year, as CoinDesk reported.
While further details on the new partnership are thus far sparse, Abel also mentioned Ripple in his tweets yesterday.
The Gates Foundation announced its partnership with Ripple in October last year, when the two released an open-source software called Mojaloop – also focused on payment services to the poor and unbanked.
Yesterday's development appears to indicate that the Gates Foundation will work with Coil alongside Ripple to further develop the Mojaloop platform, which uses Interledger technology and connects the different parties in the payment system to facilitate real-time transactions.
According to a press release published last year, Mojaloop is an "open-source software for creating payment platforms that will help unbanked people around the world access digital financial services."
Abel tweeted yesterday that Mojaloop "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."
The Gates Foundation has been exploring blockchain technology applications since as early as 2015 as part of its effort to improve financial inclusion.
Bill Gates image via Shutterstock
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
CME Group Expands Crypto Derivatives With Spot-Quoted XRP and Solana Futures
These are CME’s smallest crypto contracts to date, aimed at active participants who prefer to trade in spot market terms without managing contract expiries or rollovers.
What to know:
- CME Group has launched Spot-Quoted futures for XRP (XRP) and Solana (SOL), allowing for trading closer to real-time market prices.
- These are CME’s smallest crypto contracts to date, aimed at active participants who prefer to trade in spot market terms without managing contract expiries or rollovers.
- The launch also includes Trading at Settlement (TAS) for XRP, SOL and Micro futures, enabling traders to manage risk around crypto ETFs with added flexibility.
Top Stories
