🌍 This Week in Web3forGood
A weekly roundup of the ways Web3 tech is being used to make the world a better place.
Hi All,
Welcome to Week 2 of our “Web3forGood” newsletter - we had a great response to the first newsletter last week and hope readers enjoy this one too!
Last Friday, just after I finished celebrating with Abeera about publishing the first edition of this newsletter, I signed off for a weekend that was supposed to be spent offline catching up with a friend in Tulum, far away from Web3. Imagine my surprise, when two days later, driving down a busy beach road, I saw a storefront with the sign “NFT BOUTIQUE.” As if that wasn’t eye-catching enough, there was a giant ATV parked out front with a sign that read “2.5 Solana = 1 Hour Ride + 1 NFT” too. It was a very real reminder that the potential impact of Web3 isn’t just digital any more - it spills over into the “real-world” too.
This week, we’re looking at exactly that - the physical, real-world impact that Web3, specifically NFTs, can enable. We look into a recent report on the growth of the market and explore some specific examples of NFT projects with built-in social utility that promise to create real-world social impact. There are still lots of questions. Is the impact real? How is it measured? How many active players can there be in the space? We don’t have the answers to these questions, but we do know that the potential for good is there.
Are you bullish on NFTs for good or skeptical? Which projects, if any, are you a part of? Send us a note at web3forgood@gmail.com. As always, we’d love to hear from you.
xx Sam (& Abeera)
P.S. Sam went back to the NFT Boutique in Tulum that night, and learned that each NFT collection on display was created by a different Mexican artist and each supports a local, social cause. You can learn more about what they are doing in Tulum here.
Image Source: Instagram @unlockablecontentagency
What’s Inside
📣 Latest News
📚 What We’re Reading
🚀 Opportunities
🌊 Deep Dive: NFT Social Utility and Social Impact
📣 Latest News
📚 What We’re Reading
Ethereum has talked about shifting its underlying consensus mechanisms from Proof-of-work (PoW) to Proof-of-stake (PoS) for a while now. Finally, it has passed a major test in making that shift. Currently a single PoW Ethereum transaction can consume as much power as the average US household uses in more than a week! Hence, the anticipated transition to PoS, which it “promises will use 99% less energy, allow the network to scale, and help it reach 100,000 transactions per second,” is a positive response to the criticism of how energy extensive blockchain technology can be.
US President Joe Biden’s Executive Order on digital asset innovation – directing federal agencies to study the industry and report on regulatory authority – is a major win for the industry in the United States. The focus is no longer on whether crypto will survive, but rather on how to encourage responsible innovation and what role US leadership can and should play.
Creative women all over the world are turning to NFTs as a creative outlet, including women in the Middle East. From avoiding censorship to achieving equity, this article delves more into how Arab women creators are using the technology to their advantage.
How do you measure the success of online communities? According to this paper published at the 2019 The World Wide Web Conference, there is more than one way. Actually, there are four. This research might be a couple years old, but the lessons are especially relevant today as we think about how community drives social utility in the NFT world.
🚀 Opportunities
Funding Opportunity - Mercy Corps Ventures launched their Crypto for Good Fund, which will provide equity-free grants between $25,000 and $100,000 to ten eligible startups to run their pilot over a six month period in 2022.
Attend - The Mental Health and Wellness Festival in Decentraland is happening Saturday March 19 and is free to attend.
Apply - DoinGud is hiring local ambassadors in Denver, Miami, Austin, and Boston.
Apply - EarthFundDao is hiring a Project Manager (Miami).
Subscribe - Cryptojobslist.com produces a weekly jobs newsletter.
🌊 NFT Social Utility and Social Impact
NFTs. Mention the acronym, and the reaction is often visceral, from total loathing to confusion to gushing love. Whatever your opinion about this digital asset class, its sudden and rapid rise in cultural relevance over the last six to twelve months is hard to ignore. Celebrities are buying things called Bored Apes for millions of dollars. Athletes are launching NFT agencies. Previously unknown creatives are becoming overnight millionaires by selling their digital art.
According to a new report by industry tracker NonFungible.com, NFT sales soared to $17.7 billion in 2021, up from $82.5 million in 2020. That’s a jump of more than 200 times, which could support the idea that NFTs are a bubble that’s about to burst. Whether or not that bubble is real, NFT technology is unique in that, beyond financial value, it can be used to create community value via the social utility of assets. This presents a real opportunity to create real-world social impact.
If you’re new to this space, you might be wondering, “What is an NFT?” In some ways, it depends on who you ask. NFTs can be works of art, collectibles, tokens, invites to join certain communities, gaming assets, tickets to real-world events, representations of real-world objects, and more. For the total beginner, here’s what you need to know: NFT stands for “non-fungible token,” which is a fancy way of saying a unique, non-interchangeable representation of value that can be traded and sold. For comparison, a fungible token, is something like a US dollar, a Euro, or a Bitcoin - if someone were to hand you a dollar, it wouldn’t matter *which* specific dollar they handed you; the value is the same. Now imagine someone were to hand you a Pokémon card, a Beanie Baby, or a painting - in this case, *which* specific item you receive matters significantly. A Holographic Charizard, First Edition Princess Diana bear, or an original Picasso painting would hold significantly more value than more basic items in the collections.
Non-fungible tokens as a concept aren’t new; what’s new in the Web3 world is that such tokens can be stored, bought, and sold on blockchains as digital assets, thus opening the floodgates to whole new ways to collect and create representative value. Often, when people buy into an NFT project, they do so not simply to own the artwork or token, but also to join the affiliated community, which is inherently socioeconomic. They also buy access to the social utilities of the piece.
NFT projects with built-in social utility go beyond just selling art and donating the profits to a cause; they actually create solutions and organize actions, in this sense, functioning more like social impact businesses by creating two-way utility for holders. If a community is active and organized well, this means that the relationship between the project founders and funders is ongoing. In other words, unlike the traditional one-way, transactional relationship model of a financial contribution to a charity, purchasing an NFT with social utility is more akin to an investment, where a holder has an ongoing relationship to and can directly influence the cause.
In the social impact world, this is already having a major impact on what’s possible for funding real-world change, as made clear by the increasing number of NFTs projects that are incorporating a social utility component, often with real-world impact, into their roadmaps at launch. These projects range from global to local, with varying impact targets in mind.
For example, the upcoming project Nemus features collectible NFTs that conserve & protect the Amazon Rainforest. To make this happen, Nemus’ founders secured actual land in the Amazon, and each NFT is tied to a portion of the land. Participants who mint (mint = the term for publishing an NFT on the blockchain), referred to as Guardians, will participate in real-world decisions about the land their NFT represents, with the goal to prevent deforestation. Thus, by purchasing a Nemus NFT, participants are funding and taking action to support the preservation of the rainforest.
Another example is Women Rise,* a collection of uniquely generated art pieces by a Pakistani artist, author, and activist Maliha Abidi. The mission here is to advance women's rights and girls' education with the ultimate goal of building the first school in the metaverse for children without access to education. Holders have access to an active, global community that shares their values, including a recent interview with world-renowned activist Malala.
Image Source: Women Rise NFT #1321, owned by Pranksy
Other projects approach social utility by economically supporting traditionally marginalized groups. For example, Moon Landing, “a new initiative for neurodiversity in the NFT space,” collaborates directly with a specific nonprofit studio and its neurodivergent artists to create its collections. Beyond funding, the project works directly with the nonprofits it partners with to educate its artists (all of whom have intellectual, learning, or developmental disabilities) about the technical steps of producing NFTs and using cryptocurrencies.
There are also projects that function by defining and rewarding certain values, as opposed to focusing on specific impact targets. The project Leyline promises to enable the minting of NFTs in exchange for real-world acts of social good via what the organization calls a Proof-of-Good protocol. On Chain Monkey,* a project by Meta Good, is a 10,000 piece collection centered around the shared community values of “respect, integrity, sustainability and experimentation.” Together, participating holders take action to create various real-world impacts, like working with British-American charity Future Brilliance to bring Sharbat Gula, an icon for Afghan female refugees made famous by her appearance on the cover of National Geographic, to safety. In both cases, there is no defined impact target in either project’s roadmap; instead the social utility lies in the shared values of the NFT holders enabling the community to act in alignment.
This is just a handful of the many, many social-impact NFT projects out there right now. Actually, more and more, as new projects launch, the norm seems to be for NFT projects to function as a direct way to fund and support a real-world social cause by incorporating social utility into the value of an asset.
Image Source: @DavidAll
The above graphic illustrates the topic breakdowns for accepted speakers for the 4th annual NFT.NYC event taking place in June 2022. “NFT for Good” dominates 9.8% of sessions, second only to “Art” at 11.4%. Which is to say, “NFT for Good” is a hot topic that the world is only just starting to explore.
Despite all the good NFTs can do, it’s important to remember that not all NFTs are good. The negative side of the industry is well documented, from seemingly bizarre get-rich-quick schemes to outright scams - just scroll through the (ironically named) Web3 is Going Just Great page for a snapshot of some of the worst, every-day examples. As with any new technology, it’s important to think critically and remain vigilant.
If you are interested in learning more about NFTs with social good utility or getting involved in a project of your own, the best place to start is to find a project with (1) a clear, published roadmap that aligns with your values, (2) a fully doxed aka identified team with relevant experience, and (3) an existing, active community. Then join that community. In the Web3 world, this typically means joining a project’s Discord channel and following along on Twitter. Even if you aren’t planning on purchasing an NFT, this is a great way to learn the most about a cause, the people involved, and ways you can get involved.
Ultimately, whether or not the financial bubble is real, by uniquely embedding social utility into digital assets, NFT technology has the potential to enable new and exciting ways to create real-world, positive social impact together. We believe that is a good thing.
Did you join an NFT project because you were attracted to the cause it supported? What projects are on your radar?
*I own both Women Rise and OnChainMonkey NFTs. Both are what initially attracted me to the Web3 space and sent me down the NFT rabbit-hole.
Nothing contained in this newsletter should be construed as financial or investment advice. This newsletter is for informational educational purposes only.