8/ This Week in Web3forGood
A weekly roundup of the ways Web3 tech can used to make the world a better place.
Welcome to Week 8 in Web3forGood,
I remember first hearing about DAOs and reading more about them - I got the basic gist but I didn’t truly understand how they worked until I experienced one up close.
Some of you might have heard of the Constitution DAO. In November 2021, one of the only 13 surviving copies of the United States Constitution was up for auction at Sotheby’s, and among the groups that hoped to buy it was Constitution DAO, a digital group who pooled cryptocurrency to buy the documents. By donating to the DAO, investors received governance tokens, which would have granted them the ability to advise on how and where the constitution should be displayed and the mission of the DAO.
The sense of ownership this whole process created was amazing to experience firsthand. Immigrants who were donating proudly posted on Twitter!
Again, it was amazing to see this in action. Together, people organized on Twitter and Discord and raised over $45 million!
As the auction began, the excitement across Discord and Twitter was palpable. ConstitutionDAO lost the bid, but seeing a DAO in action for the first time was quite an experience for me, and I’m excited to see what DAOs will mean for the future of work. This week, we highlight 5 social impact DAOs that have caught our attention.
As always, we would love for this newsletter to be more community driven so please reach out if you would like to contribute to this newsletter, or if there is a project or person in this space that you would like us to reach out to or highlight.
What’s Inside
📣 Latest News
📚 What We’re Reading
🚀 Opportunities
📡 On Our Radar
🌊 Deep Dive: DAOs and Social Impact, a perfect match?
📣 Latest News
The Uniswap on Celo proposal is now passing with over 50M votes voting for the proposal
IMF publishes Global Financial Stability Report discussing Bitcoin
Central African Republic Looks for ‘Quick Wins,’ Becomes Second Country to Adopt Bitcoin
📚 What We’re Reading & Listening To
Some NFTs sales are helping create a more just and equitable world.
Investing.com suggests donations in digital assets could be more trustworthy than those made in fiat currencies.
Food and climate movements are using Web3 and DAOs for decentralization and transparency.
"People want to be a part of something more grounded, something that leverages web3 tools to make an impact on the way humanity operates. And I think they’ll find it in the Celo community." Packy McCormick did a great overview of the Celo ecosystem this week, great for anyone looking to learn more about ReFi, Climate Change, and a very positive spin on the future of web3 and crypto.
Why the debate about crypto's energy consumption is flawed, according to the World Economic Forum.
🚀 Opportunities
Apply: impactMarket is hiring a Grant Writer & Major Gifts Officer
Apply: Meta Angels x Adobe Artist in Residence program is now accepting applications.
Attend: Global Digital Development Forum is happening online May 4-5. The keynote presentation at 13:00 GMT on May 5 is all about Web3.
Join: The melon is a flexible collaborative designed to help anyone build, lead or join a web3 project.
📡 On Our Radar
Crypto Coral Tribe: is a creative hub driving marine and wildlife conservation through art & tech through a collection of 6,565 unique NFTs that represent a force for change. The Impact Fund (IF) is a community led treasury investing in our planet - seeded with 50% of all primary and secondary sales. Read their litepaper to learn more.
The African NFT Collective is a global movement for African art and technology on the blockchain.
Luxury department store Harvey Nichols has launched HN NFT Vault, an NFT retail concept space which will offer a curated selection of NFTs for exploration and sale.
The Three Bears from Seva.Love, artist WhIsBe, and wildlife photographer and filmmaker Hamid Sardar sheds light on the acute phenomenon of climate refugees in the animal world.
Terrene Perceptions is a collection of creators using art to cultivate new forms and practices of planetary cognition. A portion of the proceeds go to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #2 of Zero Hunger.
🌊 DAOs and Social Impact, a perfect match?
To put it simply, a DAO (Decentralised Autonomous organisation) is a community with a shared bank account; it is a way of working together with no centralised leadership. DAOs are governed by their community members and predefined rules determine how decisions are made and capital is allocated.
A DAO’s smart contract defines the rules of the organization and holds the group’s treasury. It defines when a vote needs to be held and how much community support an initiative needs. No one can spend the treasury funds without the approval of the community.
DAOs are often funded by the issuance of a governance token (cryptocurrency) or by the sale of an NFT collection. The purchasers of these assets are granted access to a community built on a shared set of beliefs. The assets also represent their voting rights in that community.
With regards to creating social impact, DAOs are a natural fit due to the importance they put on community governance;- this is an obvious synergy for grassroots organizations without traditional leadership, as opposed to traditional non-profits that are more centralized. DAOs also create new models of accountability since their financial transactions and rules are recorded on a blockchain. There is no question about how the organization spends money, because it is visible for all to see. By nature of design, DAOs are made up of active, engaged communities and create a two way relationship between a supporter and a cause unlike a traditional one-way donation model.
Here are 5 DAOs in the social impact space that we think are creating impact and changing the way things are done:
KlimaDAO: If you are interested in climate change, KlimaDAO is hard to miss.