🌍 This Week in Web3ForGood

AI needs blockchain

Feb 13, 2026

Web3forGood is a weekly publication that celebrates and critically analyzes how emerging web3 technology could be used to make the world a better place.

gm gm,

Happy (almost) Lunar New Year to all who celebrate, and happy (almost) Year of the Fire Horse to all who believe. The Year of the Fire Horse carries a spirit of movement, courage, and decisive creation. After much reflection and questioning (🙋‍♀️), the invitation now is to act with clarity and build the futures we have only been imagining 🔥🐎.

If you’re on your way to ETHBoulder/ETHDenver this weekend or next week, send us your pictures, your favorite talks, and what you’ve learned.

WAGMI (we are going to make an impact!)

xx Abeera & Sam

📚 What We’re Thinking About
📣 Latest News
🔈 Watch & Listen
🚀 Opportunities & Calls to Act
🎪 Events
📡 On Our Radar
✨ And One More Thing

📚 What We’re Thinking About

🤖 Blockchain and the AI Future

Look, we know you don’t need to be reminded, but just to restate the obvious, AI development is accelerating at pretty alarming rates. At a time when most people seem to be focused on the race to AGI, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin published new thoughts this week asking everyone to please slow down. The TLDR, after explaining that he’s not against AI and some details on the AI future he wants to see, he writes, “So now, my updated view, which definitely focuses on that shorter term, and where Ethereum plays an important role but is only one piece of a bigger puzzle: Building tooling to make more trustless and/or private interaction with AIs possible.”

This is a deeper point about the types of systems we are building to support an AI-enabled world, and I would argue, one of the most important use cases for blockchain (yes, even more so than finance). Vitalik is pointing out that Ethereum should be used to shape an AI future grounded in freedom, privacy, and decentralized coordination rather than unchecked concentration of power. Because blockchains create transparent, tamper-resistant records and shared rules that no single actor controls, they offer one of the few credible ways to keep AI systems accountable to the people who must live with their consequences.

Closed AI ecosystems risk deepening inequality and limiting participation. Open, verifiable coordination creates space for public goods, shared ownership, and more democratic control over powerful technology. In other words, the convergence of blockchain and AI is critical, and it deserves out attention now.

⚡ Solana

As in, we’re thinking about Solana as we dig into this essential Guide to Solana from Cryto Altruists (a practical guide for impact builders and nonprofits exploring real-world social and environmental use cases on Solana). Solana approaches the familiar promises of Bitcoin and Ethereum from a different angle, prioritizing speed, scale, and extremely low transaction costs so that activity which feels experimental elsewhere can function like everyday infrastructure. Networks built on slower confirmation times or higher fees often reserve participation for moments of clear financial value, while Solana’s design allows frequent, small, and data-rich interactions to happen continuously in the background. This shift makes room for real-time distribution of funds, onchain records that update as conditions change, and digital coordination that does not stall under congestion or cost. The contrast is less about ideology and more about usability at scale, where public goods, open communities, and shared resources can operate with the same fluidity people expect from the rest of the internet. Learn more about the fundamentals, plus find impact case studies, resources, guides for building, and more in the Crypto Altruists Guide to Solana.

Plus:

🪪 ERC-8004 and the Early Market for Onchain AI Agent Identity: “If agents are going to move money and interact autonomously, we need a way to evaluate their trustworthiness in a system that is itself verifiable.“ (@eltoniselton)
🥊 The adversarial case for crypto: “Napster and Ethereum are both peer-to-peer, decentralized networks. They’re both ways to route around gatekeepers — record labels in one case, banks in the other. But Napster was built on its users’ desire to share, while Ethereum was built on speculators’ desire for financial returns. For Doctorow, crypto transforms peer-to-peer cooperation into something mercenary — speculation dressed up as community — and leads to bad outcomes: networks built for extraction rather than sharing. But I’d like to point out that Ethereum is still with us, and Napster is not.“ (Byron Gilliam for Blockworks)
⏳ The long game for crypto: “The core idea was — and remains — that blockchains introduce a new primitive: the ability to coordinate people and capital at internet scale, with ownership embedded directly into the system.“ (@cdixon)

📣 Latest News

Global Policy, Regulation, and Adoption News

Reports and Project Updates

February Edition of the Crypto Altruists Newsletter
Storytelling for Systems Change: A story-kit for changemakers from Dusseldorp Forum and the Centre for Public Impact

🔈 Watch & Listen

Crypto Altruists - Episode 238 - Web3 Foundation - Proof of Personhood, Community Currencies, and Empowering NGOs with Polkadot & Kusama
Green Pill Podcast - Network Nations Episode 15 - Catalysing Network Nations: Movement Building with Benjamin Life & Patricia Parkinson
Green Pill Podcast - Season 10 Episode 10 - AI Agents on Ethereum Inside the Emerging Agentic Economy with Austin Griffith & Zak Cole

🚀 Opportunities & Calls to Act

Apply: The Ethereum Foundation is hiring a Comms Associate (APAC).
Apply: Summer of Bitcoin is a global, online summer internship program focused on introducing university students to bitcoin open-source development and design.
Funding: GoodBuilders Season 3 is a 3-month continuous funding round on Celo for projects and builders creating meaningful integrations and products that drive G$ usage, adoption, and ecosystem growth. Run by GoodDollar and Flow State, the round streams $50K USD in G$ using GoodDollar’s native Superfluid capabilities. To qualify, grantees must have (or be ready to launch) a live G$ integration and a clear plan to keep building and delivering real value to users and the ecosystem. Applications are open, and teams are encouraged to apply early — the process is iterative, so you can submit your idea, receive feedback, refine your scope, and be approved before streams start in mid-February.
Funding: Funding the Commons Frontier Fund supports projects that prototype how humanity funds, governs, and coordinates shared resources as intelligence becomes abundant. It backs builders and researchers working on the real infrastructure behind that challenge: funding protocols, coordination tools, autonomous funding agents, governance frameworks, and applied research that advances how public goods actually get sustained. What matters is that the work moves public goods funding forward.
Funding: Active & ongoing Web3 grant programs serious builders should know.
Create: Are you developing an experimental art practice that pushes the boundaries of digital media? Building a tool, platform, or product that reimagines how we interact with technology? Gray Area’s Cultural Incubator provides the structure, support, and community you need to take your project to the next level. Apply by March 9.
Fellowship: GovAI’s DC Summer Fellowship is a three-month bipartisan opportunity designed to launch or accelerate impactful careers in American AI governance and policy. Participants deepen their understanding of the field, connect with a network of experts, and build their skills and professional profile, all while conducting a research project of their choice under expert guidance.

🎪 Events

🆕= New to the roundup this week

Virtual

💖 LOVE, MONEY & SELF-CUSTODY is happening February 13 (TODAY). 🆕
Crypto Fundraising 101: Digital Gold with The Giving Block is happening February 18, March 18, and April 15.
Beyond the Hype: Making Sense of Generative AI’s Rapid Evolution is happening February 19.

IRL

ETHBoulder is happening February 13-15 in Boulder, Colorado.
Rome Ethereum Community Hub Launch is happening February 15 in Rome. 🆕
ETHDenver is happening February 17-21 in Denver.
Boys Club ETHDenver Hang! is happening February 17 in Denver. 🆕
The International Association for Safe & Ethical AI (IASEAI)’s second annual conference (IASEAIʼ26) is happening February 24-26 in Paris.
DWeb Camp Unconference + Meetup @ c-base is happening February 28 in Berlin. 🆕
Funding the Commons SF: Intelligence at the Frontier is happening March 14 in San Francisco.
Touch Grass: A Retreat for Builders from Bread Collective is happening March 26-29 in Skamokawa, WA. 🆕
Stable Summit is happening in March 27-28 in Cannes, France.
The Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC 9) is happening March 30 - April 2 in Cannes, France.
Horizons in Ethics & Emerging Technologies (HEET 2026) is happening April 16 in Torino, Piemonte, Italy.
RightsCon 2026 is happening May 5-8 in Zambia.
Bitdeer X ACJR Awards are happening May 7 in Miami Beach.
Edge Esmeralda is happening May 30 - June 27 in Healdsburg, California.
The Oslo Freedom Forum is happening June 1-3 in Oslo, Norway.
ETHConf is happening June 8-10 in NYC.
DWeb Camp 2026 is happening July 8–12 in Alte Hölle - Brandenburg, Germany.
Valley of the Commons is happening August 24 - September 20 in the Austrian Alps.
Boston Blockchain Week is happening September 8-10 in Quincy, MA.
Devcon 8 is happening November 3-6 in Mumbai, India.

Recurring

Monthly Earth Day is a global event that happens on the 22nd every month, not just once a year. Get involved next on February 22.

📡 On Our Radar

Sigbash, a Bitcoin co-signing service, released Sigbash v2, introducing a new approach it calls oblivious signing for Bitcoin multisignature custody. “For activists and civil society groups, Sigbash can protect funds against misuse or theft without exposing sensitive financial information to authoritarian regimes.” (via Financial Freedom Report)