🌍 This Week in Web3forGood
state onchain
gm gm,
This week’s stories trace a changing relationship between states and the systems that move value. In Bhutan, national identity is finding its way onchain; meanwhile, across the world in the US, billions in Bitcoin is being held rather than converted to cash, a major policy shift. Across borders and ideologies, governments are beginning to engage with blockchain not just as speculation, but as infrastructure. Where will we go from here?
The shape of this shift is uneven, sometimes messy, and deeply human. It reminds us that the future of these technologies will unfold differently everywhere, shaped by local realities and the ways people choose to build within them.
WAGMI (we are going to make an impact!)
What’s Inside
📚 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
🧭 Bhutan’s Blockchain Experiment
By 2026, Bhutan plans to move its entire national digital identity system onto Ethereum, the same public blockchain that powers much of today’s web3 ecosystem.
In practice, this means every Bhutanese citizen could have a secure, government-issued credential that lives online and works like a verified passport for the internet. Something like this could prove who you are when you apply for jobs, open a bank account, or access healthcare, while letting you decide what information to share, all verified cryptographically.
Until now, Bhutan’s digital ID ran on a Polygon blockchain. Moving it to Ethereum marks a significant philosophical shift. Ethereum is a public blockchain, which means the system’s integrity depends on code and a global network of computers rather than a single authority. Bhutan hopes this will make digital identity more secure, more portable, and more future-proof, something citizens can use across borders or digital platforms.
If it succeeds, Bhutan could set a global example of how governments can use public infrastructure to manage identity in a way that protects privacy and empowers citizens.
💰 This $14B Bitcoin Seizure
US authorities have seized ~127,271 BTC (worth over $14 billion) from a Cambodian-based “pig-butchering” scam ring, which made headlines this week as the largest crypto forfeiture in US history. What makes this case stand out though is not just the scale, but the evolving posture toward seized crypto.
Traditionally, when law enforcement confiscated crypto, the next step was to liquidate it into dollars and insert the proceeds into U.S. coffers. In this case, the U.S. already has the Bitcoin held in custody as part of its forfeiture proceeding. It’s a subtle but meaningful shift.
Holding seized crypto rather than immediately converting it suggests a maturing strategy where the government treats digital assets as assets in their own right. It introduces the possibility that the US may manage, reserve, or even deploy seized crypto differently in future cases, potentially tying it to broader monetary, regulatory, or operational goals.
Overall, this is a landmark moment showing that state actors are beginning to see Bitcoin less as a disposable target and more as something to steward… or at least, not rush to eliminate.
🧩 Putting ETH to Work
The Ethereum Foundation moved 2,400 ETH (worth nearly $9.6 million) plus $6 million in stablecoins into a DeFi lending protocol. This means that, rather than sitting idle or being sold off, those funds will now earn yield in a permissionless, on-chain system.
In other words, instead of the Foundation converting ETH to cash to cover costs (which they have done routinely in the past), they’re now putting ETH to work in protocols built on the same infrastructure the Ethereum ecosystem uses. That choice shows they trust and want to participate in that ecosystem, not just use it as a backdrop. Plus, by allocating funds in this way, the Foundation can generate yield, support aligned protocols, and reduce its reliance on traditional liquidation paths. The foundation expressed it would do this earlier this year after criticism over one of its routine sales of ETH to fund its operations. Now, it’s finally happening.
Plus:
🕊️ The Latest Nobel Peace Prize Winner Is a Bitcoin Supporter: “Venezuelans have long used cryptocurrencies as a way to dodge out of control prices. A toxic combination of government currency controls, corruption, and U.S. sanctions led the Venezuelan bolivar to collapse almost 10 years ago.” (Decrypt)
🤖 The AI Revolution: Our Immortality or Extinction: “Often, someone’s first thought when they imagine a super-smart computer is one that’s as intelligent as a human but can think much, much faster2—they might picture a machine that thinks like a human, except a million times quicker, which means it could figure out in five minutes what would take a human a decade. That sounds impressive, and ASI would think much faster than any human could—but the true separator would be its advantage in intelligence quality, which is something completely different.” (WaitButWhy)
🧠 Investing in Kalshi: “Today we might say that the answer to the knowledge problem is not to give central planners more sophisticated computers. The answer is that markets themselves are the computers. Prediction markets make this idea concrete, applying it to questions about the future and turning collective knowledge into prices that reflect probabilities.” (a16z crypto)
🪪 Worldcoin’s less ‘dystopian,’ more cypherpunk rival: Billions Network: “It’s part of a new wave of decentralized identity projects that prioritize privacy and pseudonymity through zero-knowledge proofs and selective disclosures.” (Magazine by Cointelegraph)
🔁 Stablecoins Don’t Win by Minting. They Win by Moving. “Because in the end, money doesn’t need more issuers, it needs better coordination. And the future of stablecoins will rely whoever can orchestrate movement, not just mint supply.” (@0xcoconutt)
🔑 Unlocking Economic Inclusion: Bitcoin and the Hope of Millions. “While Americans often view bitcoin primarily as an innovative, rapidly growing and gateless asset class, for countless people across Latin America, bitcoin is fundamentally practical.“ (Bitcoin Policy Institute)
📣 Latest News
Introducing Localism Fund: Building Place-Based Power with Ethereum
Gitcoin’s Schelling Point and Funding the Commons join forces for DevCon
Filecoin Foundation Announces One Million Cultural Artifacts Preserved on the Filecoin Network
Global Policy, Regulation, and Adoption News
Stablecoin News
Reports & Project Updates
🔈 Watch & Listen
Crypto Altruists - Episode 222 - Octant Epoch 9 Special - Communicating Ethereum’s Human Story to the Masses
Green Pill - GG24: Inside the First Funding Round of Gitcoin 3.0 — Funding What Matters
🚀 Opportunities & Calls to Act
Funding: FIL-RetroPGF-3 is an Optimism-inspired Retroactive Public Goods Funding round for the Filecoin Ecosystem. Applications open now.
Funding: Gitcoin Grants 24 (GG24) represents Gitcoin’s 3.0 model, not just Quadratic Funding, but a plural, network-first approach that makes Ethereum’s coordination engine more resilient and aligned with community values. Applications open now.
Funding: The Oops!…AI Did It Again challenge addresses the urgent need to equip young people with the skills, knowledge, and confidence to navigate AI, which is rapidly reshaping their learning, creativity, relationships, and mental health. Up to $100,000 in grant funding is available. Applications open now.
Subscribe: No Signal is a new substack from Kernel. Kernel is a unique learning environment, somewhere between a fellowship and a residency, which has been lucky to host 2,000+ talented technologists from around crypto and the broader web. This Substack is dedicated to amplifying the stories, research, and products of those technologists.
Hack: ETHOnline 2025 is an async hackathon event running from October 10-31 that will bring together some of the top minds and experts in Ethereum Ecosystem. We enable teams to make something great in a little over three weeks by providing an abundance of web3 resources like mentors, partners, and software.
🎪 Events
🆕= New to the roundup this week
Virtual
ETHOnline 2025 is happening October 10-31.
RealFi Hack: Winners Announcement is happening October 20. 🆕
The Web We’ve Built from the Internet Archive is happening October 22.
Metagov x Future of Science Seminar: Elif Eckmekci is happening October 22.
BLI Global Summit on Digital Assets, Blockchain & Technology For Consumers is happening October 23.
Celo Governance Call #79 is happening October 23. 🆕
IRL
Doors Open 2025: Go Behind–the-Scenes at the Physical Internet Archive is happening October 21 in San Francisco.
Zebu Live is happening October 21-22 in London.
The London Blockchain Conference is happening October 22-23 in London.
Responsible Tech Summit: Centering Humanity in our Tech Future is happening October 27 in NYC.
Bitplebs Summit is happening November 1 in Goa, India.
Borderless 4.0 is happening November 1 at University of Nigeria Nsukka.
FIL Dev Summit 7 @ DevConnect is happening November 13 in Buenos Aires.
LabWeek Web3 by Protocol Labs is happening November 13-19 in Buenos Aires.
The Uniswap Cup is happening November 16 in Buenos Aires.
Devconnect 2025 is happening November 17-22 in Buenos Aires.
DePIN Day Buenos Aires is happening November 18 in Buenos Aires. 🆕
Funding the Commons: Buenos Aires 2025 is happening November 19 in Buenos Aires. 🆕
Schelling Point is happening November 20 in Buenos Aires.
Vision Weekend USA 2025 is happening December 5-7 in San Francisco. 🆕
The Oslo Freedom Forum is happening June 1-3 in Oslo, Norway. 🆕
ETHBoulder is coming in 2026…
Recurring
Monthly Earth Day is a global event that happens on the 22nd every month, not just once a year. Get involved next on October 22.
📡 On Our Radar
INHABIT is a global regenerative platform pioneering ecosystem restoration through biocultural hubs, Stewardship NFTs, and a groundbreaking legal framework that recognizes nature’s rights. The team is building a network of living laboratories where traditional knowledge meets contemporary science, connecting local communities with global stewards to protect and restore critical ecosystems and biodiversity hotspots.
Filecoin Pin is a fully decentralized persistence layer for IPFS content using the global network of Filecoin storage providers with cryptographic guarantees.
Storacha decentralizes storage giving true data ownership while ensuring that once data is created, it remains fast, verifiable, and accessible without relying on a single provider. Presearch is a search engine that enables people to access information without profiling, filtering, or surveillance. Together, decentralized search and storage form the backbone of a free internet.
The Mento FX ID Card is an entry pass to the global onchain FX layer.
✨ And One More Thing
Celo Season1 Program Overview: a complete guide to help you identify the best opportunities for funding in Q4 2025.
Thanks!