🌍 This Week in Web3ForGood
blockchain IRL
Web3forGood is a weekly publication that celebrates and critically analyzes how emerging web3 technology could be used to make the world a better place.
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This week, we’re thinking about practical humanitarian and IRL uses of blockchain.
Women in a refugee camps being paid via a blockchain-based payment network. Collective funding for community regeneration. It’s happening in the real world, and it’s happening now.
Reminder: there are just two weeks left to donate to the Tor Project’s and Funding the Commons’ crypto crowdfunding campaign for internet freedom. Support an individual project of support the matching pool. Every bit makes a difference.
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
🪪 Paying refugees with blockchain
In Jordan’s Syrian refugee camps, UN Women replaced a cumbersome cash-envelope system with a blockchain-based payment network linked to biometric identity verification. The result was a system that helped more than 1,000 refugee women receive money they earned more efficiently, transparently, and independently — and one that kept working even when COVID lockdowns shut down traditional distribution channels.
The reflections from the people who actually built and operated the system are insightful. Identity turned out to be the biggest challenge. Most recipients had no conventional ID, so the team tied the payments to iris scanning backed by UNHCR's refugee registry, and getting that verification right was harder and mattered more than the blockchain itself. The team was also refreshingly honest that technology cannot solve every social problem. The iris scan made sure only women could reach their funds, but it could not stop a relative from pressuring her once the cash was in hand, which is a question of program design rather than code.
Still, the biggest lesson is encouraging. The blockchain did exactly what it was supposed to do, getting money to more people faster, more transparently, and more reliably than the old system ever could, even holding up through a lockdown. It worked because the team paired it with the right identity verification and thoughtful program design, which is the key takeaway here. When you build the human pieces around it with this much care, the technology can be a genuine force for good.
🌱 Collective funding for community regeneration
Earlier this week, we joined the Funding the Commons Town Hall event featuring the team at Ma Earth, which describes itself as a collective funding platform, purpose-built for community-led regeneration. The TLDR is this: Ma Earth blends crowdfunding, philanthropy, climate finance, and digital tech into one platform. It’s definitely not a new project, but they do have a new platform to share, and there is truly a lot to be excited about, namely the incredible, detailed thinking behind it.
Recognizing that funding today tends to skews toward western systems and methods and that there is no silver bullet for regen solutions, the team opted to build an open stack for regen instead. The goal is that, by creating a great design space, the people on the ground who know what they are doing can lead the way without tedious hoops to jump through for funding.
Ma Earth calls its approach “Web2.5;” permissionless, they emphasize, must not only mean that something is possible, but just as importantly, it must be easy for anyone to do. Ma Earth’s Ken Beckers summed this up perfectly when he said “seed phrases are the web3 version of bureaucratic violence.” (Louder for everyone in the back!). Their answer is to facilitate the data without owning any of it, all running on the Certified Protocol (if you’re into the tech, more on that, here).
The call featured great audience questions and wrapped with breakout sessions. Join the next Town Hall from anywhere in the world by subscribing to Funding the Commons’ events here.
Plus:
🔢 How do you quadratically fund the proper way? Octant showed the work (math nerds, rejoice!) ahead of their highly anticipated Epoch 12. They’re calling in Proper QF (pQF), noting that it’s truly a “trustless implementation of capital-constrained QF, faithful to Buterin, Hitzig, & Weyl’s original proposal and proofs.”
⏳ European crypto users have less than two months to make sure they are using a MiCA regulated exchange.
🌐 A new paper from the Global Solutions Initiative introducesthe idea of “plural protocol ecosystems” as a comprehensive alternative to the centralized, extractive digital infrastructures currently dominated by massive tech monopolies.
📣 Latest News
Mastercard expands onchain settlement in bet on stablecoins and always-on finance
Andrew Yang’s Noble Acquires Crypto-Fueled Helium Mobile Service
Global Policy, Regulation, and Adoption News
Stellar to Power Bermuda’s Plan to Become World’s First Fully Onchain Economy
Japan must promote yen stablecoins in Asia, ruling party panel says
Ripple is bringing its regulated RLUSD stablecoin to MENA’s biggest crypto market
US House Democrats call for FTC probe into prediction markets
Reports & Project Updates
AthenaBIO Updates (formerly AthenaDAO)
🔈 Watch & Listen
Crypto Altruists - Episode 254 - Memes with Meaning: How the $BONK Community Raised $600K for Animal Welfare, with Buddies for Paws
🚀 Opportunities & Calls to Act
Apply: Foresight Institute is hiring a Compute Support & Systems Administrator (Part-Time Contractor – Berlin).
Apply: Kiss the Ground is hiring a Brand Engagement Representative – Business Development.
Hack: Hack Your Summer is a 4-week program for college students to build undeniable proof of their capabilities and expand their professional networks.
Fund: The Tor Project and Funding the Commons are running a crypto crowdfunding campaign for internet freedom using the quadratic funding methodology. Donate to a project directly or fund the matching pool. The more individual donations a project receives, the more match pool funding they receive.
Learn: UNDP’s Cyber4Africa Programme is designed to co-build the trust layer that makes AI diffusion viable. Selected startups receive a tailored cybersecurity assessment, expert-led training from Cyber 4.0’s specialist network and Cisco’s Nairobi Training Centre, and hands-on support to strengthen their security posture and operational resilience. The call is open to African AI startups at MVP stage or beyond, handling sensitive data in one or more of five priority sectors: healthcare and digital health, fintech and financial services, govtech and civic technology, energy and climate technology, and AI infrastructure and data platforms.
Crypto Altruists@Crypto_AltruismCrypto regulation in Europe is evolving and your input can shape it. 🌍 The EU just opened a public consultation on MiCA. If you work in web3 for good, this is directly relevant. Open until August 31. 👇 finance.ec.europa.eu/news/commissio…2:06 PM · Jun 4, 2026 · 187 Views2 Replies · 2 Reposts · 8 Likes
🎪 Events
Virtual
Regeneration Pollination Solarpunk: World Environment Day is happening June 5.
Fast Forward Virtual Demo Day 2026 is happening June 9.
A Salon on AI’s Grand Bargain from RadicalxChange is happening June 10. 🆕
Community Call: Let’s Play The Polycentricity Game! hosted by Metagov is happening June 11. 🆕
Metagov Orientation Call is happening June 17. 🆕
Regenerative Technology Playshop ~ Governance & Collaboration is happening June 30.
Community Call: Deliberative & Democratic Tech hosted by Metagov x CrownShy is happening June 30. 🆕
Regenerative Technology Mutual Aid Innovation Gathering is happening July 15.
IRL
Edge Esmeralda is happening May 30 - June 27 in Healdsburg, California.
The Philosophy of Brain-Computer Interfaces: A Neurotechnology and Society Conference is happening June 5-6 in Boston.
Foresight Institute’s Vision Weekend United Kingdom 2026 is happening June 5-7 in London.
ETHConf is happening June 8-10 in NYC.
Decentralised Justice: Law in the Digital Age of Crowds and Code is happening June 9 in Oxford, UK.
FDS-8: New York is happening June 9-11 in NYC.
Neocypherpunk Summit is happening June 14 in Berlin.
Stablecoin Conference 2026 is happening June 15-16 in Mexico City.
State Capacity in the Digital Era, a panel discussion from UCL IIPP, is happening June 17 in London.
UN Open Source Week 2026 is happening June 22-26 in NYC. 🆕
East Africa Adopting Bitcoin Conference is happening June 24-26 in Nairobi.
European DAO Workshop 2026 is happening July 6-7 in Winterthur, Switzerland. 🆕
DWeb Camp 2026 is happening July 8–12 in Alte Hölle - Brandenburg, Germany.
DWeb Camp Cascadia is happening July 30 - August 3 on Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada.
FW:B Fest 5 is happening July 31-August 2 in Idyllwild, CA.
Liberpulco 2026 is happening August 13-23 in Liberland Ark Village, Serbia.
Crypto Commons Gathering is happening August 16-22 in Reichenau an der Rax, Austria.
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.
The Gathering is happening September 11-15 in Portugal.
The Technoprogressive Opportunity is happening September 19-20 in London.
ETHGlobal Tokyo 2026 is happening September 25-27 in Tokyo.
Progress Conference 2026 is happening October 8-11 in Berkeley, CA.
Responsible Tech Summit: Embedding Accountability in the AI Era is happening October 29 in NYC.
Devcon 8 is happening November 3-6 in Mumbai, India.
Foresight Institute’s Vision Weekend USA 2026 is happening November 13-15 in San Francisco. 🆕
The Africa Bitcoin Conference is happening December 2-5 in Blantyre, Malawi.
Recurring
Monthly Earth Day is a global event that happens on the 22nd every month, not just once a year. Get involved next on June 22.
📡 On Our Radar
SpiritDAO is a community of communities. They are a dynamic and family-friendly collective welcoming communities and individuals who share a vision of the good. Their mission is to further the Eight Dignities — universal rights unbound from any state or nation.
This is a great roundup of companies defining the African stablecoin economy.
✨ And One More Thing
