🌍 This Week in Web3forGood

100

gm gm,

💯💯💯

100 weeks of Web3ForGood, and what a wonderful 100 weeks it has been 🎉🎉. It’s been nearly two years since March 11, 2022, the date that we pressed “SEND” on the first🌍 This Week in Web3ForGood. Whether you’ve been here from the start or you joined us somewhere along the way (hi new friends from last week at ETHDenver 👋), we’re grateful to have you here with us, learning together.

Speaking of learning… it never stops. Both of us (Sam and Abeera) are freshly back from our trip to ETHDenver last week and this week kicked things off SheFi students (hi friends from Cohort 10👋). We’re feeling extra inspired by all the energy / good vibes and can’t wait to jump back in and get building.

“We’re so back!” is something we’ve heard a lot in the Web3 space lately. Are we so back? Back from what? The incredible, passionate, social-impact focused builders that we know and love never went away. And whether you’re new here, “so back,” or have been building alongside them/us this whole time, we can’t wait to dive into 100+ more weeks of stories of Web3’s positive-impact potential and take you along for the ride.

Thanks for being here 💛

WAGMI (we are going to make an impact!)

xx Abeera & Sam

P.S. We also want to point out that applications for Crypto for Good Fund III are open - Mercy Corps Ventures is providing $100,000 in equity-free grant funding to support blockchain-powered solutions.

If any of the following are the problems you are solving, you want to apply to this. 

• Ramps - how can we onboard more people to financial freedom?

• RWA / asset tokenization - how can tokenized assets improve livelihoods?

• DePIN - how can we improve financing for critical physical infrastructure?

• Humanitarian aid delivery - how can we better serve the 299M people in need of aid?

• ReFi - how can we promote and restore the environment alongside financial gains?

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What’s Inside

• 🪞 Reflections on ETHDenver

• 📣 Latest News

• 📚 What We’re Thinking About

• 🔈 Podcasts

• 🚀 Opportunities & Events

• 📡 On Our Radar

• ✨ And one more thing

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🪞 Reflections on ETHDenver

Last week was a whirlwind, and walking through the Spork Castle, all we could think about was - this is like Hooli-Con! (If you watched Silicon Valley, you know what we mean 👀)

Instead of a long winded piece, here are some short takeaways:

• ETHDenver was a whole vibe: Honestly, the event itself was cool and all, but the real magic? It was all about the people coming together in Denver. It felt more like a massive meetup than a typical conference.

• Side events were where it was at: The dinners (hi, Kernel 👋) and niche events like Schelling Point and Regeneration? Absolute gold. It was like finding your tribe within the chaos, connecting over what really matters.

• Finding your crew: Hearing all the buzz from the SheFi summit got us hyped and signing up for the next round. It's all about finding folks who get it, you know?

• Keeping up with the chat game: It's no longer just about Telegram. Now everyone's asking if you're on Farcaster – guess it's time to catch up with the new chat spot!

• Crypto's little bubble world: Feels like we're all chilling in our own little bubbles sometimes, especially when it feels like everything's by developers, for developers. Time to pop that bubble and think outside the box!

• That Web3 struggle: Everyone's talking about it – Web3's got some real UX headaches. But hey, we're all in this together, figuring it out one step at a time.

• We’re still early: There were a lot of different “quest” and onchain activations at both the main event and side event, but honestly, they were straight up challenging or annoying to take part in — and this is coming from people who love this stuff. It’s going to be some time before this stuff is consumer ready. For now? We appreciate the effort, the creativity, and the vision.

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📣 Latest News

• Gitcoin has now provided $60 Million in funding. 

• Arbitrum is now live for Giveth donors and projects

• Toucan launches CHAR

• Celo shares plans for QF and RPGF Q1 2024

• Rarible API is now integrated on Celo

• GainForest joins the Climate Collective

• Circle’s USDC Deploys on Celo Mainnet

• Glo Dollar is now a $2.5 million stablecoin

• PotLock Announces the Africa Public Goods Quadratic Funding Round

• United Nations Development Programme partners with Innofund to harness blockchain technology for social impact

• Leading Responsible Tech Organization All Tech Is Human Announces $2.5 Million in New Funding to Tackle Thorny Tech & Society Issues and Expand the Responsible Tech Ecosystem

• Plateau State Government and Algorand Foundation Explore Blockchain Programs in Nigeria

• Spain bans Worldcoin for up to three months amid broader investigation

• Worldcoin Rival Humanity Protocol Nets Funding from Polygon, Animoca Founders

• Bitcoin Hits New All-Time High Price

Project Updates

• GoodDollar GoodUpdate — February 2024

• Sovereign Nature Initiative – Our Year in Review

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📚 What We’re Thinking About

• 🚕 Satoshi’s Legacy Is Capitalism’s Software Upgrade in an AI World: Just as Airbnb and Uber increased the utilization rate of our homes and cars, DePINs are helping us deploy and utilize our computers and sensors more productively. (Unchained)

• 🪴 Stablecoins and Sustainability: Innovating financial tools for planetary health. (Flowcarbon)

• 🌱 Rene Reisberg, CEO Celo, on ETHDenver, regenerative finance, and Celo ecosystem growth. (HackerNoon)

• 💻 Sean Ren, a computer science professor at USC, created a tool that can help workers and businesses get compensated for their knowledge, data, and expertise in the age of AI. (CoinDesk)

• 🧠 Big ideas from ETHDenver, from someone who watched 20+ hours of talks. (@sgershuni)

• 🔗 What is Optimism Superchain and why is it popular for projects? (Unchained)

• 📄 Gitcoin 2.0 whitepaper. (@owocki)

• 🏠 Key entrepreneurs and investors say that DePIN infrastructure is ready. (Decrypt)

• 👐 Etherisc leverages the Chainlink oracle network, ensuring a dependable link to external weather data sources to ensure insurance policies are automatically activated, leading to payouts. (Etherisc)

• 📗 A longitudinal assessment of Gitcoin Grants impact on open source developer activity. (Open Source Observer)

• ✅ The 2024 elections have significant implications for digital assets in various parts of the world, from India to the U.S. (Unchained)

• 🌐 Beyond Public and Private: Collective Provision Under Conditions of Supermodularity. (The Collective Intelligence Project)

• ☕ Lavazza’s coffee journey is traceable thanks to the data collected by Algorand blockchain technology. (Lavazza)

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🔈 Podcasts: 

• Crypto Altruism Podcast Episode 144 - ETH Denver Special - Interviews with leaders building at the intersection of web3 & regeneration

• Crypto Altruism Podcast Episode 143 - Pawthereum and Impactify – The power of community-driven crypto philanthropy

• GreenPill Podcast - Exploring MyCoFi - Mycelial Design Patterns for Web3 and Beyond with Jeff Emmett and Jessica Zartler

• Boy’s Club Episode 123 - Feelings Check-In with Chris Dixon, Founder and Managing Partner at a16zcrypto

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🚀 Opportunities & Events: 

• Apply: The Giving Block is hiring for multiple positions.

• Apply: Optimism is hiring a Product Marketing Manager.

• Apply: SEED CLUB is hiring a social media producer.

• Apply: Farcaster is hiring a staff-level frontend React engineer.

• Donate: Contribute to the Glo Dollar x Arbitrum DAO funding round.

• Fund: Gitcoin Citizens Retro funding round is happening April 2-16. 

• Build: Baddies in Tech is hosting a Women's Rights Buildathon, a first-of-its-kind event that brings together diverse builders to tackle some of the most pressing challenges facing women globally.

Events

• Upcoming fairly aligned X spaces focusing on using web3 for positive impact in the real world (+ some recordings), curated weekly by @civilmonkey.

• Attend: Glen Weyl: Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy seminar is happening March 11 online and IRL at Stanford.

• Attend: Responsible Tech Mixer + Fireside Chat w/ Frank H. McCourt, Jr is happening on March 11 in NYC.

• Attend: /brandnew by Boy’s Club is happening March 11 in Austin.

• Attend: ETHLatam is happening March 13-14 in San Pedrosula, Honduras

• Attend: Transforming Web3 For People & Planet Solution Showcase + Mastermind Networking is happening March 19 online.

• Attend: GBBC's Tech for Impact Day 2024 is happening on March 19 at the U.S. House of Representatives in DC. 

• Attend: Paris Blockchain Week is happening April 9-11 in Paris. 

• Attend: Funding the Commons is happening April 13-14 in Berkeley, CA.

• Attend: Decipher 2024, a retreat for teams actively building on Algorand, is happening June 26-27 in Barcelona.

• Attend: EthCC[7] is happening July 8-11 in Brussels. 

• Attend: DWeb Camp is happening August 7-11 in Camp Navarro, CA.

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📡 On Our Radar

• The Filecoin Ecosystem Explorer is a crowd-sourced database that showcases the breadth and depth of Filecoin ecosystem projects.

• Cashdillo is a grant, match funding, and data management platform disrupting ESG, CSR and AID flows to Africa, built on Algorand.

• HesabPay is working with the UN World Food Programme Afghanistan to build a cashless payments solution. 

• Zero Knowledge Proofs for kids is a book that explains ZKPs to you like you are 5. 

• Grant Orb is an AI grant writer that crafts winning grant proposals in minutes from just a brief outline of the project.

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✨ And one more thing

• We made a Web3ForGood Farcaster channel! There are no posts yet, but follow along as we #BuildInPublic here.

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