🌍 40/This Week in Web3forGood
The OG story of Web3
gm gm,
This week in Web3forGood, we hung out with our impact-focused friends at givepact, Impact DAOs, and Arkive on Twitter for a Crypto Therapy session, and we covered everything from why we’re still building in Web3 to projects we love. Give it a listen.
Plus, we have an awesome conversation with Chris Georgen, Founder and Managing Director of Topl, to share. Chris has been building a social-impact oriented blockchain since 2017; he is literally a pioneer in this space, and he has SUCH interesting, grounding insight to share. This is a good one!
As we start to wrap up this year and make plans for next, we’d love to know what you think. What do you want to see more of here? What can we do to better serve you?
Thanks for being here and building with us 🙂
WAGMI (we are going to make an impact)
P.S. Scroll to the bottom to see what ChatGPT had to say when we asked it how Web3 could be used for good… 🤯
What’s Inside
🌊 Topl Founder Chris Georgen on Impact, Power, & Potential in Web3
🕊 Tweets of the Week
📣 Latest News
📚 What We’re Thinking About
🚀 Opportunities & Events
📡 On Our Radar
✨ And one more thing
🌊Impact, Power, & Potential in Web3: A Conversation with Topl Founder Chris Georgen
When Chris Georgen, Founder and Managing Director of Topl, first fell down the Web3 rabbit hole a decade ago, he was still a university student. Like most people his age discovering the space at the time, at first, he was mostly interested in mining, trading, and smart contract development. Very quickly, though, he connected the dots between what he was learning about blockchain and something else: creating new markets and economies for impact.
At a time when topics like ReFi and building for impact are just now starting to enter the mainstream Web3 conversation, Chris is very much an early pioneer. Since 2017, he and his team and technologists and impact professionals have been quietly engineering their own impact-oriented blockchain from the ground up. The result, Topl, is a first-of-its-kind impact technology economy that enables digital and sustainable transformation across value chains and empowers the monetization of impact verified on the Topl Blockchain.
“The original story of Web3 was about allowing power and control to flow from the most powerful parts of society down to individuals, wherever in the world they may be,” emphasizes Chris. “That story of self-sovereignty, of power, is where the real potential lies and what I hope people start paying more attention to now.”
Web3forGood spoke with Chris about what makes Topl unique compared to other blockchains, how Topl is exploring impact markets beyond carbon, and why he’s still bullish on Web3 when it comes to making the world a better place.
🕊 Tweets of the Week
📣 Latest News
NFT-focused startup Metagood raises $5 million to grow ‘social good’ impact
DeFi and Web3 Startups Attract $3B in Funding in Third Quarter
Ledger Taps iPod Creator Tony Fadell for New Crypto Hardware Wallet
📚 What We’re Thinking About
🐄 In April, Mercy Corps Ventures launched a pilot with Cinch, CeloOrg, Kotanipay, and Moola Market to test the potential for scale when integrating fast & affordable DeFi-enabled credit into Cinch's offering to smallholder farmers & employees in Kenya. Project insights, here. (Mercy Corps Ventures)
🌱 The Climate Collective recently announced the addition of six organizations to its memberships, including SimplexDNA. (Climate Collective)
🌍 Gitcoin Grants Protocol UNICEF Alpha Round kicks off at the end of this week. Meet the 10 grantees and support their work. (Gitcoin)
📒 ImpactMarket’s latest bulletin includes details on Libera + access to the annual impact report. (ImpactMarket)
📖 Research Report: Learning Agenda for Monitoring, Evaluation, & Learning (MEL) in Web3. (Pulte Institute for Global Development, Keough School of Global Affairs)
💚 Mechanisms, use cases, and the future of Kolektivo, a collection of institutional technologies that allow local communities to launch, finance, and govern their own regenerative economies. (Green Pill Podcast)
🚀 Kevin Owocki on hypercerts aka NFT Impact Certificates at Schelling Point. (Funding the Commons)
🪙 The best practices to launch your own Web3 grants program + what drove three leading programs to major success. (Gitcoin)
💦 Why we need to build an environmentally sustainable Web3 world. (Entrepreneur Europe)
🔥 What in the Ethereum ecosystem excites Vitalik Butterin. (Vitalik Butterin)
🎨 Artists Heno and Andre Oshea use NFTs to fund prison reforms. (NFT Now)
🏛 The first mayoral address in the Metaverse: Orlando Mayor delivered his state of downtown address in person, while his avatar addressed hundreds more virtually within the Metaverse. (WMFE)
🚀 Opportunities & Events:
Apply: Crypto Council for Innovation is hiring a Government Affairs Lead - U.S. State & Local
Apply: UNICEF’s Giga is seeking Requests for Proposals from a company to build the Giga NFT2.0 collection.
Attend: To kickoff their UNICEF round, Gitcoin is hosting a Twitter space next Tuesday.
Hack: Filecoin Space Warp is a jam-packed program leading up to the launch of Filecoin’s Virtual Machine on mainnet in Feb 2023. The program includes grants, a hackathon, a builders’ leaderboard, and more totalling over $400k in FIL tokens.
Accelerate: Fuelarts x Tezos are running a joint acceleration program for Art+Tech startups.
Register: Your Impact DAO!
Live (?!): Co-living opportunity at Casa Celo’s digital nomad dream house in Colombia.
Speak: NFT.NYC speaker applications are open.
📡 On Our Radar
Impacta is a hub focused on Discovering, Tracking & Developing the Next-Generation of digital impact assets.
Thallo is a marketplace designed to make the VCM more fair and functional for all with a strong commitment to project developers.
Pawthereum is decentralized, community-run charity cryptocurrency project that gives back to animal shelters and advocates for the well-being of animals in need.
The United Nations Population Fund first 1st NFT Collection supports the rights & choices of women and girls around the world.
Kindeck is the first decentralized P2P social-commerce platform allowing full control over your most valuable asset - your social capital.
Kokonut Network is creating a Blockchain-Based CO-OP to Manage a Network of Coconut Farms.
Iran DAO is a peer-to-peer social impact initiative supporting Iran’s women-led revolution.
Awaken Your Inner Child is an NFT collection from ChangeDAO featuring art by Inner Children, a group of altruistic NFT artists and Web3 thought leaders. Funds raised through primary mint sales benefited Upbring’s Crypto Endowment Fund for Better Childhoods, a first-of-its-kind fund dedicated to fueling innovation in child welfare.
✨ And one more thing…
We asked ChatGTP how Web3 could be used for good. Here’s what it had to say…
