🌍 This Week in Web3ForGood
"the liberatory possibilities of democratized technology"
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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I read a few lines in the IEET Substack this week that I can’t stop thinking about.
“Luddism does the work of the Right by focusing time and effort on trying to put tech back in the bottle, diverting attention from the oligarchs, capitalism, patriarchy and ethno-nationalism. Thinking that young people’s mental health struggles can be fixed by taking away their phones or social media distracts from the social causes of their distress, the dark future they have been forced to enter. We can’t ethically consume our way to a solarpunk future; we need aggressive Green New Deal policies. The IEET and the Technoprogressive Hub will continue to dissect the false promises of the Luddite Left, and of the techolibertarians - unmasked now as technoauthoritarians – so that we can focus on the liberatory possibilities of democratized technology. “
It names something we’ve felt for a while but hadn’t seen articulated so clearly until now. The problem is not that technology exists or that people use it imperfectly. The problem is power. Fixating on rolling tech back or asking individuals to opt out distracts from the structural forces shaping people’s lives and narrowing their futures.
That is what we believe at Web3ForGood. Ethics that stop at personal restraint or consumption choices feel insufficient in a moment defined by oligarchy, extraction, and political instability. The more interesting question is how technology is governed, who benefits from it, and whether it expands or constrains human agency. Building better systems matters more than pretending we can unbuild the ones we are already living inside.
This week’s edition sits right in that tension. The links below explore how people are using decentralized tools when centralized systems fail them and how new infrastructure is being designed with accountability and coordination in mind rather than speed alone.
We look at ERC-8004 and what interoperable AI agents could mean for trust and participation. We examine how people in Iran are using Bitcoin and peer-to-peer messaging as financial and informational lifelines. We share reporting from Afghanistan, reflections on serious thinking in an AI-saturated world, critiques of shallow tech ethics, protests inside digital platforms, and signals from the next phase of decentralized social media. As always, you’ll also find news, opportunities, and ways to engage.
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
🧩 ERC-8004
ERC-8004 is a new Ethereum standard that will give AI agents something they currently lack. It’s not a core protocol upgrade or hard fork, but rather, a smart contract standard that defines how autonomous AI programs register onchain with an identity, build and carry reputation, and verify themselves before interacting with others. Instead of each agent living inside a siloed system, credibility can be portable and discoverable across wallets, apps, and organizations on Ethereum.
Technically, it creates shared registries onchain for an agent’s identity, reputation history, and validation data. These registries act as lightweight building blocks agents can reference to decide who to trust or work with, without centralized intermediaries. Developers on different chains and layer-2s will be able to adopt the same standard, making those signals interoperable.
ERC-8004 is rolling out to the Ethereum mainnet right now and through this week with February being a “genesis” period for early activity.
The implications are practical and social. ERC-8004 makes it possible for AI agents to interact across organizations without gatekeepers, while remaining accountable through onchain reputation and identity signals. Paired with proof-of-human tools, this opens space for agentic systems that reflect real users, real incentives, and real participation. Ethereum is positioning itself as neutral infrastructure for the emerging AI-to-AI economy.
🕊️ Iran and Freedom Tech
In recent weeks, Iranians have been increasingly moving savings into Bitcoin and relying on Bitchat to send messages phone to phone as access to banks and the open internet becomes less reliable. Out of necessity, people are turning to decentralized systems that do not require permission to function.
Bitcoin adoption is rising because it still works when the rial does not. It can be self-custodied, transferred without intermediaries, and held outside a collapsing financial system. At the same time, decentralized messaging tools are gaining adoption because they do not depend on centralized servers or a stable internet connection. Messages hop over Bluetooth from device to device, so communication can survive even if the web does not.
These choices are unfolding alongside the state’s attempt to impose a two-tier internet that preserves full access for approved users while restricting everyone else. People, though, are resilient. They route around the bottlenecks. They adopt infrastructure that is harder to shut down and harder to selectively deny.
This is what decentralized technology looks like when it leaves whitepapers and enters daily life, and this is why decentraized technology is so important. It’s neither protest tech nor speculative trade; it’s literally basic infrastructure for autonomy. Freedom depends on systems that continue to operate even when those in power want to turn them off, and the world is watching Iran to see how the tech works when it matters most.
Plus:
🌱 An Unlikely Source of Crypto Innovation: Afghanistan: “Blockchain-based cash transfers are not the kind of innovation that many people would expect from a country better known for its repressive Taliban leadership, which views the internet with suspicion. But in a nation that has largely turned its back on the world, an Afghan start-up is building tools that it hopes will transform how humanitarian aid is delivered in countries shattered by conflict.“ (New York Times)
📖 Serious thinking has gone offline: “The tools have levelled the playing field for what any one person can do, but AI-native nerds who’ve spent the most time with the models are all the more deliberate in how they use them. After enough exposure, the sycophancy becomes obvious, and so does the fear of outsourcing too much thinking and deskilling yourself into the permanent underclass.“ (Second Nature)
🪧 Anti-ICE protests pop up outside of Roblox’s digital HQ after chat function disappears: “Still, Roblox users fought back with signs and protested ICE — but it soon became clear what the underlying issue was, with several signs reading: “Bring chat back.” Without the chat feature to express themselves, users created in-game signs to express how they felt.“ (The Daily Dot)
🚀 Ethereum’s Buterin backs decentralized social media’s second act as Lens handover unfolds: “In his post, Buterin opined that decentralization is a prerequisite for competition in social media, arguing that a shared data layer would allow multiple clients and interfaces to coexist.“ (The Block)
Fidelity’s Choice of Ethereum for its Stablecoin Puts Focus on Public Blockchains: “early assumptions were that institutions would prefer closed systems, but experience has shown that “institutions demand functionality – and in payments and settlement, functionality means interoperability.”“ (The Defiant)
📣 Latest News
ZKP2P integration is now live in the Bread Solidarity Fund (meaning you can contribute directly from Venmo, Cashapp, Revolut, Wise, Zelle, PayPal, etc. With the new Solidarity Fund integration, you can directly purchase xDAI with your existing payment apps. Then it’s a single step to bake BREAD.)
Global Policy, Regulation, and Adoption News
Thailand SEC’s New Three-Year Plan Pushes Tokenization, Crypto ETFs
Ugandans, Iranians turn to Dorsey’s messaging app Bitchat in web crackdowns
Bitcoin Adoption Surges in Iran Amid Protests and Rial Collapse
Reports and Project Updates
🔈 Watch & Listen
Crypto Altruists - Episode 236 - Superset - Stablecoins for Good: The Infrastructure Powering the Future of Global Impact
Green Pill Podcast - Network Nations Episode 13 - Intentional Communities & New Jurisdictions with Jessy Kate Schingler
🚀 Opportunities & Calls to Act
Apply: The Ethereum Foundation is hiring a Comms Wizard, Local Production Magician, and Programming Lead for Devcon 8.
Apply: Anthropic is hiring a Program Manager, Responsible Scaling Policy.
Apply: Dune is hiring for several positions.
Contribute: Share your ideas with All Tech Is Human, as they map out their 2026 Responsible Tech Summit.
Contribute: Share your ideas to help plan DWeb Camp 2026.
Scholarship: The Hub for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (HEET) and the Scuola di Studi Superiori “Ferdinando Rossi” (SSST) are pleased to announce the Call for Participants for HEET 2026: Horizons in Ethics & Emerging Technologies, to be held on 16 April 2026 at Collegio Carlo Alberto, Turin. To support student participation, 15 scholarships are available.
Subscribe: The Web3 + AI Daily is your definitive guide to the world of Decentralized AI (DeAI/dAI).
Earn: The Google Cloud for Web3 testnet faucet is officially live with Self ZK Proof-of-Humanity for Celo Sepolia. Get free Sepolia CELO sent directly to your wallet.
🎪 Events
🆕= New to the roundup this week
Virtual
AI Companions and Chatbots is happening February 5. 🆕
IRL
Protocols for Publishers is happening February 4-5 in London.
Foresight Institute’s Vision Weekend Puerto Rico 2026 AI for X is happening February 6-8 in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico.
ETHBoulder is happening February 13-15 in Boulder, Colorado.
ETHDenver is happening February 17-21 in Denver.
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.
RightsCon 2026 is happening May 5-8 in Zambia.
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 is happening July 8–12 somewhere outside of Berlin, Germany (exact location TBD). 🆕
Valley of the Commons is happening August 24 - September 20 in the Austrian Alps. 🆕
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
Merge Labs is a research lab with the long-term mission of bridging biological and artificial intelligence to maximize human ability, agency, and experience.
HesabPay is a secure global payment platform. Send money to Afghanistan & Syria, use prepaid cards, and manage payments via mobile app or web browser.
✨ And One More Thing
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