🌍 This Week in Web3forGood
PGF on NEAR
gm gm,
Impactwifhat 🎩? Maybe you’ve seen some of the absurd meme coin news from this week. Is it good for the space? Depressing? Either way, what a time to be alive. (side note: Boys Club dissects all these complicated feelings around meme coins well in this podcast).
Before you get annoyed at us for bringing up so seemingly removed from social impact, consider this: maybe it’s ridiculous that mass amounts of people from all around the world have mobilized to fund something seemingly so frivolous, BUT the fact remains that mass amounts of people mobilized -- for a cause! And quickly! In other words, it IS possible. Our job as impact-focused professionals is now to figure out how to use this technology and channel this energy for causes we care about. For good.
Speaking of causes we care about, please consider checking out and supporting ETH Evacuations, a project spearheaded by the former Head of Product at Zora to fund evacuations from Gaza 💛.
This week, we’re excited to share a project spotlight from our friends at Potlock, who are bringing public goods funding to NEAR. Read all about it + the latest news, ideas, opportunities, and more that we’ve discovered this week.
WAGMI (we are going to make an impact!)
What’s Inside
🔦 Community Project Spotlight: Potlock
📣 Latest News
📚 What We’re Thinking About
🔈 Podcasts
🚀 Opportunities & Events
📡 On Our Radar
✨ And one more thing
🔦 Community Project Spotlight: Potlock
This spotlight was written by @plugrel. Want to highlight a project that you or someone you know is working on in Web3ForGood? Reply to this email or send us a DM on X @w3b3forgood.
Launched earlier this past quarter, Potlock is a public goods funding protocol on NEAR. We integrate decentralized front ends, Web3 social, identity and funding mechanisms to build an open source way for anyone to deploy their own funding platforms. Any public good can sign up to start receiving donations today.
Recently we launched our first quadratic funding rounds, over $150,000 in rounds in the next two months supporting Open Source Software, Creatives, AI Public Goods, Africa, and NEAR Builders. There have already been 130+ public goods that have created a profile with $20,000 in donations. We are constantly shipping and building PGF infra on NEAR with our roadmap including, improving the identity stack, creating custom registrations, attestations services, and new funding mechanism like campaigns, payments streams, etc.
We are looking for more projects to sign up, more donors, and builders. Want to help the PGF movements, then join our Telegram or follow us on Twitter.
📣 Latest News
Project & Company News
Indigenous-Led Group Launches Cutting-Edge Biocultural Jaguar Credits
Potlock and NEAR Foundation Partner to Accelerate Public Goods Funding
Endaoment launches major upgrade to onchain donor-advised funds
Optimism RetroPGF will move from broad to narrow scoped rounds
Project Monthly Updates
Ecosystem News
Ethereum Activates Dencun Upgrade, Ushering New Era For Layer 2 Scalability
Craig Wright is not Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, UK judge says
Geographic & Policy News
Nigerian crypto community split over govt’s bid for Binance user data
EU publishes draft rules for stablecoin issuer complaint procedures
IMF guides Andorra to record and monitor Bitcoin transactions
📚 What We’re Thinking About
🤝 From reactive to proactive: how blockchain is revolutionizing the delivery of anticipatory aid. (Crypto Altruism)
🌐 World Wide Web inventor predicts VR and spatial computing will transform the internet: Tim Berners-Lee made no mention of crypto or blockchain but seems bullish on the metaverse. (Cointelegraph)
📕 The most important Bitcoin facts for nonprofits. (The Giving Block)
👤 Experiments in Proof of Personhood have been touted as a mechanism for tracing information provenance, distributing UBI, and facilitating democratic governance over systems of AI. This paper chronicles Idena’s experiment in Proof of Personhood from launch in August 2019 to a crisis in May 2022, which prompted a pivot towards a novel experiment in sublinear identity staking. (SSRN)
🤖 Around the world,teachers are making AI work for them and their students. (The Markup)
💳 A path forward for consumer crypto. (@ljin18)
🔗 Ethereum Layer-2 networks Base and Optimism have been marveling at the impact of Dencun, including less-than-a-penny transaction fees. (Decrypt)
🪄 In addition to EIP-4844, Dencun also introduced significant upgrades bolstering block space efficiency, user security, and network validation. (The Defiant)
👾 Everything you need to know about Ethereum Blobs. (@shefiorg)
🔈 Podcasts:
Crypto Altruism Podcast Episode 145 - Brave & BAT - Building a user-first internet powered by Web3
ReFi Podcast Season 3 - 23: Public Goods Ecosystem with Luuk Weber and Monty Merlin
🚀 Opportunities & Events:
Apply: Giveth is hiring a QF Round Product Manager.
Apply: The Giving Block is hiring a Product Manager, Nonprofits.
Apply: Serotonin is hiring multiple positions.
Earn: Celebrate 1 year of G$ UBI on Celo with a 500G$ bonus for signing up or a 1000G$ bonus for referrals.
Funding: Mercy Corps Ventures Crypto For Good Fund III: crypto for climate and financial resilience in emerging markets applications are open through March 31.
Events
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: Building at the Edge tech summit is happening April 13 in San Francisco.
Attend: Harvard Blockchain Conference (HBC) 2024 is happening April 13-14 in Cambridge, MA.
Attend: Funding the Commons is happening April 13-14 in Berkeley, CA.
Attend: ReFI UNCONFERENCE April 21-25 in Barcelona.
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.
*Plus, don’t forget to set reminders for these upcoming fairly aligned X spaces focusing on using web3 for positive impact in the real world (+ some recordings), curated weekly by @civilmonkey.*
📡 On Our Radar
ETH Evacuations funds evacuations from Gaza with ETH donations.
The Abundance Economy is a book about how crypto can solve dystopia and solve the problem of public goods.
Our Biggest Fight is a book about how we can seize back control of our lives from the corporate algorithms and create a better internet—before it’s too late.
Firefly Shire is bringing regenerative travel & magical experiences to blockchain.