🌍 This Week in Web3forGood
Spotlight: Open Forest Protocol
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Web3 can feel like a weird space sometimes. One minute we’re convincing the uninitiated that it’s not full of criminals, the next we’re overwhelmed by how much positive news there is to share. Save this video for the next time you need a dose of inspiration: in it, locals in the village of Cochas Bajo in Peru use blockchain technology to purchase panettone treats on-chain with cUSD. Pretty cool, right? It’s all made possible by Ammer Wallet, Celo, Mento Labs, impact Market, and Agape Hands of Hope.
This week, we’re excited to share another Climate Collective Member Spotlight, this time featuring Open Forest Protocol (OFP) 🙌. With OFP, projects of any size can enter the global carbon market and communicate that they are a trustworthy, verified supplier. Learn more, below.
And a quick housekeeping note: starting this week, you’ll find a new 🔈Podcasts section in the weekly roundup. In it, you’ll find the latest Web3ForGood-approved podcasts you should listen to from creators like Crypto Altruism and more.
WAGMI (we are going to make an impact!)
What’s Inside
💚 The Climate Collective Member Spotlight: Open Forest Protocol
📣 Latest News
📚 What We’re Thinking About
🔈 Podcasts
🚀 Opportunities & Events
📡 On Our Radar
✨ And one more thing
💚 The Climate Collective Member Spotlight: Open Forest Protocol (OFP)
About Open Forest Protocol:
Open Forest Protocol (OFP) is a complete digital overhaul for the verification and issuance of carbon credits. OFP re-imagines carbon credits by providing carbon developers a no-upfront-cost, open-source, network-based verification system that allows them to create the most transparent and verifiable carbon credits possible. With a focus on nature based solutions, OFP is designed to scale and holds the promise of making voluntary carbon markets reliable, liquid, and easily accessible for mitigating climate change in the coming century.
With OFP, any project, of any size and anywhere in the world, can enter the global carbon market and communicate that they are a trustworthy, verified supplier within this emerging market.
Real World Impact:
To date, OFP has successfully integrated 80+ forest projects spanning six continents into its ecosystem. These projects, irrespective of their size, benefit from cutting-edge digital MRV tools for comprehensive forest plot management. Notably, many of these initiatives are owned and operated by local and indigenous communities, facilitated via financing through OFP's transparent, blockchain-based protocol.
Traditionally, associated costs and time constraints have imposed a considerable challenge for smaller community projects seeking to implement carbon financing or data verification systems into operations, but with OFP's innovative tools, anyone can access the global market. Beyond the broad goal of sustainable development, many communities benefit from carbon financing as an important source of income too. For example, the Voices for Forest Alliance in the southwest region of Cameroon uses OFP's verification tools to support hundreds of women in the Bimbia Bonadikombo community. Funds are directed to these women for their services planting indigenous trees in degraded water catchment areas, empowering them to earn an income and improve their communities.
Accessible to all, the OFP Atlas Explorer allows everyone, from anywhere in the world, to view the data uploaded by participating forest projects, further fostering a culture of transparency and engagement.
Potential Future Impact:
OFP is set to soon welcome an additional 70+ diverse projects into its ecosystem with this number steadily on the rise. Ranging from modest community-owned land plots to expansive hectares of property, these projects, in collaboration with OFP, are consistently uncovering new applications of the technology. At the Kisampla Conservancy in Tanzania, for example, OFP's data collection support inadvertently but fortunately exposed and halted an illegal poaching operation.
Looking to the future, OFP is exploring government-level collaborations with different countries to facilitate their entry into carbon markets. Operating at this scale, the transparency and immutability inherent in OFP's use of Web3 technology will be essential for establishing a global sense of trust. Ultimately, by empowering individuals on the ground to showcase their expertise in a transparent and verifiable manner, OFP hopes to continue to serve as a safeguard against corruption, ensuring that its technology is always used for the greater good.
Get involved:
[This feature is part of our ongoing “💚 The Climate Collective Member Spotlight” series. Web3ForGood is a Climate Collective Grant Recipient. We appreciate The Climate Collective’s partnership and support in connecting us with member organizations for this series. All opinions remain our own.]
📣 Latest News
Gitcoin joins the Glo Consortium, holding $100k in Glo Dollars
Opera MiniPay surpasses 1,111,111 million users across Nigeria, Ghana & Kenya
Coinbase partners with stablecoin exchange Yellow Card in African expansion
McCourt Global Welcomes Tomicah Tillemann as President of Project Liberty
Bitget Launches $10M Fund to Support Female Led Startups in Web3
Giveth partners with Meta Pool for a new Quadratic Funding round
Newly Published Reports
📚 What We’re Thinking About
72% of crypto developers live outside of North America. (@binji_x)
2024 will be the year for stablecoins, which will provide the volatile crypto market with much needed stability. (Blockworks)
13 Web3 public goods funding predictions for 2024. (@owocki)
Dagon, a technical implementation introduced by core developer Ross Campbell could improve DAO governance and delegation using smart contracts. (CoinDesk)
OpenAI has intensified its efforts to prevent AI misuse to protect democratic processes amid the upcoming elections. (Decrypt Emerge)
From Tokens to Trust: Collaborative Finance, or CoFi, argues that in many contexts, the exchange of value doesn't have to be powered by the actual moving of tokens or fiat money, but instead by altering the credit-debit amounts of the players, with tools designed for this purpose and a variety of configurations of "trust". (Crypto Altruism)
The AI Revolution in Climate Science. (Project Syndicate)
AI Has a Trust Problem. Can Blockchain Help? (The Wall Street Journal)
Bitcoin miners in Texas are curtailing power to ensure the stability of the state’s power grid. (Decrypt)
Gitcoin grantees received $7.6 million in pure donations in 2023. (@owocki)
🔈 Podcasts:
Crypto Altruism Podcast Episode 137 - Mercy Corps Ventures - Empowering visionary tech entrepreneurs to deliver impact at scale
Crypto Altruism Podcast Episode 136 - Tea Protocol - Decentralized funding for a sustainable open-source software ecosystem
GreenPill Season 3 - Ep. 5 - GreenPill Hypercerts Experiment w/ Sejal + Bitbeckers
🚀 Opportunities & Events:
Apply: Optimism is hiring a Governance Research and Experiments Lead.
Apply: OP Labs is hiring a Head of Data.
Apply: The Giving Block is hiring a Web/PHP Developer, Senior Fundraising Strategist, and Head of Growth.
Engage: Empower impactMarket’s vision by delegating votes to its group validator.
Learn: Test your skills in OnchainSquad's 30 Days of Web3, a collaborative initiative to build your Web3 experience.
Accelerate: Codebase is an accelerator program that funds and supports web3 founders as they shape the future with category-defining projects
Funding: Gitcoin is now offering sponsorship of Quadratic funding rounds for student blockchain clubs.
Funding: The Responsible Design, Development, and Deployment of Technologies (ReDDDoT) program invites proposals from multidisciplinary, multi-sector teams that examine and demonstrate the principles, methodologies, implementations, and impacts associated with responsible design, development, and deployment of technologies in practice.
Speak: Good Tech Fest speaker applications for the May 1-2 virtual conference are now open.
Build: #BUIDL is a call to blockchain enthusiasts to build and contribute to the advancement of the blockchain ecosystem. At ETHDenver 2024, #BUIDLers will form teams of 2 to 4 and spend up to 9 days #BUIDLing to their unique Web3 visions.
Events
Attend: DeSci NYC: Longevity and Tissue Replacement with Professor Jean Hébert is happening January 22 in NYC.
Attend: NFTs 4 Social Good space happens every Thursday at 12p EST. Next up: Humanitarian & Environmental Efforts conversation happening January 25.
Attend: Africa Tech Summit Nairobi is happening February 14-15.
Attend: ETHDenver is happening February 23 - March 3 in Denver.
Attending ETHDenver? Here’s a list of sideETH Denver events.
Attend: Social Impact Summit 2024 by Blockchain Law for Social Good Center is happening February 27 in San Francisco.
Attend: SheFi Summit is happening February 28 in Denver.
Attend: Funding the Commons is happening April 13-14 in Berkeley, CA.
📡 On Our Radar
Open Dollar is a stablecoin protocol built on Arbitrum designed to yield and leverage assets with safety and predictability.
EasyRetroPGF.xyz is a tool that makes it easy for DAOs to run an Optimism style Retro PGF round.
CARBON Copy is the preeminent source of ReFi news, information, and analysis.
✨ And one two more thing(s)
Revolutionize public goods funding with Quadratic Funding (QF). In this video from Gitcoin, grantees @PaigeDonner & @leen_schelfhout dive into how QF empowers every donor, big or small, aligning funding with community values.
@civilmonkey compiled a list of upcoming X (Twitter) spaces around Web3 for positive impact in the real world.