🌍 This Week in Web3forGood
What a time to be alive
gm gm,
Congratulations to Mento Labs on the $10M raise 🙌🎉 + roadmap for new decentralized local currency stablecoins across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Let’s go 🔥.
Speaking of stablecoins, last week Glo Dollar shared their big plans to donate $40k to Celo Public Goods, thus creating a Glo Liquidity Flywheel ⚡🛞. Projects like ReFi Medellín are already reaping the benefits. We love to see it.
And speaking of funding public goods, Filecoin’s FIL-RetroPGF-2 has entered the application intake stage 📝. If you’ve contributed to the Filecoin ecosystem between April-September this year, now is your chance to be recognized for your contributions. Not a Filecoin ecosystem contributor? GG22 starts next week.
This week, we’re revisiting Tokenized Carbon Credits in TLDR. Check it out below 👇.
Before we signoff, we’d be amiss if we didn’t bring to your attention the fact that an AI bot could soon become the first non-human millionaire and has somehow started a neo-religion. What a time to be alive.
Culture is powerful. Let’s steer it intentionally.
WAGMI (we are going to make an impact!)
What’s Inside
📣 Latest News
🔍 TLDR: Tokenized Carbon Credits
📚 What We’re Thinking About
🔈 Podcasts & Spaces
🚀 Opportunities
🎪 Events
📡 On Our Radar
✨ And one more thing
📣 Latest News
a16z crypto report finds cryptocurrency activity and usage at all-time high
Optimism rolls out fifth airdrop, allocates 10.3 million OP tokens to 54,000 Superchain users
Glow Protocol triples carbon credit production overnight via India expansion
Global Policy, Regulation, and Adoption News
Thailand’s Siam Commercial Bank introduces stablecoin service for international payments
Ireland drafting urgent crypto laws before EU money-laundering rules
Over 31,000 merchants in South Africa now accept crypto on Luno
Project Updates
🔍TLDR: Tokenized Carbon Credits
New to Web3? Welcome! TLDR is where we offer a simplifed explanation of a term used often in this newsletter or a big topic in the news this week. If there's anything you're curious about, reply and let us know.
What are Tokenized Carbon Credits?: Imagine if carbon credits, instead of being managed through complex traditional systems, were made as easy to trade and track as cryptocurrencies. This is the concept behind tokenized carbon credits. Just like digital tokens represent ownership of assets on a blockchain, tokenized carbon credits represent a specific amount of carbon offset, such as one ton of CO2 removed from the atmosphere.
These tokenized credits are stored and traded on a blockchain, which ensures transparency and security. The blockchain makes it easy to trace the origins of the carbon credit, prevent double-counting, and ensure that the credit can’t be used more than once. Each token is unique and tied to a real-world environmental project, like reforestation or renewable energy. This way, buyers know exactly where their carbon offsets are coming from.
Just as ENS (Ethereum Name Service) simplifies crypto addresses, tokenizing carbon credits simplifies the carbon market by making credits easier to manage, buy, sell, and retire. Blockchain ensures that these transactions are fast, secure, and verifiable, opening up the carbon offset market to a global audience.
Tokenized carbon credits make the process of investing in and managing carbon offsets more efficient, secure, and transparent, similar to how blockchain has improved other areas of trade.
TLDR: Tokenized carbon credits turn carbon offsets into blockchain-based tokens, making them easier to track, trade, and verify. Blockchain ensures transparency, prevents fraud, and links credits to environmental projects. This system simplifies the carbon market, making it more accessible globally.
📚 What We’re Thinking About
🔗 Mercy Corps CIO explains how NGOs can integrate blockchain to amplify their efforts. (Cointelegraph)
🦖 The Web Isn’t Forever: New Research Findings from “Not Your Parents' Web” Project. (Filecoin Foundation)
🟡 Yellow Card: Bringing Africa onchain with stablecoins. (Blockchain Capital)
🌐 How interoperability is central to the internet's future. (Project Liberty)
📈 Key trends in a16z’s State of Crypto report. (@cdixon)
👾 Al Will Take Over Human Systems From Within: It’s not a tool, but an alien agent, says author Yuval Noah Harari. (Noema)
🔮 Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol.(vitalik.eth)
🌱 The Future of Purpose-Driven Capital: Merging Blockchain and Social Impact Initiatives. (Purpose for Profit)
➗ Mathematically Ethical; or: escaping the mines of mathbrain. (Reboot)
🎤 How quadratic funding could finance your dreams. (TED)
🔲 ReFi & Ecological Benefits Framework. (ReFi DAO)
🔈 Podcasts & Spaces
Crypto Altruism Podcast - Episode 176 - Rarimo - ZK Social Graphs for a More Open and Free World
Crypto Altruism Podcast - Podcast Starter Pack - LatAm Builders
Green Pill - Season 6 - Episode 5 - Intents, Missions, and Metrics: Exploring OP GC W/ Jesse, Gonna
Green Pill - Season 6 - Episode 6 - Web 3 Grants and Governance W/ Nneoma & Juanbug
The Giving Block - Episode 21- This Week in Crypto Philanthropy Podcast.
Upcming spaces to join:
Climate Coordination Network X Spaces happen weekly, every Thursday. Learn more and join.
@civilmonkey’s Curated X Spaces focus on using Web3 for positive impact in the real world (+ recordings). Learn more and join.
🚀 Opportunities & Calls to Act
Apply: IBM is hiring a Responsible Tech Research Scientist Intern.
Write: Reboot is accepting pitches for longform essays on the past, present, and future of technology, humanity, and power.
Funding: FIL-RetroPGF-2 is an Optimism-inspired Retroactive Public Goods Funding round for the Filecoin Ecosystem. The application round is happening now.
Funding: Unichain Developer Grants from the Uniswap Foundation will support builders exploring novel swapping mechanisms, innovation upon the DeFi experience, and improvements to liquidity infrastructure.
Win: The Octant Public Goods Sweepstakes will reward someone who funds public goods in Octant, even with very small amounts of their rewards.
🎪 Events
🆕= New to the roundup this week
Virtual
Greenpill Dev Guild - Passport For Octant Workshop is happening TODAY October 18. 🆕
Funding the Commons Public Goods Builders Townhall #5 is happening October 22. 🆕
Superchain Ecosystem Workshop: Transitioning Celo to the OP Superchain is happening October 24.
Blockchain4Good’s Virtual Summit is happening October 30 and 31. 🆕
MiCA Applied to the Celo Ecosystem Workshop is happening October 31.
Raising Funds for Web3 Workshop is happening November 7.
IRL
ETHGlobal San Francisco is happening October 18-20 in San Francisco.
Escaping the Memory Hole: Internet Archive’s annual celebration is happening October 23 in San Francisco.
DC Privacy Summit is happening October 24 in DC.
ETHSydney is happening October 25-27 in Sydney. 🆕
Filecoin Hacker House is happening October 26 in Chiang Mai. 🆕
IMPACT FESTIVAL, Europe’s biggest B2B event for sustainable innovation, is happening October 30-31 in Frankfurt, Germany.
NYU Blockchain Conference is happening November 1 in New York. 🆕
FIL Dev Summit 5 is happening November 6-8 in Bangkok.
LabWeek Web3 is happening November 7-13 in Bangkok.
LabWeek Opening Party is happening November 7 in Bangkok.
Protocol Labs Hub kicks off November 7 in Bangkok.
Earth Commons: Bangkok 2024 is happening November 9 in Bangkok.
Settlement Day is hosted by Celo Foundation happening November 11 in Bangkok.
FIL Bangkok: DePIN Meets AI is happening November 11 in Bangkok.
Boston Institutional Digital Assets Forum 2024 is happening December 3 in Boston.
Oasis Oncahin is happening January 30 - February 2 in Nassau, Bahamas.
ETHDenver is happening February 23 - March 2 in Denver.
Recurring
Monthly Earth Day is a global event that happens on the 22nd every month, not just once a year. Get involved on October 22 and share on X to @HighlyArtistic with the hashtag #MonthlyEarthDay.
Hosting an event that you’d like to see listed? Reply here or send us a DM.
📡 On Our Radar
Ecological Benefits Framework (EBF) is a Framework for Diverse Investors to Create Positive Impacts in Six Key Areas: Air, Water, Soil, Biodiversity, Equity, and Carbon
Impact Scribe is an exciting new tool for utilizing the Ecological Benefits Framework (EBF) to assess and communicate a project's impact. Impact Scribe gathers information about the project in order to generate an EBF Impact Certificate and EBF Digital Fingerprint.
Partna builds onramp & offramp widgets that enable users to seamlessly go from USDT, USDC and cUSD to local currency and back within seconds.
Yellow Card App is the largest and first licensed stablecoin on/off ramp on the African continent, with operations spanning 20 African countries and over $3 billion in transactions facilitated across the continent.
Purpose for Profit is the world's first tokenized Endowment Fund that provides low-interest loans for affordable housing projects, tax incentives for donors, and Token Rewards for investors.
The Biocultural Jaguar Credit system is a transparent ecologic-economic model that looks to reward those who protect and steward the Amazon.Using Regen Network’s blockchain technology and the indigenous leadership of Fundación Pachamama and the Sacred Headwaters Alliance, the project is piloting the model this year with the Sharamentsa community.
Regen Data Stream represents a significant milestone in realizing Regen’s vision of a collaborative, interoperable platform for environmental crediting. Building on concepts of permissionless project creation and addressing historical challenges of market fragmentation, lack of standardization, and inefficiency in environmental markets, Regen Data Stream provides a flexible, transparent, and user-friendly tool for real-time data management.
✨ And One Two More Things
Master impact DAOs in 16 mins via @deeparocks.
Resource Allocation Through History via @owocki
