🌍 This Week in Web3forGood
the future is ReFi
gm gm,
ETHSafari is happening next week in Nairobi, and all the cool kids from Celo, Mento, and more are going to be there (FOMO). It’s Africa’s largest ETH event, and we can’t wait to binge the recordings. Will you be there IRL? Let us know what you’re seeing on the ground.
Keep scrolling for a TLDR on Funding the Commons, + GoodDollar Academy’s latest module, Celo’s retrospective on GG21, a hot job at Mercy Corps Ventures, Octant’s Builder Accelerator, many projects newly on our radar, and so much more.
WAGMI (we are going to make an impact!)
What’s Inside
📣 Latest News
🔍 TLDR: Funding the Commons
📚 What We’re Thinking About
🔈 Podcasts & Spaces
🚀 Opportunities
🎪 Events
📡 On Our Radar
✨ And one more thing
📣 Latest News
Polygon’s $MATIC Token Becomes $POL, Boosting Utility in Polygon 2.0
Sui blockchain taps radio waves to bank the unbanked offline
Global Policy, Regulation, and Adoption News
Project Updates
GoodDollar GoodUpdate — August 2024
Filecoin Foundation Fresh From FF: Early September, 2024
Celo Public Goods GG21 on Celo Retrospective
Ethereum Foundation Allocation Update - Q2 2024
Breadchain Cooperative Insights from the first Voting and Distribution Cycle
🔍TLDR: Funding the Commons
New to Web3? Welcome! TLDR is where we offer a simplifed explanation of a term used often in this newsletter. If there's anything you're curious about, reply and let us know.
Funding the Commons is an organization with a mission of building new models of sustainable public goods funding and value alignment in open source networks. The team focuses on how to use innovative tools like blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi) to support public resources, such as clean air or open-source software.
Traditionally, only governments or large donations could fund these types of public goods, but the Funding the Commons works to make the process more inclusive. With blockchain technology, contributions can be traceable and decentralized, cutting out middlemen and encouraging broader participation. Contributors can also be rewarded with tokens, offering a stake in the value created or governance rights. This makes funding public goods more dynamic, involving more people directly in the process. There are many bright people thinking about how technology can be used to improve public goods funding, and Funding the Commons brings them together.
Funding the Commons’ goal is to bridge the public goods community across Web2, Web3, research, philanthropy and industry by convening builders and practitioners, researchers and academics, and funders and philanthropists, catalyzing innovation in public goods. They hope to create a world where the incentives that govern human coordination at scale push humans to develop an economy that prioritizes public goods above all else.
TLDR: Funding the Commons build bridges between builders, researchers, and funders transforming funding models & mechanisms for public goods. They make supporting public goods easier, transparent, and rewarding, turning community support into an inclusive, decentralized system.
PS. Funding the Commons hosts amazing events all over the world that explore how blockchain and decentralized finance can reshape the way we support public goods. They bring together researchers, developers, and innovators to discuss new economic models, governance structures, and technologies that can drive the collective funding of shared resources, from environmental projects to digital infrastructure. Next up: Bangkok.
📚 What We’re Thinking About
🌱 The future of crypto is ReFi. (Grit Daily)
🔢 A Quantitative Simulation of Pairwise Voting for RetroPGF. (CryptoEconLab)
🤝 Plurality philosophy in an incredibly oversized nutshell. (vitalik.eth)
🤖 Will AI Improve Exponentially At Value Judgments? (RadicalxChange)
The ReFi Funding Trilemma. (CARBON Copy)
🔈 Podcasts & Spaces
Unchained - Episode 698 Bitcoin Is Just for Libertarians, Right? Two Progressives Disagree
Crypto Altruism Podcast - Impact on Optimism Episode 169 - Alternun - Creating Wealth & Regenerating the Environment with Onchain Digital Gold Mining
Green Pill Season 5 - Episode 4 - Celo x Easy RPGF w/ Luuk and Monty
🚀 Opportunities
Apply: Mercy Corps Venture is hiring an Investment Principal, Ventures (East Africa).
Apply: EcoSynthesisX is hiring for multiple positions.
Apply: ETHGlobal is hiring for multiple positions.
Funding: Octant’s Grant Accelerator is a 4-week accelerator program for builders who are serious about growth. Action packed. No-fluff. For builders, by builders. Applications are rolling.
Learn: SheFi empowers professional women to master Web3 in 8 weeks. Each session is a combination of live instruction, hands-on tech demos, and career support, all aimed at accelerating careers in Web3.
🎪 Events
🆕= New to the roundup this week
Virtual
The Blockchain for Good Alliance (BGA) AMA Blockchain Beyond is happening TODAY September 6. 🆕
Global Blockchain Business Council’s Blockchain Central at UNGA will have a virtual program for the event on September 23.
IRL
ETHSafari is happening Septemner 8-15 in Nairobi.
Gray Area Festival is happening September 12-15 in San Francisco.
SheFi Summit Singapore (Web3 & AI) is happening September 17 in Singapore.
Stablecoin Summit 2024 is happening September 20 in Singapore.
Global Blockchain Business Council is co-hosting the Sustainability Summit alongside Microsoft and Blockchain x Climate (BxC) as part of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), UN Foundation Global Goals partner and NY Climate Week events on September 24 in NYC.
GBBC's Blockchain Central UNGA 2024 is happening September 24 in NYC.
Launch of The Digitalist Papers: Artificial Intelligence and Democracy in America is happening September 24 in Stanford, CA. 🆕
ETHMilan is happening September 26-27 in Milan.
Funding the Commons and Earth Commons are hosting a month-long Public Goods x Climate Builder Residency this October in Chiang Mai.
The Global DPI (Digital Public Infrastructure) Summit is happening October 1-3 in Cairo, Egypt.
Athena DAO Labs Pop-up is happening October 1-30 San Francisco, California. 🆕
Network Society Camp is happening October 11-14 in Austin, Texas.
The SolarPunk Summit is happening October 17-21 in Kingsbury, Texas.
Escaping the Memory Hole: Internet Archive’s annual celebration is happening October 23 in San Francisco.
FIL Dev Summit 5 is happening November 6-8 in Bangkok.
LabWeek Web3 is happening November 7-13 in Bangkok.
Earth Commons: Bangkok 2024 is happening November 9 in Bangkok. 🆕
FIL Bangkok: DePIN Meets AI is happening November 11 in Bangkok.
Oasis Oncahin is happening January 30 - February 2 in Nassau, Bahamas.
Recurring
Upcoming X spaces focusing on using Web3 for positive impact in the real world (+ recordings), curated by @civilmonkey.
Climate Coordination Network X Spaces happen weekly, every Thursday.
Monthly Earth Day is a global event that happens on the 22nd every month, not just once a year. Get involved on September 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
Cork Protocol is a risk pricing protocol accelerating onchain credit.
Seabex provides a sensorless precision irrigation solution designed to meet the unique needs of smallholder farmers, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver data-driven advice.
The Citizen Wallet is an open source crypto wallet that you can preconfigure for your community token. The end result is a wallet ready to use for community members (on iOS, Android and web).
Blockchain Governance, published by MIT Press, is a new book by Primavera De Filippi, Wessel Reijers and Morshed Mannan.
Unchained Elephants is a community dedicated to promoting elephant welfare in Thailand via MemeCoins & NFTs.
Phygital Food Project uses technology like Web3, NFTs & Spatial Computing to feed hunger instead of greed.
Landia is a grassroots network leveraging ancestral and emerging tech for environmental protection and intersectional regeneration.
Freedom Pay Wallet empowers the unbanked in rural Africa by providing seamless access to goods and services via a digital wallet.
OpenSocial Protocol is a multichain protocol empowering creators & communities to build, grow & monetize their own dApps. (It has more DAUs than Farcaster or Lens).
✨ And one more thing
Passionate about Celo governance? How to become a Celo Delegate and have your Delegate profile appear in Celo Mondo.