Web3forGood https://paragraph.com/@web3forgood undefined Fri, 05 Jun 2026 13:49:25 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html https://github.com/jpmonette/feed en All rights reserved https://paragraph.com/@web3forgood/kFHUjmGP6KctuZg34meb kFHUjmGP6KctuZg34meb Fri, 05 Jun 2026 11:01:12 GMT ]]> web3forgood@newsletter.paragraph.com (Web3forGood) <![CDATA[🌍 This Week in Web3ForGood]]> https://paragraph.com/@web3forgood/🌍-this-week-in-web3forgood-1 kFmbUkBOeYMmFSI8jBMP Fri, 29 May 2026 11:01:09 GMT Web3forGood is a weekly publication that celebrates and critically analyzes how emerging web3 technology could be used to make the world a better place.

gm gm,

This week, someone who is a really big deal had something very important to say about power and technology. Shoutout to the pope. We read Magnifica Humanitas (aka Pope Leo XIV's new encyclical) and found him making a case for decentralization that would sound right at home in this newsletter… read all about it, below.

Alongside that, we're tracking the Ethereum Foundation choosing values over market value as it slims down, and a new kind of prediction market from Hyperliquid that has us curious (optimistic??).

One more thing: Ma Earth's Funding Round 3 closes this weekend, with $500K in matching funds available for 100 grassroots nature projects worldwide. If you know a community doing the work, send them this way before the deadline.

WAGMI (we are going to make an impact!)

xx Abeera & Sam

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🕊️ Decentralized Pope

If you’ve consumed any form of media content this week (and if not, kudos to you), you are probably aware that the pope had something to say about AI this week. But were you also aware that Magnifica Humanitas, aka Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical on artificial intelligence, explicitly celebrates an idea that is a cornerstone of web3 philosophy? Multiple times, he returns to something called the principle of subsidiarity, which calls for strengthening the fabric of associations and communities while avoiding further centralization of power. In plain terms, this means that decisions should be made as close as possible to the people they affect, and that higher authorities should support local communities rather than replace them. Ok, so the pope never says blockchain or decentralization… but he doesn’t NEED to, because the point is the same. People should be able to participate in the systems that dictate their lives.

Pope Leo argues that, in the digital age, the “highest level” is not the state, but actually a handful of major economic and technological actors that set the terms of everyday life by deciding who gets access, what is visible, and which opportunities exist. His response is that these processes cannot be imposed from above in a unilateral way. He calls for transparency about algorithms, fairer access to data, independent checks, and avenues for people to participate. He names the problem perfectly. What he does not do, because it is not his job to, is name the tools that could solve it.

This is where we get excited, because we know that this is the exact problem that web3 tools were built to solve. The tools exist and people are building with them right now. Gitcoin runs funding rounds where the amount a project receives is driven by how many people back it rather than how much any single donor gives, which pushes money toward whatever the community actually wants instead of whoever has the deepest pockets. Octant hands allocation power to its community through onchain votes, and its upcoming epoch opens that participation to anyone with ETH and uses zero-knowledge proofs so people can vote without exposing their identity. Funding the Commons builds the rails and convenes the people working to fund shared public goods from the ground up. Every one of these is a working attempt at enabling exactly what Pope Leo is calling for: decisions made close to the people affected, power spread out instead of concentrated, and transparency built into the mechanism rather than promised from above.

We want to be careful not to overclaim. The pope is not endorsing crypto, and he is clear that subsidiarity does not mean the state disappears. Public institutions still have a role. So though this is not the pope shilling DeFi, but it is a convergence; one of the most influential moral voices alive is championing the same philosophy that animates much of web3.

For an industry that is often told it’s solving problems nobody has, it’s genuinely invigorating to see the underlying principle that we care about so much show up in a 245-paragraph letter from the Vatican. Distribution of power, aka decentralization, is more than a fringe crypto talking point; it’s part of the larger conversation about what technology owes to human dignity and something worth fighting for.

X avatar for @Pontifex

Pope Leo XIV@Pontifex

Technological progress — valuable in itself — requires careful discernment of the anthropological vision that guides it and the ends it pursues. If technological development advances without a corresponding ethical and social progress, the result may be an increase in means

11:30 AM · May 28, 2026 · 169K Views

227 Replies · 1.38K Reposts · 7.47K Likes

X avatar for @TenreiroDaniel

Daniel Tenreiro@TenreiroDaniel

@Pontifex Holy Father the post will perform better if you append the url in a threaded reply as opposed to linking it in the tweet

11:39 AM · May 28, 2026 · 184K Views

36 Replies · 333 Reposts · 5.18K Likes

🧭 The Ethereum Foundation Is Finding Its Footing

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has had a rough few months. At least nine senior contributors have left or announced departures in 2026, which has mostly been perceived as sparring from a foundational identity crisis. This isn’t completely wrong. Former EF researcher Dankrad Feist recently proposed a new $1 billion organization with a mandate explicitly tied to ETH’s price… which gets right to the heart of the issue. Should the foundation chase market value and growth, or stay loyal to the harder-to-measure values it was built on?

Over the weekend, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin published a long post laying out where he thinks things are headed. He framed the EF as choosing longevity over breadth by focusing only on the activities critical to Ethereum staying censorship-resistant, open, private, and secure. Those values now have a name btw, CROPS, and they were written into the foundation’s mandate back in March.

In a further push to emphasize the importance of decentralization Vitalik emphasized that the foundation is just one node with a defined purpose alongside other nodes; it is not and should not be the center of Ethereum. Overall, the changes are a deliberate bet that Ethereum’s edge is that it runs as a values project first and a financial instrument second.

What happens next is genuinely up in the air. A leaner foundation with fewer researchers is a real loss of capacity, and the people who left are not easily replaced. Still, the direction is clear, and it is a familiar one for anyone who has followed Ethereum from the start. The mission was always supposed to outrank the market. The foundation has made that clear, even at a moment when it would have been easy to chase the money instead.


🔮 A New Referee for Prediction Markets

Prediction markets let people bet on whether something will happen, and someone has to decide who won once the event plays out. Until now that job fell to an outside service called an oracle, a separate system that reports back to the blockchain on what happened in the real world. Hyperliquid just cut that middleman out. Earlier this week, it launched markets where the 24 operators who already run its network vote directly on whether a real-world event occurred, settling the bet on-chain without any outside reporter involved. These operators are the computers, and the people behind them, that keep the blockchain running. Now they have a second job as the referee. Worth noting, the article says they lean on automated news-reading software to guide these votes, so how much of each call is human judgment versus a machine scanning headlines is not really spelled out. It is a direct shot at Polymarket and Kalshi, the two biggest names in the space, and a genuinely different idea about who gets to certify the truth.

We’ve been pretty honest here about our hesitation to accept prediction markets as a net-positive development for society, and we’ve written before about people using them to threaten others and warp public perception of what is real. The question of who decides what actually happened in the real world is a big deal. Moving that decision onto a transparent, on-chain vote, instead of leaving it with a single service that could be manipulated seems to at least be a step in a more accountable direction. Whether a small group of validators makes a better referee is an open question, especially when the outcome is genuinely disputed rather than obvious. We’re watching this closely.

Plus:

X avatar for @Crypto_Altruism

Crypto Altruists@Crypto_Altruism

Science funding, publishing, and ownership are all broken in different ways. Decentralized science is trying to fix all three. 🧪 Crypto Altruists' Guide to DeSci by @TerezaBizkova maps what's being built and what still has to prove itself. cryptoaltruists.com/blog/crypto-al…

5:49 PM · May 28, 2026 · 61 Views

3 Reposts · 13 Likes

📣 Latest News

Global Policy, Regulation, and Adoption News

Reports & Project Updates

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🚀 Opportunities & Calls to Act

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Virtual

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Recurring

  • Monthly Earth Day is a global event that happens on the 22nd every month, not just once a year. Get involved next on June 22.

📡 On Our Radar

  • Bitso is Latin America’s leading digital financial services company, evolving from a crypto pioneer into a comprehensive investment platform with a community of over 10 million customers. Bitso offers a secure, regulated, and easy-to-use digital platform to buy, sell, hold, earn yields, and transact with more than 120 cryptocurrencies and over 5,000 global stocks and ETFs—democratizing finance by combining the transparency of blockchain technology with the strength of traditional stock markets.

  • Mercato Capital provides supply chain finance for Latin America — purchase orders, milestone escrow, and real-economy returns on Stellar.

  • Bit2Kwacha allows anyone to convert between Bitcoin and Kwacha (Zambian) instantly.

  • The Guardian Project is a mobile technology team focused on creating open-source, easy to use mobile applications and firmwares focused on providing personal security, anonymity and privacy.

  • DPGs for Climate Action Collection highlight digital public goods with a proven track record of supporting climate mitigation and adaptation with the goal of pointing governments and organisations toward relevant, proven digital public goods they can adopt.

  • RegenBank is a cooperative platform where eco-projects sell their credits and part of revenue funds collective promotion — creating a self-reinforcing growth engine for regenerative finance.

  • Sarafu Network empowers communities through commitment pooling. Commitment pooling enables communities to create, manage and connect their own economic systems, fostering local trade and resilience.

  • Silvi is building financial and coordination tools to support the trillion tree movement.

  • ChapSmart lets anyone send money to Tanzania using Bitcoin. They disburse in TZS via M-PESA for family, bills, or other needs.

  • GrowFi is making planetary regeneration bankable. Seed liquidity, stake shares, earn interest, and redeem harvests from verified projects all around the world.

  • Futures Literacy.

✨ And One More Thing

X avatar for @FundingCommons

Funding the Commons@FundingCommons

Looking for ways to support internet freedom? Our quadratic funding round with @torproject is live. Ten privacy and anti-censorship nonprofits. $115K match pool from @cakewallet, @ZcashCommGrants, @Logos_network, @OctantApp. Here they are. 🔒👇

11:34 AM · May 22, 2026 · 6.54K Views

4 Replies · 15 Reposts · 46 Likes

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]]> web3forgood@newsletter.paragraph.com (Web3forGood) <![CDATA[🌍 This Week in Web3forGood]]> https://paragraph.com/@web3forgood/🌍-this-week-in-web3forgood EpFy9wfbNzalVyQAtHTg Fri, 31 Oct 2025 12:01:20 GMT gm gm,

The edges of the old and new worlds are blurring fast. Western Union is launching a stablecoin on Solana, a move that says as much about crypto’s growing influence as it does about how incumbents adapt when their time is up. Meanwhile, a16z’s State of Crypto 2025 report maps the shift from trading to building real systems. Stablecoins, privacy tech, and identity tools aren’t just conceptual anymore; they’re starting to power actual change on the ground.

This week’s stories explore that tension between innovation and control, progress and co-option. From global remittances to regulations to reflections on tech and meaning, everything is moving fast and getting closer to something “real.”

WAGMI (we are going to make an impact!)

xx Abeera & Sam

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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


💰 Western Union’s Stablecoin Play

This week, Western Union announced USDPT, a new stablecoin launching on Solana, marking the company’s first major move into blockchain-based remittances. The goal is to let customers send digital dollars instantly and cheaply through the same network that once charged some of the world’s highest transfer fees. For a company long criticized for taking double-digit cuts from migrant workers, this shift feels both overdue and complicated.

On one hand, this could be a meaningful step toward lowering costs for millions of people who rely on remittances every day. Western Union’s global footprint and local payout networks could help solve crypto’s “last mile” problem (how to easily move between digital and local currencies in hard-to-reach markets). For billions without stable on-ramps, this kind of infrastructure could accelerate financial inclusion in practice, not just in theory.

At the same time, the move raises important questions about what kind of system we are building. Crypto’s original promise was to disintermediate the middlemen who profited from the world’s poor, not to empower them with better rails. Western Union’s pivot is a sign that the old guard sees the writing on the wall. For the Web3forGood community, it’s a reminder that competition is here and values matter. The challenge now is ensuring that this next phase of digital finance truly gives people choice and not just a faster way to pay the same gatekeepers.


💭 a16z’s 2025 State of Crypto Report

The State of Crypto 2025 report from a16z is all about “the year crypto went mainstream.” Aka crypto is no longer about trading tokens… it’s about building systems that work in the real world. For the first time, blockchain networks are powering payments, identity, and coordination tools that feel ready for mainstream use, especially in places where the existing systems fall short. Here are our key takeaways for the Web3forGood community:

1. Stablecoins are leading the way.

Stablecoin payments now outpace Visa and PayPal combined, becoming the most used blockchain application globally. In emerging markets, they’re already helping people save, send, and receive money with more stability and less friction. For nonprofits, this is a practical breakthrough; stablecoins make it possible to deliver cash aid directly, pay global teams instantly, and track funds transparently.

2. Builders are back and infrastructure is maturing.

Developer activity has surged across modular and Layer 2 ecosystems like Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism. Smart wallets, account abstraction, and mobile-first design are making crypto usable without crypto literacy. This opens the door for NGOs, community projects, and local innovators to build with blockchain without needing deep technical expertise or complex setup.

3. Privacy, identity, and trust are evolving.

Zero-knowledge technology is reframing privacy as a public good, allowing verifiable yet private transactions. New identity frameworks are emerging that let users prove who they are or what they qualify for without revealing personal data. These are foundational tools for humanitarian work, where safety, trust, and transparency must coexist.

4. Finance meets the physical world.

DeFi is transforming into RealFi, linking on-chain finance to tangible assets like renewable energy projects, small business credit, and community infrastructure. For social enterprises, this could unlock new capital flows into the kinds of projects traditional finance has overlooked.

5. Culture and governance are changing too.

NFTs and DAOs are being repurposed for belonging and coordination rather than speculation. These new digital communities are testing models for collective ownership and participatory decision-making that could inspire the next generation of civic and nonprofit governance.

6. Regulation is slowly catching up.

The landscape is still uneven, but the direction is clearer; stablecoin frameworks, ETF approvals, and more nuanced policy debates are paving the way for collaboration between public institutions and decentralized systems.

The takeaway for the Web3forGood community is simple: the infrastructure is ready. Stablecoins, smart wallets, and privacy layers now make it possible to design financial and civic systems that are global, transparent, and human-centered. What happens next depends on who chooses to build with them and for what purpose.


Plus:

  • 🪙 What If I Was a Bitcoin?: “Think about it: in a world where cryptocurrencies dominate the financial system, we’d be divided by nothing else than our own personal interests. Are you a real-estate enthusiast? Then, go for the RWAs coins. Are you a music and digital art aficionado? Then, the NFT crowd are your kind of people. Memecoins, stablecoins, dAI, DePINs, just choose what makes you get butterflies in your stomach.” (Albena Kostova-Nikolova)

  • ⚖️ Kenya’s New VASP Law: A No-BS Legal Guide for Bitcoin and Crypto Builders: “In plain English: it doesn’t regulate Bitcoin the protocol or your private self-custody. Instead, it regulates companies that touch customer assets — exchanges, custodians, token issuers, investment advisors, brokers, and trading platforms.” (Bitcoin Magazine)

  • 🤖 72 Hours with Friend AI: “There’s something very Judeo-Christian about how Friend seems to comprehend the nature of experience. In our philosophical tradition, experience is often centered on logos, the word. Famously, in the beginning was the Word (see John 1). Similarly, with every new technology, we develop new ways of understanding the world, currently, with the advent of large language models, everything is flattened into language. In each new technological epoch, we must define a system of inputs and outputs that the machine can process. In the industrial age, that meant encoding actions into mechanical logic; now, in the age of large language models, it means translating everything into language.” (being-on-line)

📣 Latest News

Global Policy, Regulation, and Adoption News

🔈 Watch & Listen

🚀 Opportunities & Calls to Act

🎪 Events

🆕= New to the roundup this week

Virtual

IRL

Recurring

  • Monthly Earth Day is a global event that happens on the 22nd every month, not just once a year. Get involved next on November 22.

📡 On Our Radar

  • Campfire is an on-chain renewable energy investments platform.

  • ZAR is accelerating stablecoin adoption for the next billion users living in countries with unstable money.

  • Eco is a stablecoin liquidity network powering fluid, real-time money movement across blockchains.

  • Minibits is an ecash and Lightning wallet exploring how ₿-backed ecash can enable instant, cheap, and private value transfer.

✨ And One More Thing

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