Umbrella Tokens, Better Ancestors, and the Future of Moments
Dispatch from Wine3 — The Happy Hour Web3 hackathon
Well, this was a first for us. Last week, we witnessed a real mini-hackathon. Hosted by Annabelle Low, venture builder and director of strategic development at Project Ark, and Ricardo Amaral, co-founder of Positiveblockchain.io, it was a four-session crash course on the practical applications for making Web3 impactful, sustainable, and beautiful.
Now, we’re currently sitting in a tricky spot. Since 1970 69% of earth’s species have been lost. And to avoid a climate disaster, we have to reduce 30billion tons of emissions per year. Inevitably, we find ourselves in the business of rethinking how we live—and Web3 can help us drive this change. It’s crucial, however, to remember that Web3 is a tool, but not a solution in itself. Technology is not the main driver of social social change, it’s just an element in a complex system of social, cultural economic process.”
So Rica and Belle contextualized this moment, from Web1 (as a library, a web where we can read) to Web2 (as a platform, a web where we can read and write) towards Web3 (where we are the web; we can read, write, and execute—the user is empowered). How can we push the existing structures of Web3 to do public social good?
To better understand how to use these technologies, we went through the basic vocabulary, the main “buzzwords”—blockchain (the underlying infrastructure), tokens and NFTs (ways to make transactions happen, the currency and assets), DAOs (the community using these technologies), and the metaverse (the interface). And the coordinators behind using these for social impact? The ReFi, Regenerative Finance movement, used to build systems for human thriving and plurality—because, just like Jess de Jesus de Pinho Pinhal was saying last week, there’s not just one internet, or one Web3; there’ no one way of doing things.
We glanced into the tokenomics: how do tokens create value, how do they incentivize positive behaviour? What are deflationary and inflationary tokens? How do proof of impact tokens attach to sustainable product? (Check out GainForest, a decentralized fund using AI to measure and reward sustainable nature stewardship). What is proof of humanity and Soulbound token—and how does it correlate with the Sybil proof list of humans through the trusted web?
To explain the workings of Web3 projects seeking to drive positive social impact, Rica and Belle gave examples of such projects, like their own Project Ark. Through their own experience, they have learned a lot about using NFTs for fundraising, positioning the project, educating through PR and marketing, investing into a community around the project, responding to concerns about environmental aspects of using this technology, and so on. How can creating a digital twin and using NFTs and proof of impact tokens help drive sustainable initiatives, like ecotourism and conservation activities? What is the preserve-to-earn method? (Check out The Greenverse Suriname project). How can we use NFTs and the metaverse for inclusivity? (Check out the Unhidden, for people with disabilities). How does a non-profit philanthropic DAO work? (Check out Big Green DAO). How can DAOs drive regenerative design? (Check out Traditional Dream Factory DAO). How can you support local causes, artists, and changemakers, as well as education initiatives through NFTs and the metaverse? (Check out AfricaRare and Kolektivo). How does proof of humanity work? What are some criteria to select a green chain to build on? And other examples, which you can check out in the recording.
To be able practice this received knowledge, and turn it into a real hackathon, the participants worked together in 3 groups, aiming to come up with a project responding to one of the two main challenges: tokenizing beautiful business, so seeing how organizations can leverage digital assets for the common good, and decentralizing beautiful business, or imagining setting up a decentralized organization to leverage Web3 for creating positive externalities.
In the spirit of learning together, the criteria by which the groups were judged were: identification of the problem, the strength of solution, creativity, feasibility, and the clarity of the presentation. Our judges were Greg Sherwin, senior principal engineer at Farfetch and contributor to our asynchronous conference (during Week 2), Alexandra Dumitrescu, catalyst of partnerships for innovation at WWF, Jon O’Sullivan, director of business development and partnerships at Project Ark, and Belle and Rica.
And these were three fantastic projects presented.
Are the new systems we are learning to use accessible to everyone? There are more than 350 million colorblind people in the world today—and there are so many other common disabilities around us. Does “everyone” really mean “everyone?”
So the first team (Sofia Lopez Ambrosioni, Rute Sousa, and Petra Ronzani) presented umbrella tokens as an incentive for companies acting in the blockchain environment to be 100% inclusive with their products and services. In other words, it’s an accessibility rating tool of businesses’ blockchain platforms, measuring things like contrast of color, user interactivity, presentation of information, etc, that grants the tokens using smart contracts. And for the users, companies’ umbrella tokens work as a kind of filter so that they can choose the platforms that best fit their needs.
Second group (Katja Pönigk, Anna Sundukova, and Mariana Westphalen) wants to become better ancestors. City dwellers often feel disconnected from municipal officials who take care of natural resources—the parks, the rivers, the forests, the air, and so on. How could they be a part of those decisions, as well? As suggested by this project, they could access platforms where local organizations and municipal officials are represented, and purchase impact tokens to decide on their city’s natural sources used for the common good and the future generations. Through smart contracts, organizations would have to prove the realization of their initiatives. Citizens could also go into a virtual representation of the city and see the “live” results of their actions.
And the third group (Micael Lopes, Su Sakarya, Alexandre Ayoub) presented us with a problem, known to many of us, globally: we take way too many photos and videos, we post them on social networks, and we share fake images and spread fake news. And there’s a lot of duplication: per day, we are looking at around 8 billion pictures sent on WhatsApp alone. And our global data is expected to double within the next three years. So the solution this group proposed is to create a platform where every single picture and video only exists once—and it would be stored and authenticated in time and geolocation. It would bring about an authentic digital world based on real life events and moments through revolutionizing how we store and share pictures and videos. It could later be used for proof of creation and proof of preservation.
After tough consideration, the judges announces the winning team, and the second group, that of the good ancestors received a 100 ton CO2 offset by Project Ark under the team’s name (that’s an equivalent of roughly 100 trips from Paris to New York—or, the average yearly carbon footprint of someone living in Berlin). It’s a 100 Climate CRED token that verifies that carbon has been removed from the atmosphere and serves as proof-of-removal.
Congratulations to the winning team and to all the wonderful participants, hosts, and judges!
Additional information and links:
A lot of the information covered in the hackathon was quoted from the book by one of the founders of Gitcoin, Kevin Owocki, called
Greenpilled: How Crypto Can Regenerate the World
And here are the recordings of all the four sessions:
They are also available in the #library section on our Discord. Want to join our journey? There’s still time!
Katia Zoritch, writer at the House of Beautiful Business
Beautiful Business in Web3 is the first community-run, asynchronous conference on the future of humanity, technology, and business in a decentralized world. It is run by the House of Beautiful Business in partnership with Hotwire, a global PR and communications consultancy.
