Ethereum For The World - DDA Report (DRAFT)

[LuukDAO]

This draft DDA report aims to 1) speedrun the Strategic Sense-Making Framework to serve as a benchmark and provide additional insights and clarity for other GG24 DDAs and 2) make the case for what we believe is a key problem Ethereum faces.

While the report itself is still in draft stage, we would love early feedback on the structure, overall direction of the DDA (and interest of others to contribute to it), and other high-level recommendations.

Author: Luuk Weber, Founder Kolektivo Labs & Lead CeloPG

DDA: Ethereum For The World

Despite having the most mature infrastructure and ecosystem for building effective real-world solutions, Ethereum is not at the forefront of most innovators’ and development institutions’ minds when they develop their solutions.

Problem & Impact

The lack of cohesive, accessible resources, proactive relationship and program building, and timely support available to promising builders are the primary reasons why Ethereum is not yet embedded in a large share of SDG initiatives, despite providing a global, permissionless and open-source foundation that could play a key role in many challenges ranging from identity, humanitarian aid tracking, to last-mile funding.

It’s critical to position Ethereum as the de facto public blockchain and ecosystem for sustainable development and ensure sufficient resources are allocated to those solving real problems. This is important now more than ever before, as a) regulatory clarity (such as the GENIUS Act) and technical progress are increasingly drawing in institutional interest to use and invest in public blockchains, b) geopolitical changes are shaking up global development value chains and forcing traditional leaders to re-org and re-focus - with the best example being the UN having the reduce it’s budget with ~30%.

For Ethereum To Win, it has to continue to play a key role as the world ledger (a vision shared by key stakholders Vitalik and Joseph Lubin) for ETH to be able to function as a Global Reserve Asset, Store of Value, and Oil of the Digital Economy (Bull Case Picture).

Tough times accelerate change and innovation. This is a unique opportunity for Ethereum and Gitcoin to become a proven infrastructure for new-age sustainable development solutions and funding infrastructure. If successful, ETH FTW would result in thousands of impactful and open-source solutions thriving in the Ethereum Ecosystem, resulting in hundreds of millions of real humans benefiting from the value created, a share of which will undoubtedly flow back to Ethereum and Gitcoin stakeholders.

Sustainable Development, when viewed collectively, is one of the largest and fastest-growing market opportunities. Let’s grow that pie, and get our fair share of it!

Sensemaking Analysis

Our sensemaking effort combines deep market experience, public signals and sources by leading stakeholders and institutions, and statistics to prove the importance and urgency of the ETH For The World DDA.

Deep Market Experience: Our team, Kolektivo Labs, and I have 8+ years of experience operating at the intersection of Ethereum and Sustainable development. Since launching CuraDAO, the first real-world impact DAO in 2019, we’ve coordinated with hundreds of solution builders and institutions, from being part of UNICEF Innovation’s Climate Fund, to presenting at the UNDP HQ, to coordinating large-scale programs and strategic grants to realize the potential of Blockchain to solve real problems. We’re first-hand experiencing a) our partner development organizations struggling with uncertainty and reduced budgets, b) the rapid development of new generation onchain solutions and last-mile solutions, and c) an increased demand for solutions that can scale to millions of users and solve a real problem.

Public Signals: see problem & impact section for now, more sources to be added later.

Statistics: see problem & impact section for now, more sources to be added later.

Gitcoin’s Unique Role & Fundraising

Historically, functionally, and strategically, Gitcoin plays a key role in funding what matters for the world and Ethereum. With a rich history of supporting open-source development - a great share of which focused on the intersection of the world and Ethereum’s needs - Gitcoin has the legitimacy and resources required to play a leading role in making Ethereum the de facto sustainable development ecosystem.The problems that sustainable development aims to solve are wicked and complex; an ecosystem approach paired with strong leadership and feedback loops is required to solve them effectively.

There’s a range of projects and funders that have in the past and/or are actively funding and driving initiatives at the intersection of sustainable development and open-source software within and around the Ethereum ecosystem, including but not limited to: Funding The Commons, Ethereum Foundation, Gitcoin, Giveth, Octant, Unicef Ventures, UNDP, Celo, and Optimism.

Previous Gitcoin rounds, including the dApps & Apps and other OSS core rounds hosted by Gitcoin and the Real World Builders round hosted by CeloPG during GG21, provide a strong foundation to source learning, traction, and solution developers from.

As the lead for CeloPG, we have included a budget request of up to $150,000 from the Celo Ecosystem Treasury for this domain to be voted on in the next weeks. We also have a soft commitment from the EF to support the overarching Ethereum For The World movement, which would allow us to create marketing resources, case studies, a platform, and host an ETH FTW event around DevConnect.

With a commitment from Gitcoin to prioritize this DDA, we would imagine being able to reach out to additional co-funders to work towards a $500K budget, allowing this DDA to have a lasting impact on Gitcoin, Ethereum, and the world.

Success Measurement & Reflection

ETH FTW aims to make Ethereum the most attractive place to build sustainable development solutions that have a positive impact on the world.

To realize its purpose, we aim to measure outcomes across multiple dimensions, namely:

1. How well are we able to identify, curate, and support meaningful, sustainable development solutions that leverage Ethereum? Measured by the amount and quality of projects funded through the ETH FTW program.

2. What is the size and depth of impact of the projects that benefited from our program on solving the sustainable development programs of the world, and the Gitcoin, Ethereum, and Celo ecosystems? Measured by having teams report their impact through proven standards, such as the SDGs and CIDS, which we’ve already started using in the Regen Coordination round, and their onchain impact.

3. How much traction can we gain to accelerate the program and initiatives of ETH For The World further beyond GG24? Measured by our ability to produce the required impact and resources needed to gain serious interest from multiple stakeholders to (continue to) dedicate resources to the progression of the ETH FTW program.

We’ll set up impact tracking solutions for each of these dimensions using tools like Karma, Divvi, OSO, Forms, Partnership CRM, Analytics, and host interviews to be able to report on the program’s impact 6 and 12 months after the start of the ETH FTW program.

Satisfaction test: We are confident that the Ethereum ecosystem will be glad we funded this domain in the long term if we’re able to increase the amount of sustainable development solutions built on Ethereum (L2s), the number of real users regularly engaging with dApps that provide them with clear value, and the number of development companies and institutions dedicating time and resources to the Ethereum Ecosystem.

[owocki]

i am spiritually and ideologically aligned with this vision @LuukDAO @MontyMerlin

but i have to say, the following questions are existential and i think it is largely unanswered:

1. how do we raise the next $100k for Ethereum for the World?
2. then, how do we raise the next $1m for Ethereum for the World?
3. then, how do we raise the next $10m for Ethereum for the World?
4. then, how do we raise the next $100m for Ethereum for the World?

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riffing on this a bit more:

i think there is more supply of web3-pilled impact creators than there is demand to fund it. what is the offering we’re providing here? what is the killer draw that is gonna raise the $$? who are the capital allcoator archetypes we should pursue first?

ofc, Gitcoin (and Celo, and the EF if we harangue them enouggh) can provide the initial funding.

But how do we nerdsnipe the next 10x of funding? then the 10x after that? then the 10x after that?

a big part of Ethereum for the World being viable IMO is showing where the money is gonna come from! id love to see a higher resolution piece of sensemaking about this bit.

[owocki]

tagging @omniharmonic - i think we could put our brains together on this!

also ethereum localism people like @exeunt @vengist and greenpill network friends @Oba-One @MattyCompost i think would have some good additions in how to orchestrate / fund more ethereum for the world

[LuukDAO]

Getting the next 100k and 1M seems very accomplishable if we create the best capital allocation program for stakeholders who are already convinced of the value prop of onchain development / PG funding as mentioned in the DDA report.

The right target from our POV and what we aim to proactively progress on is “How to get to a $10M multi-year program?” as this is the size required to have a serious and lasting impact on the World and the Ethereum ecosystem.

To get there, we have to make meaningful progress on solving the World’s biggest problems (as you also mentioned on your latest pod) and show our ecosystem’s ability to coordinate solution funding more efficiently than traditional mechanisms.

We’re coordinating with UNDP and have a list of 200+ real problems various countries (offices) are facing that could be solved with blockchain solutions, and we aim to include these challenges in the ETH FTW DDA.

Each year, over $200B in development funding is coordinated, with ~10x that amount needed to realize all development objectives. Our aim is for 0.1% of that funding (200M) to be allocated on Ethereum by 2030.

An ideal timeline to get there would be:
H2 2025 - Pilot cycle with ~0.5M program (kickstarted by Celo, EF, Gitcoin)
2026 - Full-year program with 1-2M in funding (attract 3-5 more co-funders such as Octant, World, Unicef Innovation, B4G, Whales)
2027-2028 - Multi-year program with 5M+ in resources from large institutions
2029 onwards - Ongoing, large-scale programs with nation states and multi-national entities.

I disagree with the take that there is an oversupply of web3-pilled impact creators, as there are thousands of traditional impact solutions that could benefit and increase their effectiveness by leveraging Ethereum; however, we lack the guidance and resources for (proven) teams to integrate and for existing teams to expand with development-focused offerings.

We need a better program and more resources to be able to attract high-potential/proven solution builders.

In parallel to the effort of increasing our resources for onchain development solutions, I’m also optimistic about the long-term potential of an ETH FTW Fund, comparable to the Gitcoin/Allo fund vision, which would provide an additional path to fund and further accelerate promising solutions.

If we manage to tie in the ETH FTW Program into new and existing development funding pipelines and create an ETH FTW Fund that ties into the growing Impact Investor ecosystem (1.5 T+ in assets management according to Global Impact Investing Network), we believe we can grow to 10M and even 100M a year.

Yet, it all starts with a first step now.

[exeunt]

Tl:Dr ETH FTW can maximize ROI on sector investment, attract interested capital and improve its branding/credibility by putting great attention to selecting for avant garde, future-coded sustainable development projects (projects that are structurally creative, ontologically imaginative, intellectually compelling, and cool).

In this essay from last year, I argued for three future-proof paths of Ethereum adoption:

• Make Ethereum Underground
• Make Ethereum Interspecies
• Make Ethereum Weird

(See bottom third of the piece for elaborations on each, but in general, they argue that Ethereum is adequate and relevant to underground/DIY values, important to any project of establishing political or economic stakeholder shift for nonhumans, and, as a network-economy framework, robustly capable of absorbing the implications of the many disruptive scientific breakthroughs (“ontological shocks”) on the horizon).

I see these as all apart of a general project of unlocking intellectual and cultural legitimacy for Ethereum that will go hand and hand with unlocking pools of capital.

There’s a reason why this kind of appeal is more salient than ever: personal wealth concentration accelerated greatly after covid, and has been solidified by Trump’s policies. And billionaires - unlike impersonal public funding bodes - want to be cool, to have interesting things to say at dinner parties. This means investing in things that are avant garde, have the sanction of an intellectual elite (whether of STEM or of the humanities), or are underground/cultural-avant garde coded.

Many note that “woke values” (which are underground values) are no longer attractive to capital, but I think this is a fakeout: the Trump right is fundamentally kleptocratic and hollow - they don’t believe in anything except short term wealth gain - and exhaustion from that will lead to a rediscovery of core progressive values in short order. At the same time, that rediscovery will be most intense to the many billionaires and private philanthropy outfits that were enriched in the last 5 years - all the moreso because public funding is now dead, and many will be looking to them to replace it. When this happens, the smartest of that money will recognize the call, but will be intolerant of the old guard of progressivism, seeking instead futuristic solutions: democracy without bureaucracy, agility without financial nihilism - all the things Ethereum offers as a third way from public administration and shareholder capitalism.

I would argue everything above aligns with ETH FTW…

• We need to market the Ethereum ownership economy as an alternative to streaming services, Shopify, and the dozens of other extractive middlemen that dominate the ethereum space. Content creation is a huge source of onboarding momentum to tech in developing countries and in impoverished elements of developed cities, and creators will understand the difference between value owned and value intermediated by corporations.

• Sustainable development means understanding the agency and rights of other species, of nature, as stakeholders and participants in human thriving. Terra0’s model of a self-owned forest won cultural legitimacy - here they are in LAS Arts Foundation in Berlin - that I know anecdotally was a major greenpill for ecological thinkers now working in the space. How can we identify and fund those who are thinking beyond the humanist lens, mixing ecological values with science fiction level futurism to shape the future of sustainable development? (And how can we ignore that those people are likely to be bright, charismatic, iconoclastic types that are not responding to the dominant narratives but shaping the future ones?) The academic community has been deadset on more-than-human governance for two decades - they’ve only had the buy in of the most imaginative, forward institutions. We can fill that vacuum.

• The larger point: Ethereum is an economic and governance framework from the future. It’s a third way. This is a marketing and adoption angle that also has the convenience of being true. How can we show that to the world, and especially to a new class of billionaires and private funds that are disenfranchised with the limitations of the private/public binary at the same time as they are greatly empowered to act on that disillusionment? How can we surgically identify next level sustainable development vectors, actors that will be natural allies to Ethereum because they are too underground, too posthuman, too weird to map on to the dominant institutional frameworks… actors that will attract capital exactly because of those qualities.

If I had to suggest something it would be this: Let’s put together a team to identify the most philosophically, politically, scientifically, strategically disruptive movements in sustainable development - esp. the ones that resonate with the horizontalist, p2p, networked, decentralist, technologically optimistic and pro-social values of ethereum - and fund them aggressively until the avant garde of this field is synonymous with support from and entanglement with Ethereum. In order to get the most for our dollar while attracting new capital, let state and tradfi money fund sustainable development of today while we focus on tomorrow.

[AC1706-67]

This resonates deeply with what we’re building through Recovery Commons — a decentralized, peer-led recovery ecosystem aligned with Ethereum values: community ownership, freedom from institutional gatekeeping, and technology as a tool for human dignity.

We work with people navigating incarceration, addiction, and systemic neglect, and we’re designing tools like zkProof logins, decentralized identity, token incentives, and trust-based coordination models to offer self-governed recovery systems. Not charity. Not bureaucracy. Community sovereignty.

Recovery is more than just health — it’s a frontier of governance, access, and cultural regeneration. We are building a post-institutional framework that can serve as a real-world use case of what Ethereum makes possible.

I’d love to be in conversation with anyone assembling this visionary team. Recovery Commons is ready to be part of this future-facing network. We’re already building it.