Welcome to the September Edition of the Crypto Altruists Newsletter!

👋 Hello, Crypto Altruists!

This past month has felt like a reminder of the crossroads we’re at.

On one side, we see corporate-led chains and memecoins dominating headlines. On the other hand, communities are experimenting with tools for coordination: funding systems, residency programs, and public goods experiments that show a quieter but steadier path forward.

We see that often, the real work is happening in small circles: local projects testing new models, builders designing rails that make participation easier, and experiments that try to pair freedom with responsibility. The tension between hype and impact is always there, but September has been rich in examples of how people are choosing to build with care.

Let's dive into some of the updates for September... 👇

🌱 Featured: Our Cause is live on Giveth!

We’re excited to share that Voices of Impact, our curated Cause on Giveth, is now live as part of the Causes Quadratic Funding Round! 🎉

A Cause on Giveth is a themed collection of verified projects, making it easier for donors to support a mission rather than just a single initiative. Donations to a Cause are distributed among the projects by Giveth’s allocation system, while also boosting the visibility and funding of the collection as a whole.

Our Voices of Impact cause brings together eighteen projects that have been featured on the Crypto Altruists podcast including builders shaping regenerative finance, governance, impact innovation, and more. Explore the full lineup here. 💜

The round runs September 10–24, with a matching pool of $40,000 in $GIV on Polygon. That means every contribution you make to Voices of Impact is amplified, supporting multiple projects at once while strengthening the broader impact ecosystem.

💡 September impact spotlight

Ecosystem developments 🚀

• Gaia AI and Regen Network launch REGEN IRL: Running until September 26, the grant competition uses AI to evaluate grassroots regenerative projects by their Planetary Return on Investment (PROI), awarding funding and $REGEN rewards to the most impactful initiative.
• Uniswap launches DeFi Safety Quiz: An interactive 10-question quiz from Uniswap University that helps newcomers to crypto test instincts, learn best practices, and spot common risks before they happen.
• Buildathon Season kicks off in Argentina: A six-week series of founder programs running through Devconnect, with tracks spanning privacy, consumer apps, infrastructure, and adoption. Participants can join residencies, hackathons, and accelerators hosted by Crecimiento and partners.
• ReFi DAO launches Regen Haus Residency at Edge City Patagonia: Running October 18–November 15 in San Martín de los Andes, the month-long residency will bring together builders, founders, and creatives to co-live, collaborate, and prototype regenerative Web3 tools.
• DeCharge’s EV charging project on Solana fully funded: Project Surya has raised $150K to install 19 chargers along busy Indian highways, expanding critical EV infrastructure while generating community-funded returns. Development begins this month & first investor payouts expected in January.
• Metagov hosted its 2025 Grants Summit: A two-day event on the future of Web3 grants with support from Octant, Stellar, Scroll, and DAOstar. Watch the recordings from Day 1 and Day 2.
• Alternative payment methods are reshaping Africa’s digital economy: Kotani Pay examines how mobile money, bank transfers, and stablecoins are driving inclusion and why hybrid models may be the key to scale.
• Ethereum For The World launches: A new builder movement positioning Ethereum as a platform for SDG solutions, with programs, events, and resources to support impact-driven projects.
• Funding the Commons announces RealFi Hack: A global virtual hackathon (Sep 23–Oct 16) focused on building practical infrastructure for real-world use cases covering public goods funding, financial access, privacy, identity, and coordination.
• David Dao shares a history of mechanism design for public goods: A timeline mapping how ideas from academia shaped Web3 approaches to public goods, including why incentive compatibility matters.
• Identifying ReFi revenue models: In a new analysis, Trinity Morphy outlines the main revenue models used by regenerative finance projects, from protocol fees and subscriptions to data monetization and validator rewards.
• Gitcoin announces GG24 dates: The 24th round of Gitcoin Grants will be taking place from October 14-28, following months of community sensemaking and priority setting.
• MiniPay celebrates 2nd birthday: Since it's launch in 2023, MiniPay has grown into a force for financial inclusion, providing access to millions in Africa and around the world, while facilitating over 270 million transactions.

Crypto Altruists content & updates 💚

• 📦 Crypto Altruists Starter Pack – Ethereum Public Goods Infrastructure: Our curated collection of podcast episodes on Ethereum’s public goods stack, covering L2s, DAOs, RetroPGF, impact staking, decentralized identity, and more.
• 📖 Understanding Gitcoin Grants & Quadratic Funding: How Communities Fund What Matters: Updated for 2025, this guide covers Gitcoin’s evolution, $67M+ distributed to 5,000+ projects, and how quadratic funding empowers communities to back what matters.
• 📖 10 Years of Ethereum: Driving Global Social & Environmental Impact: From stablecoins and DAOs to climate resilience and localism, Ethereum’s first decade shows how blockchain can fund, govern, and sustain impact worldwide.
• 🎧 Growing Good on Solana Ep. 2 – ecoBridge: Building a Global Web3 Marketplace for Verified Impact: James Bettauer on expanding beyond carbon credits, using blockchain and AI, and building a peer-to-peer marketplace for transparent impact.
• 🎧 Crypto Altruists Ep. 216 – Kava: How Decentralized AI Can Help Web3 Scale: Tony Pham of Kava on co-chain architecture bridging Ethereum and Cosmos, their Oros AI agent layer, and how decentralized AI can drive onboarding, impact, and DAO/DePIN growth.
• 🎧 Crypto Altruists Ep. 217 – Olas: How Decentralized Media Can Rebuild Trust in Journalism: Ciarán Murray on why blockchain is the foundation for open-source publishing, how crypto incentives can counter misinformation, and what Olas is building to restore credibility in media.
• 🎧 SPECIAL EPISODE Crypto Altruists Ep. 218 – Hype, Harm, or Hope? AI & Blockchain at the Crossroads of Global Impact: Exploring how decentralized AI and blockchain can drive philanthropy and climate action while making AI safer, more transparent, and aligned with the public good.

Recommended resources 📖

• Octant: Turning Ethereum staking yield into public goods: A deep-dive from the Golem Foundation on how its platform has distributed $10M+ in ETH staking rewards to community-chosen projects, with v2 set to expand participation and impact.
• Building Web3 Communities in Latin America: A new handbook from CeLatam offering toolkits, funding frameworks, and region-specific strategies for grassroots builders, blending cultural foundations with Web3 values.
• CARBON Copy Newsletter: A leading source on regenerative finance news and analysis. The latest edition explores ReFi revenue models and introduces the idea of “funding readiness” for projects moving toward financial sustainability.

🌟 Project highlight: Prosperity Pass

Impact in Web3 is not only about individual projects. It also depends on the shared infrastructure that helps contributors get recognized, rewarded, and connected across ecosystems. On Celo, a new initiative is starting to do just that: Prosperity Pass. 💛

Prosperity Pass is a smart account wallet developed by Kolektivo Labs and Celo Public Goods. It brings all your onchain activity into one account, letting you link multiple wallets, collect badges for things like governance participation or event attendance, and earn Prosperity Points as you go.

Prosperity Pass has already been piloted in Celo’s Season 0 governance process and is set to play a bigger role in upcoming seasons, shaping how incentives, voting, and contributor pathways are designed.

Another complementary effort is Proof of Impact, an onchain rewards program that allocates CELO to projects based on real user activity like unique wallets and gas consumed. In its first cycle, five teams shared 20,000 CELO, with progress tracked transparently in a Dune dashboard by Divvi. The goal is to reward genuine growth and network usage, while ensuring projects beyond the MVP stage have support to scale.

• For contributors, it turns their onchain actions into visible impact, making it easier to showcase and be rewarded for what they do. 🙌
• For communities, it highlights where meaningful impact is happening and helps direct rewards toward the people driving it. 🌏

At Crypto Altruists, we're intrigued by how ecosystems can make contributions visible and connect them to real rewards, changing how people participate. Efforts that might often go unnoticed, such as joining a vote, showing up for an event, or supporting a community, can now become part of an onchain identity that carries weight across programs and opportunities. This makes coordination easier, while also making participation more satisfying for individuals.

💡 Bring Web3 into your nonprofit's mission

At Crypto Altruists, we help nonprofits, foundations, and impact organizations cut through the noise and explore blockchain in a way that’s practical, mission-aligned, and grounded in real-world use cases.

Whether you’re curious about crypto donations, AI & transparency tools, or how Web3 can strengthen your programs and services, our tailored consulting services and interactive workshops meet you where you are, no jargon, no hype. Let’s work together to unlock the opportunities that make sense for your cause.

Book a call with us today to start the conversation. 🤝

📬 Stay connected

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See you in the next edition! 💚