Previously published as Celebrating Ethereum: The Technology Empowering the Next Generation of Social Impact (July 2023)
As Ethereum marks its 10th anniversary, it's time to celebrate the transformative power this platform has unleashed not just in finance and technology, but significantly across social and environmental domains. Since its inception in 2015, Ethereum has evolved into the foundation of a global movement, enabling transparent governance, inclusive funding, climate action, and more.
Here are seven core areas where Ethereum continues to empower positive change, and where its legacy is still being written.
Stablecoins are among the most powerful tools to emerge on Ethereum, providing reliable, borderless digital money. By pegging tokens to stable assets like the U.S. dollar, stablecoins reduce volatility, making them accessible to everyday users who can’t risk exposure to crypto’s price swings.
One standout use case is MiniPay, a stablecoin wallet built on Celo but integrated directly into Opera’s mobile browser, with Ethereum interoperability. MiniPay is designed for everyday transactions in regions like Africa, where millions remain excluded from traditional banking. With fees under one cent, instant settlement, and seamless UX, MiniPay brings Ethereum-enabled stablecoins into the hands of local communities, enabling affordable remittances, savings, and commerce.
Another powerful innovation is Glo Dollar (USDGLO), an Ethereum-based stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar and backed by cash and short-term treasuries. What makes Glo unique is its built-in impact model: instead of profits going to private stakeholders, all yield generated from its reserves is directed to Web3 public goods, and nonprofits like GiveDirectly. This model turns a stablecoin into a perpetual public goods funding mechanism, showing how Ethereum can align financial inclusion with systemic social impact. We cover this exciting innovation in our podcast series: AutoPGF: Funding Impact with Glo Dollar.
Ethereum’s smart contracts, which are essentially self-executing programs on-chain, have become vital building blocks for social impact. Projects like Etherisc are providing parametric crop insurance to over 15,000 Kenyan smallholder farmers, delivering instant payouts during droughts, with expansion underway in West Africa and East Africa.
But Etherisc is expanding further: now integrating carbon credits into its model, the platform empowers up to 500 million smallholder farmers to enter the $40 billion carbon credit market, creating new pathways to bolstering livelihoods while supporting climate resilience.
Another exciting use case powered by Ethereum’s smart contracts is helping get disaster relief to those in need proactively before disaster strikes. In 2024, an anticipatory action pilot project led by Shamba Network, Fortune Credit, and DIVA Donate used Ethereum-based smart contracts to deliver cash transfers before climate disasters struck. By integrating satellite data and decentralized oracles, the system could trigger aid automatically when early-warning thresholds (like drought indicators) were met. This empowered vulnerable households to prepare rather than just recover, drastically reducing potential impacts to their livelihoods.
We explored this pilot in depth on the Crypto Altruists Podcast, Episode 177, where the teams shared how blockchain can scale proactive humanitarian aid. Together, projects like Etherisc and the anticipatory action pilot project show how Ethereum smart contracts are helping communities move from reactive relief to anticipatory resilience.
Ethereum continues to support a thriving ecosystem of DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), from BuidlGuidl connecting and empowering Ethereum builders, to Gitcoin, whose quadratic funding model has mobilized support for thousands of public goods projects.
One groundbreaking evolution is Optimism’s Retroactive Project Funding (RetroPGF), an innovative, community-governed initiative that rewards individuals and projects retroactively for their contributions to the Optimism ecosystem. To date, 71M OP tokens (or over $50M USD at the time of writing) has already been distributed to hundreds of projects contributing to Optimism and the growth of the Superchain.
Another exciting experiment, and a personal favorite, is Octant, which leverages ETH staking rewards to fund public goods. It works by allowing participants to earn ETH rewards by participating in “epoch” funding rounds and deciding how to allocate these rewards. By locking GLM tokens, users gain voting rights on fund distribution, ensuring a committed and engaged community. The Golem Foundation supports Octant with donations that come from its staking rewards of 100,000 ETH. This approach ensures that capital is both sustainably generated and democratically distributed, showing yet another way Ethereum continues to pioneer funding mechanisms that support impact far beyond its own ecosystem.
We had the pleasure of diving into the Octant ecosystem in our podcast series Trailblazers of Octant, where we highlighted projects creating impact in the Octant Ecosystem and explored how Octant’s innovative approach to public goods funding has empowered these projects to amplify their impact.
One of the biggest milestones in Ethereum’s evolution was the landmark merge in 2022. This moved Ethereum from the energy-intensive proof-of-work consensus mechanism which is most notably used to secure the Bitcoin blockchain, to proof-of-stake (PoS). This dramatically reduced the carbon footprint of Ethereum, cutting energy usage by over 99%. This shift was essential in laying the foundation for an ecosystem where impact builders felt more comfortable experimenting, recognizing that Ethereum was now a much more environmentally sustainable place to build.
Ethereum’s shift to proof-of-stake didn’t just reduce its carbon footprint, it also unlocked new opportunities for funding impact directly through staking rewards.
One example is Octant, which we highlighted earlier for its unique model of public goods funding. Another complementary approach is that offered by Lido Impact Staking, an initiative powered by Launchnodes that allows users to fund diverse causes from staking yield. Here, donor-stakers allocate a portion of their staking rewards, without touching their principal, towards initiatives that support financial inclusion, climate resilience, and other high-impact causes. This model transforms passive ETH staking into recurring philanthropic funding, providing nonprofits and startups with predictable, sustainable resources.
Together, Octant and Lido Impact Staking showcase how Ethereum’s staking economy can be repurposed to support public goods and social innovation at scale.
While Ethereum is a global network, its impact is increasingly local. Builders around the world are embracing Ethereum localism, using the network to power region-specific DAOs, currencies, and public goods.
One example is Grassroots Economics, which has pioneered Community Asset Vouchers and Commitment Pooling. This model allows communities to exchange vouchers representing commitments for goods and services, incubating projects and businesses without relying on scarce national currencies or volatile markets. By anchoring economic activity in shared commitments, Grassroots Economics helps communities build resilience and self-determined prosperity.
Another example is ReFi DAO, a global network that empowers local nodes to drive regenerative action in their own communities. From urban reforestation in South America to clean energy access in Africa, ReFi DAO enables local leaders to coordinate funding, resources, and community engagement using Ethereum’s infrastructure. The end result: a mosaic of regenerative projects connected by a common Web3 framework.
The ethos of localism, and the building of global architecture for local impact, aligns perfectly with Ethereum’s vision of open coordination, and has been one of the most exciting movements to emerge in the Ethereum ecosystem in recent years. It ensures that technology doesn’t just scale for its own sake, but directly supports the needs, cultures, and aspirations of communities worldwide.
The celebratory impact extends beyond code. The 2024 documentary Vitalik: An Ethereum Story chronicles the personal journey of Ethereum’s co-founder, capturing the ideals, governance challenges, and social ethos behind the technology. It offers a humanized window into Ethereum’s mission-driven roots, hoping to break down the stigmas commonly associated with crypto.
Ethereum’s ongoing relevance is also underscored by funding ramps like the Ethereum Foundation’s Academic Grants Round, which is investing $2 million into cutting-edge research in to areas like cryptography and economic theory, ensuring academic contributions continue shaping the ecosystem’s future.
Over the past decade, Ethereum has proven itself to be far more than a financial infrastructure. It has become a coordination layer for global good. Across its ecosystem, builders are reimagining how communities fund, govern, and sustain impact.
Through stablecoins like MiniPay and Glo Dollar, Ethereum is driving both everyday financial inclusion and novel funding streams for public goods. With smart contracts powering projects like Etherisc and Anticipatory Action initiatives, communities are moving from reactive aid to proactive resilience in the face of climate shocks. DAOs and funding experiments like Gitcoin’s Quadratic Funding, Optimism’s RetroPGF, and Octant are pioneering new ways of resourcing the public goods economy.
Ethereum’s move to proof-of-stake dramatically reduced its carbon footprint, while staking innovations such as Impact Staking are turning validator rewards into sustainable funding for nonprofits and social enterprises. At the same time, localist movements like those being powered by Grassroots Economics and ReFi DAO are ensuring that Ethereum’s tools strengthen communities on the ground, empowering people to build resilient, regenerative economies in their own backyards.
As Ethereum enters its second decade, the lesson is clear: this technology is not only about scaling finance or making money, it’s about scaling trust, equity, and human potential. From global stablecoins to hyperlocal DAOs, Ethereum is building the connective tissue for a world where financial inclusion, climate resilience, and community empowerment are not side effects, but core features of the network itself.
Ethereum’s 10th anniversary is a reminder of what’s possible when bold ideas, open technology, and a global community come together to build for the common good. The next decade will undoubtedly be filled with much more growth and adoption for the Ethereum network as the space continues working towards the elusive goal of “onboarding the next 1 billion.” At the same time, pioneers and changemakers will continue building on Ethereum, helping to deepen its role as a catalyst for social and environmental transformation worldwide.
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