Open Conversations: Funding Impact with Ethereum Staking (Jaydeep Korde, Lauchnodes)
Funding the Commons Open Conversations · 2:25
Impact staking sends Ethereum staking returns to social impact work, such as connecting schools to the internet, funding direct cash transfers and planting trees. It has two customers: a project that wants steadier funding than repeated grant requests, and a donor who gives up the opportunity cost of staking yield, anywhere from 1 percent to all of it, instead of giving away principal. Impact data, such as how many schools are connected or how much carbon the trees capture, flows to the donor to support the decision to keep funding.
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From Funding the Commons Open Conversations, hosted by Funding the Commons.
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Impact staking is about using Ethereum staking returns to fund real world social impact. Using the Ethereum staking returns, we connect schools to the internet with Giga and UNICEF. We fund direct cash transfers with G directly and we plant trees and the idea is that any project can start using e staking returns to fund their work. It's a permissionless platform and the critical part is the idea of two customers for us. My name is JD Cord. I work for launch notes and we have built impact staking.
The first customer is a project that wants to be funded in a more sustainable way. And the sustainability comes through the second customer which is the donor who can now support a cause without having to give their money away. They're giving the opportunity cost of their staking yield. And the staking yield is 100%. You can donate 1% or you can donate 100% or anything in between. And that idea of being able to blend the customer who's supporting a charitable cause by saying actually I'm going to keep some of my yield and I'm going to donate it gives them a different paradigm. And for the project now, they're not having to continually reask for grant money and refill their pot to do the work they're doing. And gluing
this connection between these two customers is the idea of impact data which says if I'm doing social impact work whether I'm connecting schools or whether I'm planting trees the data about that work the ping time on the circuits I'm paying for how many schools have been connected how much carbon has been sequested from the trees I planted that data is made available to the donor which supports them being able to make the decision to continue funding without an additional withdrawal or increase in And so the idea that this network growth creates a financial money pipe as it were that could be connected to for-profit organizations but fundamentally to fund structural
problems and social impact that needs a lot of time series as well as a persistent flow of money makes us very excited about the idea of impact statement.