Tech and Crypto communities unite in the fight against COVID-19
J Cameron & Manuel Gonzalez Alzuru in collaboration with Gitcoin
Edited by Andrea Ang and @James Young.
Caption: As New York Blockchain Week draws to a close, we examine the multitude of ways the tech and crypto communities are coming together to fight COVID-19.
New to the crypto community? Check out Episode 39 of Manifold! Podcast hosts Corey Washington and Steve Tsu are joined by Kieren James-Lubin and Victor Wong of BlockApps. Click here to skip to 28:56 for a comprehensive guide to blockchain, cryptocurrency, and digital signatures.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23IWD-06bM8&feature=youtu.be&t=1736
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23IWD-06bM8&feature=share
COVID-19, Blockchain, and the Global Startup Scene - #39
The COVID-19 outbreak and the subsequent establishment of social distancing measures have forced isolation upon our friends, families, and communities. At the same time, we've seen communities across the globe come together to support each other during this difficult time. Many are using social media groups to actively build stronger bonds and to organize initiatives, while others have explored decentralized and remote collaboration to strategize their efforts.
A swath of prospective attendees of the 2020 Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) in Paris opted to stay home in light of concerns about the spread of the COVID-19 virus in Europe. Many of those who did attend later fell ill with the virus.
When Founder and CEO of Maskbook Suji Yan discovered that Manuel Gonzalez Alzuru was sick after EthCC, and that Alzuru’s family members on the front line lacked proper personal protective equipment, he sent Alzuru 300 masks (which, frustratingly, were retained for more than two weeks by Spanish Customs). Yan later launched the Mask and Test Kit Mutual Aid Fund, to which the crypto community contributed over $16K via Gitcoin Grants that were matched by the Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik Buterin with a quadratic funding mechanism. This fund was used to send masks and tests to countries including the UK, Germany, Switzerland.
Members of the MetaCartel, Abridged and Aragon communities formed a Telegram group, Collab-19, where they brainstormed strategies to support those affected by COVID-19. Their first model took the form of a Uniswap pool designed to tie value to the governance of funds, but they quickly recognized the need for a more user-friendly and less plutocratic platform. In response, they created Collab19 using Abridged crypto bots, Aragon templates, and Wyre, which allows crypto-savvy and non-crypto-savvy users alike to easily join a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) and enter a token-permission-based chat group exclusive to DAO members without ever having to leave Telegram.