Happy Wednesday, web3 friends! It's halfway through the week and time to dig into some web3 knowledge. If you are new, welcome to our w3 the North family! If you have been following our newsletter from the beginning, good morning gorgeous human, how great to see you again! We hope this newsletter keeps you company this morning as we all cross our fingers and toes that no one has to live through any more historical events for the rest of the 2020s. 

Quip of the Week

Join w3 the North IRL for some crypto talk and drinks!

If you are in Toronto or close-by, come join us IRL - there is no program so come and meet some of the amazing members of the community and enjoy some light web3 discussions over dinner (aka commiserate over how housing is unaffordable and debate what digital salmon is best to invest in!) The first one will be on March 18th @5:30pm at a restaurant in downtown Toronto. Interested? Grab a spot here.

The Latest

NFT Launches to Celebrate International Women's Day 

There was a big surge of NFTs launched by female creators in celebration of International Women's Day-- even Melania Trump decided to jump in. The presence of female-led projects and female buyers in the NFT space is steadily growing. A recent survey reports that one-third of women play to buy crypto this year. Later this month Adidas and Creative Debuts will be hosting an art exhibit to celebrate international women's month. Many of the curated pieces are done by female NFT creators like World of Women, Boss Beauties, and Women Rise. 

Unstoppable Women of Web3 

Unstoppable Domains (which allows individuals to purchase, not rent domain names) launched the "Unstoppable Women of Web3" campaign on IWD, setting aside $10 million in web3 domains to support the inclusion of marginalized people in the web3 ecosystem. They've partnered with Google Cloud, Gemini, Binance, Ripple, Blockchain.com, and dozens of other companies committed to featuring work created by historically marginalized groups meaning women, LGBTQ2+, and racial minority groups. This is further proof that the web3 environment is working hard to be more inclusive and prominent companies in web3 are willing to invest in diversity. 

Andrew Yang wants to eradicate poverty using Web3 

Andrew Yang, failed presidential candidate in the past US elections, has announced the launch of a group called Lobby3. Lobby3 is focused on eradicating poverty and sees web3 as one of the best tools of economic mobility of our time. The focus is on partnerships with public officials to launch programs and projects that support web3 in reaching "its full potential" and the group wants to bring the voice of web3 to Washington DC. This is a signal that the conversation about web3 friendly policies and regulations is not going anywhere and we should expect politicians and policymakers to start commenting on how they will (or will not) incentivize the growth of web3 as a sector of the economy. 

Deep Dive into DeSci? 

What is DeSci? 

DeSci stands for Decentralized Science. Like the rest of Web3, the goal is to decentralize power within the scientific community. If you are thinking, what could be so centralized within research? Well.... how funding is distributed, which projects get funded, who controls the budget, what study gets published are all centralized processes, to name a few... you get the picture.

DeSci is born to fulfil two needs within the science community:

1. Change the power structures around funding and distribution of science-related knowledge

2. More clearly document ownership of scientific research, findings, methodology, and process. 

Ok so what?

DeSci is still nascent in its development. The ecosystem is primarily DAOs that are loosely connected but focus on very different aspects of the DeSci movement.  Still, people are asking themselves fundamental questions about what role web3 can play in shaping what is possible for science and, more broadly, for researchers in the future. Some of these questions include: Can using web3 incentivized communities and verifiable reputation remove the need for patents? Can it change the relationship between commercial interest and the type of research that gets funded? Can we democratize access to research by publishing directly instead of going through journals that often block access to information using paywalls and subscriptions? 

These are all questions that could fundamentally change what we research and how we have access to knowledge. This is not to say that DeSci is entirely focused on research; there are many other facets, some of which are still developing, but you can see how using web3 technology, members of the DeSci community can start to imagine a different future outside of the traditional structures. 

Want to dive in more?

Something to read

• A Call to Join the Decentralized Science Movement

• Advice from Web3 women

• Just like supporting a bro

• International Women's Day 2022: The ladies breaking the bias in NFTs and cryptocurrency

• Our previous newsletters all in one place

Something to do

• Check out one of the podcasts from this thread

• Join Eva Longoria in a conversation about Women and the future of w3

• Join our Discord

Some Crypto Lingo

• "desci": Decentralized Science

• "hodl": hold on for dear life; a typo for hold that stuck

• to the moon (🚀): usually in reference to a cryptocurrency, means you're expecting a huge increase

• whale: an investor with large amounts of crypto

If you enjoyed this read, share it with a friend! If this was forwarded to you and you want to make sure you don't miss anything, make sure to subscribe at this link.

Till next time,

w3 the North