Localism Fund

What happens when you fund localism on Ethereum? Check out our results, evaluation insights, and honest reflections from Localism Fund Round 01 & 02. Full write-up here 👇 gov.gitcoin.co/t/localism-fun…

Perspective from @owocki: 🌎 The nation-state is an awkward container for solving ecological and economic problems. Watersheds don’t respect borders. Food systems don’t care about politics. Climate impacts don’t stop at checkpoints. Increasingly, the most meaningful unit of coordination is the bioregion: places shaped by water, climate, soil, flora, fauna, and the cultures that co-evolved with those constraints. → The Colorado River Basin → The Pacific Northwest → The Great Lakes These are real geographies segmented by political boundaries despite their shared fate. Real in a way that lines on a map are not, because what happens upstream carries downstream. That connection creates the conditions for shared stewardship and shared investment – and for capital, coordination, and collective memory to root in place 🌱 Full piece ↓ gitcoin.co/research/biore…

Communities across Colombia are building regeneration on the ground With support from the @localismfund ReFi Colombia has been expanding community activities, Web3 onboarding, and direct support for people who need it most. Here’s a quick thread on what we’ve been building👇🏻

@MontyMerlin @ReFiDAOist @CeloPublicGoods 👀

The most powerful coordination mechanism humanity has invented? Finance. The almighty “invisible hand of market forces” we are taught in neoliberal economics. But even across mainstream institutions, foundations, investors and policymakers… a quiet consensus is emerging: The old system is broken. I’m starting a new project exploring how we might bridge worlds — connecting the emerging ReFi / Web3 ecosystem with mainstream nature finance. More soon 🌱 @circbioalliance @UniofOxford @LeverhulmeTrust @KateRaworth @UNEP

🌱 Update | Localism Mini Grant Round 01 – Colombia We’re happy to share that during this first round we received two applications, both of which were reviewed and approved based on their impact, territorial focus, and alignment with ReFi Colombia principles 🇨🇴✨👇🏻

Introducing the @RifaiSicilia Bioregional Portfolio: A 10-year plan to regenerate Sicily as a fractal model for the entire Mediterranean. Turning desertification, rural abandonment & climate crises into abundance through integrated businesses. Read the greenprint below 🫒

Building a startup, product, or business for the first time is hard. Doing it without structure, feedback, or real users is even harder. That’s why we launched the B<>rder/ess Builders OP — a 2-week builder sprint designed to help: 🕴🏽Early-stage founders 💼First-time builders 👩🏽‍🏫 Student Entrepreneurs 🏪 Real world Business Owners 👨🏽‍💻Emerging startups move from: 💭idea → to 🔨validation → to 📲users → to 💲revenue 🗓 January 26 – February 8 This isn’t a hackathon. It’s an Operator Program (OP) focused on real-world outcomes. Sponsored by: @PublicNouns @localismfund @BitsaveProtocol's BizMarket During the Builders OP, participants will: • Validate real business ideas • Talk to users and test assumptions • Learn practical marketing & growth fundamentals • Build and launch MVPs (Web2, Web3, or hybrid) • Work toward their first 100 users/customers and first revenue • Get reality checks, consultations, and founder support We’re doing this alongside ecosystem-aligned partners and communities including @PublicNouns, @Celo @localismfund, and local university tech clubs like @Borderlessunn, @borderless_kano, @BTCUniuyo, @Borderless_Ph, @UnicalTechClub with pathways to funding through @BitsaveProtocol's BizMarket, and post-program scaling. The goal is simple: "raise builders who can survive, adapt, and win in the real world". If you’re a builder, entrepreneur, or early-stage startup looking for momentum, this is for you🫵🏽 Sign Up here👇🏽 luma.com/f8u4u3f8

1/ We're excited to share the final results of the Local Meetups LATAM Round - in collaboration with @localismfund & @gitcoin, supporting grassroots Ethereum meetups as part of GG24. Huge shoutout to all the communities that applied! 👏 Reflections and more info 🧵👇

2. Institutions drive adoption, not new impact startups The strongest deployments come from large NGOs, multilaterals, public-sector actors, and grassroots actors plugging crypto rails into what already works. Excited for how @localismfund & others support this.

An Introduction to Ecological Institutions 🌿 Join us for a hands-on, interactive workshop exploring how communities can steward capital, data, and technology in a more-than-human world. We’ll play with the Institutional Development Kit (IDK), share practical examples, and even meet some delightful mascots! Come curious, leave inspired. Sign up: luma.com/wphpm5kl  #RegenerativeEconomics #EcologicalInstitutions #Bioregionalism #Stewardship @RegenFdn

1/ We’ve shared an evaluation of the first live TrustGraph prototype — focused on early proof points for trust-based attestation governance. Read in full here: opencivics.notion.site/trustgraph-eva… 🧵⬇️

@owocki @gitcoin 🫡

bullish ethereum localism. takeaways from @gitcoin GG24 ethereum localism fund so far: • $275k mobilized, with gitcoin’s $116k catalyzing ~2.36x in local + ecosystem co-funding •round 01: 12 locally led programs funded across catalunya, cascadia, tanzania, ukraine, colombia, brazil, curaçao, fraser lowland (canada), and east + west africa. $100k+ raised locally, increasing durability and legitimacy (groups showing up with real skin-in-the-game) • round 02 (local meetups LATAM) was co-funded by ethereum foundation and saw 37 complete grassroots meetup applications • latam showed strong pull: 37 grassroots meetup applications post-devconnect • ethereum works well as real infrastructure in many of these locales: payments, grants, governance, coordination • lesson: place-based funding is high-touch, high-leverage, and essential for real-world adoption some anecdotes: • in tanzania, the refi solar saving circles were not pitched as “web3 adoption” at all. they were pitched as cheaper energy, shared ownership, and local resilience. ethereum just quietly handled the coordination and flows in the background • gen ukraine was running a local grant program while the country is at war. the fact that they still prioritized transparent allocation, public reporting, and local co-funding says a lot about how strong the coordination muscle already is • several catalunya and cascadian groups raised local money before they ever knew if they would get matched. that flipped the usual grants dynamic from “please fund us” to “we already did the work, now meet us halfway” • in curaçao, the “onchain island” framing made ethereum legible to non-crypto locals by tying it to everyday governance and economic coordination, not tokens or speculation • in latam, 37 meetup applications came in for a round that maxes out at a few hundred dollars per month. many organizers explicitly said they cared more about continuity and legitimacy than the check size • evaluators noticed a sharp difference between proposals that used ai to sound polished and those grounded in lived local practice. the latter were often messier, but much more real read the whole GG24 progress report by @MontyMerlin : gov.gitcoin.co/t/localism-fun…

@WAVS_WAVS_WAVS @TrustGraphNet

A reputation layer for Ethereum @TrustGraphNet turns social attestations into verifiable, composable networks of trust Next-generation DAO governance tooling is here

We are so happy to share the documentary that we created during the Regen Haus at @joinedgecity ! 🏞️🌱 Tomorrow available on YouTube! December 11 at 11 am (Argentinean time) This is the link! youtu.be/98LPfzDxITo #RegenHaus #EdgeCityPatagonia #Regeneration #LivingTheFutureRightNow

@EFetheverywhere @EFDevcon

What an amazing @EFDevcon week - so wonderful to see LATAM communities coming together! 🎉 Let's keep this incredible energy going with local, regular Meetups throughout LATAM! We'd love to support you - apply for funding through the Localism Fund! 👇 x.com/localismfund/s…

“The particularly exciting bit about Network Nations is that the fringe movements now have a pathway to exert more geopolitical power and create stronger interfaces with institutions.” 🎙️ In Ep:6 "Regen: Toward a Network Nation Identity, Commons & Collective Agency" @owocki, @MontyMerlin & Austin Wade Smith sit down with Primavera De Filippi to discuss bioregional + digital hybrid communities, DAO-of-DAOs coordination, feeling lost at a crypto conference & the rise of ecological state protocols. This conversation anchors the Network Nation debate deeper in the physical realm. Listen here 📷 youtube.com/watch?v=FAYI_9… @networknations_