phas3 recently hosted ID3 – an online ideathon on web3 for international development.

The purpose was to foster a community and crowdsource ideas on web3 for international development.

The event was a collaboration between phas3 and the Frontier Technologies Hub, funded by UK Aid.

Teams were given a list of five themes and were asked to work through a series of tasks to help develop their idea over 48hrs. There were four prizes up for grabs.

The Themes

• Supporting sustainable economies
• Female empowerment & protection
• Humanitarian response
• Climate change & protection of nature
• Global health

The Prizes:

• Best use of web3 technology to solve a problem (awarded to Blockchain-Bio Commerce)
• Greatest involvement of relevant communities (awarded to The Failsafe)
• Most inspiring idea (awarded to Cure DAO)
• Most thorough exploration of risks (not awarded)

To find out more, check out the ideathon guide and framework here. You can also watch the kick-off call, featuring talks from Seb Mhatre and Kendra Leong, and an additional talk by Ale Borda. We have also made the protocol we used open-source – you can access it here.

Since completing ID3, some projects have applied for funding from the web3 ecosystem (e.g. Bio commerce) or are in the process (e.g. Women’s health data is applying to OceanDAO).

Key takeaways

• The submissions showed a strong interest in the environment and health – echoing the emergence of ReFi and DeSci for biotech.
• Most projects had a global focus and were not targeted at a particular country or location-based community – echoing the global mindset of web3.
• Maintaining personal data privacy whilst leveraging web3 was a key component of many submissions. Global standards and recommendations to ensure ethical and safe methods to achieve this are necessary but currently lacking.
• Communities would benefit from support for thinking through risks. Exploration of risks was insufficient across all entries. Consequently, this prize was not awarded and funds were distributed across the remaining three prizes.
• There is a notable divergence between the language of traditional international development and web3, whilst describing similar things – “Public goods” and “Impact DAOs” often align with “international development”. For example, ReFi relates to the theme “Climate change and protection of nature”; while DeSci often relates to “Global health”.