In this post (my first!) I am going to describe a method of utilizing NFTs, with specific properties, to create a new and powerful paradigm for incentivizing philanthropic giving and the funding of public goods: Proof of Philanthropy.

At its heart this entails NFTs which evolve based on verified giving, allow for retroactive appreciation of those supporting public goods, and make it incredibly easy for third parities / large brands to provide additional rewards to such heroes. This initiative was first presented publicly in May of 2023 at Zuzalu, Montenegro, having been in development since November 2021, and is currently being actively developed.

Starting with “Soulbound”

In early 2022 Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin publicly detailed the concept of a “Soulbound” NFT - essentially a non-fungible token that is not tradable once acquired. This non-tradable characteristic mimics the rules inherent to certain hard-won items in online games such as World of Warcraft, and is logical for other scenarios such as Proof-of-Attendance-Protocol (POAP) NFTs - as the fact that you’ve personally attended an event or concert should not be a fact that is tradable to someone else.

This concept can pair powerfully with emerging technologies which enable NFTs to become truly dynamic (work which I have been involved with myself) - allowing both cosmetic aspects such as associated art as well as functional parameters such as royalties, perks, etc. to evolve based on on-chain and/or off-chain conditions.

An exemplary use case for this combination is the creation of a single NFT that grows and changes based on verified philanthropic giving, with this growth being easily visible based on associated metadata and how the art of the NFT evolves.

To demonstrate this I worked with the team at Weavechain and the amazing artist Colton Orr (previously at Gitcoin) to create a prototype Proof of Philanthropy (PoP) NFT, one specifically tied to the support of the aging-research charity I co-founded in 2014: Lifespan.io. In this case we chose artwork based on one of humanity’s very first symbols relating to life extension and cyclic renewal: the Ouroboros.

As you can see below, the artwork of this NFT changes its graphical representation based on the total amount donated by the NFT holder to a specific wallet address owned by the charity Lifespan.io:

The showcasing of ones philanthropic giving in this manner is not something that should be tradable, similar to the concert attendance case above - and hence is a scenario that lends itself to usage of an NFT that is Soulbound.

It is critical to note, however, that in this case the NFT does not itself truly need to be Soulbound - it is only the calculations which determine its graphical representation and additional metadata that do.

And that leads us to the the concept of “Demi-Soulbound” NFTs.

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“Demi-Soulbound” NFTs

In the Proof of Philanthropy prototype NFT pictured above, recall that the artwork changes based on the total amount donated by the NFT holder. To clarify: what is actually determining the choice of graphic are the total transactions made from the wallet holding the NFT to the Lifespan.io wallet address mentioned above.

This means that if the holder of a thusly upgraded NFT were to trade it to someone who has not yet donated, the NFT’s graphical representation and other meta would be reverted to its non-powered state upon receipt. This recipient could then of course choose to power up the NFT themselves by subsequently donating to Lifespan.io.

Coupling this with the fact that transfer history is verifiable on-chain, this can create interesting ways for philanthropists to induce others to become philanthropists. For example suppose there is a key opinion leader publicly stating they care about a specific cause that Vitalik cares about - Vitalik could acquire a mission-related PoP NFT and then airdrop it to this opinion leader (perhaps after fully powering it up himself as an example), and the world will be able to easily verify if they back up their words with real philanthropic action.

In this example the aspect truly needing to be Soulbound - the verification / showcasing of philanthropic giving - is indeed so, and this is not undone by the ability for the NFT itself to traded.

In keeping with Vitalik’s original precedent of using video game references, it is this type of functionality that I will refer to henceforth as “Demi-Soulbound”:

Technology of Proof of Philanthropy

To describe the technology involved in creating Proof of Philanthropy, it is instructive to walk through the architecture powering the prototype Ouroboros NFT described above, deployed on the Polygon blockchain and mintable at https://pop.lifespan.io/.

When the NFT is minted, given it is an ERC-721 token, it will be visible on common NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea here. For example, here is one that I own (currently powered up to gold level - let’s go!), and its corresponding minting transaction on Polygon.

As you can see by clicking on the Token ID in the OpenSea display, the URI which populates this NFT is pointing to a Weavechain node - here in the case of my NFT above, which generates the following metadata JSON:

{
    "name": "Proof of Philanthropy #5",
    "description": "$1000-$9999 donated, outstanding! Almost best of the best\\u2026",
    "external_url": "https://pop.lifespan.io",
    "image": "https://pop.lifespan.io:10443/file/gold.png",
    "attributes": [
        {
            "tier": "gold"
        }
    ]
}

On the Weavechain side there is a periodic job running which calculates the dynamic parameters of the NFT based on the total amount which has been transacted from the wallet holding the NFT to Lifespan.io’s wallet address, specifically tracking transactions from a list of pre-approved tokens: in this case ETH, MATIC USDC, USDT, and VITA (token of the longevity-focused VitaDAO which we work closely with at Lifespan.io) on the Ethereum blockchain, and WETH, MATIC, USDC, and USDT on the Polygon blockchain. You can find the code for this periodic job on Lifespan.io’s public GitHub repository here.

Furthermore whenever a computation flows through the Weavechain node we create one-way hashes of the input data that was loaded, the computation itself, and the results of the computation, and then we sign all of this by the node that did that action on the Polygon blockchain. By “anchoring” both the individual NFT states, a Merkle root of all NFT states, and an audit table with a full lineage of every action, we can provide a verifiable computational lineage that enables the best of Web3 security along with Web2 flexibility. Weavechain calls this “Proof of Fair Play”.

You can read more information regarding how this works here, and if your wallet is connected to https://pop.lifespan.io you can see this history and corresponding proofs by clicking on the corresponding tabs:

Also, it’s important to note that while everything just described is in relation to on-chain philanthropic giving, this overall concept is perfectly scaleable to off-chain giving as well - provided charities and/or other sources of verifiable philanthropy can associate such actions with a specific wallet address that is observable by our system, via trusted oracles and APIs. We are currently working with partners such as Angel Giving, Endaoment, and Gitcoin on such approaches, and progress in this direction will be the subject of future posts.

The New “Giving Pledge” for the Modern Age

As it stands philanthropic data is fragmented across a wide number of organizations, with no simple and universal standard for showcasing and incentivizing provable charitable works. Proof of Philanthropy can help us collectively build a credibly neutral and unified mechanism to aggregate all philanthropic data on-chain, and serve to establish a truly functional “Giving Pledge” for the modern age.

While the prototype described above involved the verification of total lifetime donations to one specific charity, it is straightforward to see how this can be extended to have a single NFT based on tracked giving to a variety of organizations, and involve additional calculations such as total giving within the last 365 days - incentivizing recurring giving, which is the lifeblood of many initiatives and an aspect of philanthropy for a which a Web3 solution is greatly desired.

Furthermore, Proof of Philanthropy-related services can also readily surface “easy mode” donation methods such that a philanthropist can donate in a manner where their contribution is fractionalized across all initiatives tracked by the PoP systems, perhaps weighted based on user preferences (e.g. more heavily weighting towards climate or life sciences focused initiatives).

Together this enables the creation of a philanthropic pot that is simple to donate towards, supports a variety of public goods-focused initiatives, and rewards donors with clear and easily visible reputation metrics to honor and showcase such contributions. This should be attractive to a wide variety of philanthropists, both Web3 and beyond. To quote Vitalik:

“If there was a strong, effective, and credibly neutral pot - where you just know that if you throw money into the pot public goods projects and people behind them will be compensated in way that is reasonably fair - that’s something that lots of people would be willing to automatically airdrop to.” - Vitalik Buterin

Another key benefit of this approach is how easy it makes it for large brands and other organizations to add additional perks for PoP NFT holders, in a completely decentralized and permissionless manner. As an example Disney could spontaneously decide - without needing to discuss with anyone - that they will offer a discount on their cruises for any gold-level or above philanthropists, and all they would need to verify against is this one PoP NFT. Compare this with how complicated it would be for such an organization to accomplish a similar goal by tracking a variety of one-off POAPs, or how difficult it would be to convince them to integrate with projects steeped in Web3 intricacies such as Hypercerts.

It is also useful to note that Proof of Philanthropy inherently precludes sybil attacks, as splitting one’s philanthropic contributions amongst many wallets would lead to nothing but a dilution of recognized philanthropic impact.

All told Proof of Philanthropy can enable a new paradigm of philanthropy which facilitates real-time and retroactive appreciation of support for all public goods, streamlines follow-on support from popular Web2 and Web3 entities, and fosters rising-tides-raises-all-boats collaboration between all public goods-focused individuals and organizations.

Join Us!

We are currently engaging partners across various blockchain impact organizations to be sources for tracked philanthropic data and/or providers of additional perks, and if you are interested in joining our working group please read this collaboration PDF:

Proof Of Philanthropy Open Collaboration

22.5KB ∙ PDF file

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We believe together we can make massive strides in reimagining philanthropic giving and corresponding reputation; join us / support us if you can!

Other Ways to Help!

All of the work described above I do without formal compensation, so if you’d like to support this and/or public goods I am passionate about, here are some ways to do so:

• If you create a project relating to Proof of Philanthropy or Demi-Soulbound NFTs, please build in philanthropic support for Lifespan.io - e.g. a 5% reflection to the address: 0xCec4B18107d8AF27fa1395315e4c002343b6a8c2

• Subscribe to this brand new Substack: Building in Public!

• Donate to Lifespan.io directly!

• Support me and/or Lifespan.io whenever you see us appear on quadratic funding rounds, for example right now you can do so via:

  • Gitcoin Citizen Round #2

  • Giveth’s Quadratic Funding Round

The Future of Building in Public

Once again this is my first post, and first time ever writing a blog-like thing, so I hope you enjoyed it!

Along with other content, additional applications for Proof of Philanthropy, and Demi-Soulbound NFTs in general, will be the subject of forthcoming posts. In the meantime you can learn about some of these - philanthropic games based on The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant, variations of Quadratic Funding, and “BioAvatar” NFTs - in the following video from the recent Longevity + DeSci Summit 2023, hosted by Lifespan.io:

Thank you once again, and I hope you enjoyed Building in Public!