The 40acres Monthly Newsletter #04

Published in

40acres DAO Monthly

8 min readNov 21, 2022

Empowering Diverse Digital Communities, From the Block to the Metaverse & Beyond

The web3 ecosystem is largely a carbon copy of the traditional financial and technology industries, to ensure this revolutionary technology reaches the communities that need it most we have to meet people where they are and make the information palatable beyond the typical complex jargon used in most technical papers. This month’s newsletter (albeit late) will showcase how we’ve done that in our community and how you can too.

A1 Since Day 1

With the community starting in August of 2021 we hit the ground running with sponsored events the very next month. Our first event series was a 3 part activation in the east side of Arlington with Do Right by The Streets called the Eastside Exchange. During these activations, we introduced the capabilities of blockchain in meaningful messages such as the possibility of civic engagement on chain (BlockPower), arts and commerce (NFTs and digital payments) and finally doing a walkthrough and giveaway for those interested in creating their first crypto wallet.

Following a successful partnership in Arlington, we took it to the heart of Dallas and connected with the Community Growth Project to host our first social impact event to provide winter wear and warm meals for the homeless by using music NFTs. We partnered up with the first Metaverse Music Festival led by Natalie Crue and her team to host an in-person concert that allowed people to receive a discount for bringing new and gently used winter wear. Through the funds raised, we were able to feed over 100 of the Dallas area homeless and provide over 50 pieces of clothing to those in need, we were also able to create 20 new wallets and provide free NFTs.

These early activations helped to pave the way for our IRL event framework which has been replicated over a dozen times across 4 states and 2 countries reaching 500+ individuals. Below see a few pictures from our events over the past year and recognize that the issue is not a lack of access to people of color that leads to disproportionate representation in Web3 but rather a lack of intent behind connecting these people to the opportunity. We exist to buck that trend and break down all barriers standing between our people and progress because the only way forward is together.

Monthly Community Updates

Gitcoin Update: The Quadratic Friends are on a mission to amplify impact by becoming a DAO

During GR15 we formed a coalition of over 50+ impact-focused projects building with blockchain technology to create what was known as the Quadratic frens, Following the round, we deliberated on what we could do to expand our impact and onboard more mission-aligned projects into the ecosystem. Through conversations and community feedback sessions we decided the best way to do this was to form a DAO that supports projects and initiatives using decentralized governance and the new Gitcoin Grants Protocol to provide financial support to new projects in the ecosystem.

Wonderverse Dashboard and AstroDAO

Following the success of our GR15 campaign, we finally raised enough funds to deploy a DAO smart contract on the NEAR blockchain. On our journey to progressively decentralize the community this smart contract serves as a core tool to helping us achieve this goal. In short, anyone that applies to and is accepted as a member of the community is eligible to register their NEAR address as a member of the contract which will enable them to vote on proposals and drive the direction of the DAO. This is further reinforced by our new partnership with Wonderverse to highlight the available work to be done by contributors and stewards of the community. To date, we’ve created 12 milestones, 40 tasks & 12 bounties that members of the community can claim and complete to help us achieve our strategic goals.

The Monthly Member Come Up

This months blog post comes from The Catalyst, titled the 40 Manifesto this serves as a definitive understanding of our genesis, how we’ve made progress in the Web3 Ecosystem and what the future holds.

Before the Internet

Organizing is no new phenomenon to the Black community, since the dawn of time ranging from economic coordination in the likes of Esusu to other traditional tribal practices our people have leveraged the ideology of WE over Me to collectively do the work. Ujima, to build and maintain our community, make our sisters’ and brothers’ problems, our problems, and solve them together because the only way forward is together. 40acres takes a modern approach to ancestral knowledge and culture to liberate our minds, body & spirit. Over these past 400 years, we have witnessed what coordination can do when it comes to undermining and oppressing our community. With the ascent of blockchain technology, we pose the question of what it can do when used to our benefit.

The Dawn of the DAO

When Russ and I first connected, it was initially a trip with the co-founder of my non-profit to our state capitol to advocate for the passage of the For the People Act & the end of the filibuster. Immediately following the rally and due to me talking about crypto for the entire 3-hour drive from Dallas to Austin, he reached out to the only other Black person he knew to ever mention DAOs (Russ) and minutes later we connected at the top floor of the Austin Public Library to set the foundations of a decentralized network created for the sole purpose of educating, engaging & empowering marginalized communities using blockchain technology.

Realizing that we could combine indigenous knowledge with cutting-edge technology to achieve a social good felt liberating as we found full alignment with our cause and that of what created the blockchain. A decentralized, permissionless & transparent ecosystem creates opportunities that our legacy capitalistic society would never dare to consider but realizing that’s what got our people into our current standing gave me the confirmation to know that we must be bold in exploring new pathways to get to different outcomes.

Creating Mass Adoption/The Member Archetype

I feel it goes without question why marginalized groups would gravitate to a technology that’s censorship-resistant, permissionless & transparent with open-source tendencies. For centuries there has been a concerted effort by centralized entities to extract value and exploit our community at every turn. This system was built not with us in mind, but only with how much value we could push into the hands of the few, so when we realized the blockchain could serve as an essential tool to push that power and capital out toward the edges we dove down the rabbit hole & even brought a ladder.

As we’ve expanded from 3 members to 500+ there is a specific mold of an individual that we look for and deem “40 Like”, some of the key components are altruism, cultural competency, a desire to learn & a sense of spatial awareness that allows for them to remain like water in turbulent situations, able to adapt at a moments notice and still reach a destination. We look for these characteristics to ensure that people that enter our community can hit the ground running and take full advantage of the 1000+ resources aggregated, a network of members looking to build & opportunities specifically curated for members to develop professionally and personally.

How WE Drive Value

Building on the prerequisites for joining our community, the 40acres DAO serves as an oasis of opportunity for both individual and communal enlightenment. By building a collective consciousness rooted in the individual discovery of the arts, community organizing & literature through culturally designed applications we can effectively track and guide members to becoming a better version of themselves and more effective stewards of their communities. Some notable examples of this are as follows:

Uhuru Force; an impact guild that develops curriculum through a curated book club, practices philanthropy through crowdfunds for public goods & hosts/sponsors community meetings and initiatives in historically black communities.
Renaissance on Chain; is an artist guild that creates curated collections focused on Black empowerment, sponsors the development of artists, and provides scholarships to promising artists looking to mint their first pieces of digital art.
Scribe Gang; is an internet-native publication that redefines the narrative of our community by providing insight into a cultural phenomenon, business opportunities for entrepreneurs, and a weekly digest for members looking to contribute to the growth and expansion of the community.

As our direction is refined and products gain maturity, it will serve as no surprise that these initiatives may become DAOs of their own. This in effect would complete the feedback loop of developing a broader Network State that allows participants to focus squarely on their interests while still contributing to the broader community in what can only be described as an altruistic and revolutionary act.

Benediction/Conclusion

“We’re down 75 points and it’s the 3rd quarter” Rashad Bilal, EYL.

Time is of the essence if we aspire to lift ourselves above our current circumstances to repair the trajectory of our community, to do so we must lean into the community in a fashion that only the blockchain allows us to. If you are aligned with the work described within this manifesto please look no further as we welcome all allies to help us build the future that you wish to see. Please visit this link to start your journey as a member of our community and remember, the only way forward is together.