Bessie Liu

Yves La Rose, the CEO of EOS Network Foundation, the hub behind EOS Network — a layer one blockchain designed for large-scale decentralized applications — has urged community members to consider taking legal action against Block.One (B1) after the company failed to provide promised investments.



In an initial coin offering (ICO), B1 committed $1 billion of its proceeds to developers who would expand EOSIO, its own open-source protocol based on EOS designed to reduce transaction speeds and costs drastically.



The understanding at the time was that these investments would be made within the EOS Network itself, but it was apparent that this was not the case following a series of allegedly unfulfilled promises following the ICO, La Rose noted in an <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZxjqpSOkTYHzjlIe0FHIKE8vUs5l6C8S/view">open letter</a> to B1. 



“As time has passed, it has become apparent that B1 does not have and has never had any intention of investing the $1 billion promised in EOS Network,” La Rose <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZxjqpSOkTYHzjlIe0FHIKE8vUs5l6C8S/view">wrote in the open letter.</a>&nbsp; “EOS token holders relied on B1 promises when they purchased the initial ERC-20 tokens and later when they purchased EOS Tokens for use on the EOS Network.”



La Rose has prompted community members to take matters into their own hands, proposing to either take legal action against the private company or consider a hard fork to exclude B1-owned tokens, fully separating from the company.



Due to the lack of clarity provided by B1, La Rose notes that “we can only conclude that B1 never intended to make the investments it promised.”



“If enough token holders are interested in making a legal claim, a class action lawsuit is a possibility. The EOS Network Foundation is prepared to assist in bringing EOS token holders together for the purpose of advancing a claim against B1,” he said.



Hard forking the network to separate EOS Network from B1 completely is also on the table.



“​​This would have the effect of decreasing the outstanding volume of EOS tokens. More importantly, it would have the effect of fully separating the EOS Network from its association with B1, driving further confidence in the EOS Network,” he said.



Although a final decision has yet to be made, La Rose notes that a decision should be made as soon as possible.



EOS Network Foundation and Block.One have not responded to Blockworks’ request for comment in time for publication.



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EOS Network Participants May Take Action Against Block.One Following ‘Failed Promises’

Ornella Hernandez

While the motivations of speculation and status may reign within the NFT community, there is another use case for Web3 projects that has been on display this year — social good.



NFT collections, metaverse activations and DAO fundraisers can all be leveraged to raise money for charitable causes, from environmental projects to humanitarian initiatives.



This holiday season, Blockworks rounded up some of the top examples of metaverse activations and NFT projects used for social good in 2022. 



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Preserving cultural heritage</h3>



Quantum Temple is a startup that is attempting to leverage Web3 to protect and preserve the cultural heritage of communities around the world.



By documenting culture and traditions in the form of NFTs, Quantum Temple hopes to raise awareness and appeal to conscious collectors and travelers who wish to support these communities. These digital assets are curated and verified by anthropologists.



<a href="https://www.unesco.org/en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">UNESCO</a> defines cultural heritage as oral traditions and expressions, performing arts, rituals and festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe, and traditional craftsmanship. 



For example, one of the first projects, currently in development, is a collection of cultural heritage NFTs focused on Bali, Indonesia that feature the ‘Cendrawasih’ dance, meaning the dance of the ‘Bird of Paradise.’ This ritual comes from Legong, a refined classical dance in Bali, and is based on the courtship rituals of Cendrawasih birds.&nbsp;



Professor Steve Lansing and adviser to the project said that this approach “opens up new ways for communities to share their heritage with the world and generates new revenue streams to directly benefit communities and artists” via NFT proceeds.



Videos of the Cendrawasih dance will be preserved for posterity on the Ethereum and Algorand blockchains and will benefit the Legong Dance School in Se Bali. Video and image files are stored on the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) distributed file storage protocol, the Quantum Temple team said, a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ftx-nftx-are-mia" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">common technique for NFTs projects involving media</a>. 



One of the dancers featured in the collection, Ni Kadek Virna Erikayani, said that she wishes “the international community to better understand my home culture and values, so that we can grow to respect each other, support each other, and understand each other.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Web3 education</h3>



Upland, an EOS blockchain-based metaverse platform that is linked to geographical countries and cities, partnered with UNICEF Brazil to develop a virtual Web3 academy that provides technology training to Brazilian young adults.



Two UNICEF-branded structures have been built in the virtual Rio de Janeiro on <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/upland-scores-argentina-football-deal-for-eos-based-metaverse">Upland</a> and a holiday NFT fundraiser is underway. Users can purchase the UNICEF Winter Gnomes and UNICEF Winter Ornaments to decorate their Upland homes and properties.&nbsp;



The sale&#8217;s proceeds will be used as a direct donation to the United Nations Children’s Fund, including dedicated funds to support and sponsor the education programs of UNICEF in Brazil, <a href="https://www.upland.me/events/supporting-unicef-brazils-youth-education-in-the-metaverse">according</a> to Upland.



UNICEF did not immediately return a request for comment.



Approximately 50% of proceeds from the Upland fundraiser power UNICEF’s One Million Opportunities (1MiO) program, which provides opportunities for professional training, employability and income generation for young adults (from 14 to 29 years old) in situations of vulnerability.&nbsp;



Students will be both physically and virtually trained in the basics of Web3, blockchain technology, smart contracts and metaverse fundamentals, according to Upland.&nbsp;



Courses will teach students digital skills when it comes to using the Upland metaverse, as well as how to apply those learning to crypto staking, tokenization and other Web3 related education. There will also be classes to learn entrepreneurial skills and on how to identify job opportunities in the metaverse economy and Web3 industry.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">“In partnership with <a href="https://twitter.com/unicefbrasil?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@unicefbrasil</a>, we’re excited to create an opportunity for Brazil’s youth to learn how to create the same opportunities for themselves through a multi-touch web3 experience showcasing fun [CONT.] <a href="https://t.co/zXBjEpp6zC">pic.twitter.com/zXBjEpp6zC</a>&mdash; Upland (@UplandMe) <a href="https://twitter.com/UplandMe/status/1605630036744495104?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 21, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Healthcare in Africa</h3>



NFTs are being used to tackle the UN’s sustainable development goals when it comes to healthcare. The Women in Innovation Fund (WiN Fund), co-founded by Reckitt, is using the proceeds from NFTs sales to invest in women-led healthcare startups in Africa, addressing the UN’s third such goal — good health and well-being.



The benefits of blockchain for healthcare and democracy are being explored in countries with unstable leadership.&nbsp;



Women are more attuned to the healthcare needs of their community, according to Corinne Momal-Vanian, the executive director of the Kofi Annan Foundation. “Women entrepreneurs — from what we’ve seen in Africa — can drive innovation, can drive efficiency and can really have a place in the healthcare ecosystem that governments cannot fill,” she said at a UN-adjacent roundtable discussion in New York in September.



WiN Fund co-founder Pradeep Kakkattil, pointed to a worrying statistic: Only 2% of venture capital investments globally go to women-led enterprises, despite the fact that women-led businesses deliver 35% higher returns and create 6 times more jobs.&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Celebrating differences</h3>



The Sandbox and the organization People of Crypto Lab (POC) debuted the ‘Valley of Belonging.’’ They <a href="https://sandboxgame.medium.com/people-of-crypto-lab-poc-and-the-sandbox-to-debut-the-first-diversity-equity-and-inclusivity-hub-8806525d11dc" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">described</a> it as a ‘cultureverse’ or a diversity, equity and inclusivity hub in the metaverse that highlights the importance of an equitable Web3 community. That means using their virtual space to amplify creators, developers and brands that represent people of all races, ethnicity and backgrounds.



Their first project onboarded the cosmetics brand NYX Professional Makeup in The Sandbox to celebrate Pride Month via an 8,430 NFT avatar collection featuring voxelized makeup looks on the avatars.



Avatar traits included over 36 skin shades and eight NYX looks to show that makeup has no gender or sexual orientation. Additional customizable traits ranged from prosthetic limbs to various Muslim head coverings such as the hijab.&nbsp;



This activation even sought to represent handicapped community members by including non-player characters (NPCs) in wheelchairs, guiding players through special quests and mini games.



NYX donated 100% of its proceeds amounting to $50,000 from the sold out sale of the avatar NFTs to the Los Angeles LGBT Center.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Wildlife conservation</h3>



Netherlands-based decentralized carbon credit exchange Coorest and conservation consulting firm PLCnetwork of the Southern Hemisphere teamed up to tokenize individual real-world endangered animals at game reserves and privately owned conservation areas in Africa. These wildlife NFTs enable holders to sponsor an elephant, lion, cheetah or rhino. Profits from the sales will go toward food, shelter and security for the animals they represent.



Coorest — best known for operating an NFTrees CO2 compensation system that tokenizes yield-bearing assets or bonds and carbon credits that are tradable on the blockchain — partnered with PLCnetwork of the Southern Hemisphere with connections to wildlife reserves in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana.



According to PLCnetwork founder Dr. Julia Baum, the main issue with on the ground wildlife conservation is that &#8220;it is costly and resources are often very limited.&#8221; Even for a private reserve with a generally bigger budget, the cost of taking care of an African bush elephant, for example, can be very expensive because it includes fencing, monitoring, 24-hour anti-poaching patrols and veterinary support.



Owning an “elephaNFT” or a “lioNFT” does not give ownership over the animals, rather it provides monthly &#8220;proof-of-life&#8221; verification that the animal is still alive. The metadata of each NFT contains information about the species, age and gender, specific to each tokenized animal. Holders will also be invited to visit the wildlife reserve and meet the animals. 70% of the funds from these Wildlife NFTs go to the game reserve or conservation area, with the funds released on a monthly or set schedule.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Support for Ukraine</h3>



Crypto donors flocked towards Ukraine supporting causes when the Russian-Ukraine war started in February, and tested the power of DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) as fundraising tools.&nbsp;



Ukraine DAO ended up raising $8 million in only a couple of days from the sale of an NFT of the Ukrainian flag. Proceeds went towards nonprofits and non-governmental organizations. Ukrainian-born activist Alona Shevchenko reached out to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/pussy-riot-founders-unicorndao-to-make-space-for-women-lgbtq-nft-artists" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova</a> to organize the group. 



After only two weeks of conflict, over 102,000 crypto asset donations, totaling $54.7 million in ether, bitcoin and tether, were tracked, supporting the Ukrainian government and Come Back Alive, an NGO providing support to the military.



The government turned to Twitter to <a href="https://twitter.com/Ukraine/status/1497594592438497282?s=20&amp;t=9STvmfN1kKAvce4YQt686g" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ask</a> people to donate crypto. It even founded a nonprofit war fund — Aid For Ukraine — which reported <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ukraine-fund-spends-54m-of-crypto-donations-on-military-gear" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">spending $54 million of its crypto donations on military hardware</a> by August. Founded by Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation in March, around $11 million went to unmanned aerial vehicles, followed closely by armor vests, computer hardware and software.



Another organization that raised an emergency response fund for Ukraine is The Giving Block — a crypto donation platform that provides charities with back-end support.&nbsp;



According to The Giving Block, ether was the most-donated cryptocurrency in 2021, <a href="https://thegivingblock.com/annual-report/ar21/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">totaling</a> $30.79 million.



2022 saw countless more Web3 projects and fundraising efforts as blockchain technology sought to impact all kinds of industries from education and healthcare to beauty. Whether it’s NFT or DAO fundraisers or metaverse activations, blockchain technology has its benevolent side.



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6 Projects Using NFTs for Social Good

Sam Reynolds

<div id="highlights-block_61a61d973642e" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Institutional exchange Bullish, backed by Peter Thiel and Galaxy Digital, launches in Gibraltar today as institutional interest in digital assets continues to climb</li>
 <li>The exchange launched with deep pools of crypto liquidity thanks to the backing from controversial EOS developer Block.one, and already plans to go public via a SPAC</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Bullish, an institutional exchange backed by some of the biggest names in traditional finance as well as Block.one of EOS fame, launched today in Gibraltar.



The exchange was <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/biggest-names-in-macro-back-new-10b-digital-asset-exchange-bullish/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">first announced</a> back in May and caught the attention of many, given the names attached to it like Peter Thiel, Galaxy Digital, global investment bank Nomura, and fund manager Alan Howard, as well as the significant capital commitment from Block.one in the form of 164,000 bitcoins, 20,000,000 EOS tokens, and $100 million in cash.



Gibraltar, not a well known destination for the digital assets industry, was chosen because the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission’s “principles-based approach” sets the outcomes that it intends to achieve, leaving the ‘how’ to achieve compliance up to the regulated firms,” said Anthony Smith, the exchange’s head of compliance.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Bullish is unique insofar as it integrates its own internal automated market-makers (AMM), a defining aspect of decentralized exchanges, but will do so in a regulated environment. In a release, Bullish said that it is initially making available $3 billion of its over $10 billion on the balance sheet to its liquidity pools.



“What sets us apart is that the Bullish exchange is designed to integrate a regulated and compliant exchange, operating a high-performance central-limit-order-book matching engine. This is combined with Decentralized Finance (DeFi)-derived liquidity pools to enable automated market-making (AMM) capabilities and yield earning opportunities,” Michael Lau, Head of Institutional Clients, told Blockworks via email. 



In the future, Bullish users will be able to stake their assets via Bullish Earn to provide liquidity to the exchange’s AMM in exchange for yield. However, no details on the staking and yield arrangement have been released.&nbsp;



Lau added that Bullish plans to draw materially on its own digital assets and dollars to facilitate liquidity, something that many decentralized and centralized exchanges would find “hard to replicate” simply because they don’t have the war chest.&nbsp;



For now, Bullish is only available to non-US residents, and it doesn’t have a timeline as to when that will change. The exchange isn’t providing a full list of its institutional customers yet, but says that a non-U.S. affiliate of Virtu Financial and Hong Kong based liquidity provider <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/amber-group-raises-100-million-series-b-as-defi-booms/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Amber Group</a> are among the first to be onboarded.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/shutterstock_1073747786-1024x537-1.jpg" alt="Gibraltar" class="wp-image-11918"/><figcaption>Gibraltar; Source: Shutterstock</figcaption></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">The EOS legacy</h3>



Despite having some of the biggest names in TradFi attached to the project, many industry observers are skeptical of Bullish given its connections to EOS and Block.one. Block.one launched EOS in 2016 as an ‘Ethereum Killer’ and raised approximately $4 billion via an ICO in 2018. But despite the impressive funds available to it, EOS has never really gone anywhere. None of the major DeFi protocols listed on <a href="https://defipulse.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DeFi Pulse</a> are on the chain, and there’s only one Dapp based on EOS — a game called UpLand — on DappRadar’s top-25 list. In the era of Solana and Polkadot, EOS just isn’t a competitive proposition.



This mega-ICO attracted the attention of regulators, and the SEC <a href="https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2019-202" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">fined</a> Block.one in 2019, the company behind EOS, $24 million for selling unlicensed securities.



That’s not the only negative attention EOS has gotten in recent history. In August, forensic financial analysis firm <a href="https://www.integrafec.com/post/eos-ico" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Integra FEC</a>, posted a 14-page paper levelling some serious allegations that the EOS ICO was “pumped up” from wash trading. The paper identifies 21 wallets that during the ICO made whale-sized purchases of EOS and then dumped them on exchanges less than an hour later, a process the paper identifies as “recycling.” For its part, Block.one commissioned the law firm Clifford Chance LLP to test the Integra FEC claims. With help from PwC, Clifford Chance LLP said that it “found no evidence of any arrangements between Block.one and third parties by which third parties bought tokens on Block.one’s behalf.”



Meanwhile, token holders were disappointed both by the regulatory scrutiny on Block.one and the underperformance of EOS. The Crypto Assets Opportunity Fund (CAOF), along with investor Johnny Hong, had accused Block.one of failing to sufficiently decentralize EOS and not due proper legal due diligence in the process of launching the EOS crowd sale in order to &#8220;capitalize on the investor fervor for cryptocurrencies.&#8221; The resulting class action lawsuit <a href="https://b1.com/press/announces-settlement-of-class-action-lawsuit/?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=corporate_news&amp;utm_content=settlement" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">was settled in June 2021</a> for $27.5 million.&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Is a SPAC’ed Bullish another crypto macro proxy?</h3>



Bullish <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/bullish-plans-to-go-public-through-spac-merger/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">previously announced</a> its intention to go public through a SPAC back in July. This was a surprising move considering that the exchange had yet to launch. Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s founder and CEO, suggested that one reason why there was an expedited push for a SPAC despite Bullish being nothing more than a website, at the time: the market wants listed macro proxies for crypto more than it wants another exchange.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">15) But anyway, maybe this is all besides the point. Bullish seems to be comparing itself to Bakkt and Coinbase, but maybe that&#39;s not really what it is. Maybe Bullish is really another MicroStrategy.&mdash; SBF (@SBF_FTX) <a href="https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1413688840489816065?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 10, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Bankman-Fried (admittedly, a Bullish competitor) concluded, after reviewing the exchange’s pitch deck, that their fees are higher than what the market can support, and their growth projections are optimistic. Still, the value of Bullish’s holdings has increased to nearly $9 billion since this SBF summer tweet, plus $6 billion in additional crypto assets could make for an interesting listed crypto play for investors that can only hold listed companies, and are willing to pay a premium for them.



“Maybe Bullish is really another MicroStrategy,” rather than a competitor to Coinbase or Bakkt, SBF concluded. That may be the reason why so many significant players in TradFi are lending their names to the project despite the EOS albatross.



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