As the sentiment for NFT utility rages on, one of the original utilities - charities - is still going strong among some of the biggest communities within the web3 space. Donations are one of the easiest roadmap objectives to complete and can also help many projects attract a specific audience.

BAYC and Goodall

The renewed interest in charities was rekindled when Gordon Goner, a co-founder of Yuga Labs, put out a tweet about meeting Jane Goodall, the world’s leading expert on primates and anthropology. 

According to the tweet’s thread, Yuga Labs has made a commitment to donate a portion of their Apecoin holdings to the Jane Goodall Legacy Foundation to help with a number of issues such as animal habit conservation and the fight against climate change. 

While Jane Goodall may not be the largest crypto advocate in the world, her acceptance of Apecoin is unique because of its relationship to her 60-year study on chimpanzees in the wild, and seeing that the BAYC is a collection of chimpanzees it is wildly appropriate that Apecoin would appeal to her charity. 

Charities as a utility

This is not the first time that Yuga Labs and other web3 companies have donated profits to help solve real-world problems. 

1. Animal welfare
   Donating to help animals, wildlife, habitats, and conservation is one of the most common types of charities that many NFT projects focus on. As mentioned in Gordon Goner’s tweet thread, the Bored Ape Kennel Club (one of Yuga’s original NFT airdrops) has gone on to raise over $1 million in charitable donations towards charities that focus on helping animals. 
   

   While most people are fond of animals, it is especially encouraged in the web3 community because animals heavily influence the artwork seen on most NFT PFPs such as Okay Bears, Moonbirds, and Llamaverse. 

2. Climate Change
   Fighting climate change is another incredibly important cause to those in the web3 community for various reasons. NFTs and cryptocurrencies have received considerable amounts of backlash because of the intense electrical power required to successfully mine cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. 
   Although the Ethereum merge has significantly reduced the carbon emissions created by the NFT market, it is still a topic that is relevant to those communities because they endured harsh criticisms regarding the issue. 
   

   Fortunately, projects like Firewatch and BitZero are using their profits to help combat different environmental issues and are encouraging others to consider similar utilities. 

3. Women’s charities
   Donating to causes that help women in need has been an integral part of many projects that promote female-led teams such as World of Women and Vellum LA. 
   

   Since the web3 industry is male-dominated, there is a strong commitment from women in the space to create communities that encourage women and welcome them into the world of blockchain technology. 
   

   Donations to charities such as Girls Who Code can be integral to the future growth of web3 because it is helping women learn how to develop the space from a technical standpoint meaning that they’ll be able to provide a more significant impact on web3 as time carries on. 

Decentralized donations

As crypto adoption continues to expand, the potential for charitable donations also grows. We’ve already seen massive donations from Vitalik Buterin when he was given a large portion of Shiba Inu tokens which he immediately sent to India to help them fight against the Covid pandemic. 

With more access to funding, the potential for decentralized charities and donations is immense for people who do not have access to traditional web2 models.