David Dao
David Dao is Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of GainForest.Earth, a global tech non-profit pioneering decentralized nature finance and research.
His work has earned recognition including the XPRIZE Rainforest, WEF Davos 50 and Ethereum Next Billion. David completed his PhD in AI Systems at ETH Zurich, where he co-initiated the field of data valuation for machine learning.
Session
Biodiversity evidence is often extracted into databases that communities cannot control. Drawing on fieldwork with Indigenous and local stewards, this talk shows how ATProto and Hypercerts can keep signed ecological records on community-controlled servers while open indexers make them discoverable. Attendees will learn practical patterns, failures, and tradeoffs for consent, data portability, capture resistance, and verifiable public infrastructure.