# Introduction to impact staking ### What is impact staking? Impact staking is a tool for tackling climate change, inequality and infrastructure. The central idea is that instead of making a single donation or grant, an individual Impact Staker or organisation commits capital in the form of ETH. That ETH is staked for a period of time, and some or all returns from staking are donated to address a climate, inequality or infrastructure problem for a 1-5 year period. After that, the original capital is returned to the individual or organisation, allowing them to fund something else, or take back their capital. > *Launchnodes has always believed that staking returns can be used as a long-term financing tool to fund positive outcomes related to climate change, inequality and new infrastructure.* The organisation using the funding to drive a positive impact commits to designing its work to provide automated and open source data that assumes that not every approach will work, but that the data generated supports improvement and change. The first practical [use case](https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2021-09-30/ethereum-staking-makes-its-first-social-impact-with-launchnodes-and-save-the-children) for impact staking has already started. We have built [prototype projects](https://giga.global/giga-finances-school-connectivity-in-rwanda/) working with established non-profit and multilateral organisations and have existing impact staking products, ready to be used by donors. {% hint style="info" %} Contact us via ** if you would like to join our working group that looks at using staking as a long-term financing tool for social impact. {% endhint %} ### What is ETH staking? Staking allows the economic wealth generated by the growth of the Ethereum network, in terms of its adoption and the applications built on top of it, to be shared in a different way to the Internet and Web 2.0. Both in terms of: * The data being a source of economic wealth that can be monetised by everyone, not simply big tech companies that run centralised databases * Securing the network by running validator nodes --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://launchnodes.gitbook.io/impact-staking-wiki/introduction-to-impact-staking.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.