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.

Essays

Governing the Commons in the Intelligent Age

GainForest's vision of an equitable biodiversity data marketplace to finance conservation and govern the natural commons.

Research

Academic website

Publications and research projects

Talks

Tech To Save The World - Forest Futures

Channel News Asia, 2025

Conservation Data Income

Ma Earth Podcast, 2024

A Wake-Up Call from Nature

World Economic Forum, Davos 2022