🌍 Making Sense of Web3 for Climate #4

A newsletter helping you understand the crypto and climate intersection (5-minute read)

Happy Friday investors, founders, and generally passionate humans,

It’s my pleasure to share that Ale Borda — a fellow at Fifty Years VC and contributor to DreamDAO and ReFiDAO — is helping write these newsletters for the next few weeks.

Ecosystem News 🚀

• 🚢 Leverage, a supply chain visibility platform, raised $5 million in funding from investors including Mark Cuban, Great Oaks Venture Capital, and the Gaingels investment syndicate.

• 🪨 7bridges, using AI to make supply chains more resilient, just raised a $17 million Series A backed by Maersk’s Venture Arm.

• 💧 Everledger and Civic Ledger partnered to create a ‘Water Ledger’ that will track water resource use in Australia. This supports the Australian Government’s efforts to lower regulatory costs and increase compliance with “digital certificates” for Australian mining companies.

• 🔆 Powerledger, an Australian energy trading platform operating in multiple countries, won a World Summit Award for their work providing distributed energy in India.

• 🌲 Moss.earth, a Brazilian offset startup, announced a Series A investment of US$10 million led by SP Ventures and Acre Venture Partners.

• 🌊 Eden DAO announced its investment DRMSyndicate planning to pre-fund carbon removal projects before they launch.

• 🏔️ KlimaDAO just announced their partnership with Mobilum to enable users to purchase $KLIMA tokens using Visa and Mastercard.

• 🍃 eAgronom, a farming-based carbon credits platform, announced a Series A investment of $7.4M led by Yolo Investments and ZGI Capital.

Events

• At EthDenver next week, Toucan will host Regenerate: a series of workshops, office hours, and hangout space. Our very own Ale will lead a Systems Mapping workshop there :)

• Gitcoin is hosting an event “𝙋𝙪𝙗𝙡𝙞𝙘 𝙂𝙤𝙤𝙙𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙂𝙤𝙤𝙙!” on Tues, Feb 15 at 4 pm EST.

• iXO World has started a weekly Twitter space where they talk about the Tokenized Earth Economy. Every Tuesday at 3 pm UTC.

Weekend Reading 📚

• A skeptical look at climate crypto’s claims (35-minute read)

  • TLDR: many web3 projects are using fancy terminology to rebrand business models which already failed. Payments for environmental services, market-based mechanisms, and the conservation economy were all models floated over the last two decades but failed for a variety of reasons that the article outlines. Web3 provides real revolutionary advantages... but #ReFi founders must find where web3 authentically solves problems. Learning from history will prevent wasting money on accidental greenwashing.

  • If you’re a long-term or climate-focused investor: We highly recommend a team member analyzes this article. Avoiding hype or (unintentionally-)false claims is a job combining investment acumen and an understanding of climate science.

• Introducing a nature-based carbon-based token (10-minute read)

  • TLDR: Toucan, a leader in creating an open carbon credit registry using blockchain, recently launched their new Nature-based Carbon Credits tokens. While their original BCT credits included all offset types, the Nature-based carbon (NCT) credits achieve benefits beyond sequestration. NCTs, improve ecological co-benefits (soil quality, water quality, air quality), habitat preservation, species protection, social and economic benefits for communities.

  • This launch showcased the amazing spirit of collaboration in web3. Regen Network, Moss, Blockchain for Climate Foundation, KlimaDAO, BICOWG and StarCB all contributed to the Natural Carbon Credit’s criteria.

  • The collaboration spirit in web3 is amazing. Regen Network, Moss, Blockchain for Climate Foundation, KlimaDAO, BICOWG, and StarCB all contributed to the design of Toucan’s NCT criteria.

• DIOs - Decentralized Impact Organizations for the Climate (15-minute read)

  • TLDR: Using blockchain we could create decentralized impact organizations (DIOs) that use Social Policy Bonds to economically align a community of strangers towards a shared social objective. Social policy bonds (SPBs) are financial rewards for achieving social goals.

  • To solve massive climate problems we need aligned groups of people to tackle local interventions. Current market mechanisms do not incentivize large-scale experimentation or long term thinking. Fixed plans fail in highly complex and unpredictable systems. SPBs could drive ambitious long-term goals that require diverse, adaptive, collaborative approaches. Highly modular and fluid DIOs enable continuous experimentation and diversity of players to govern shared resources in a decentralized manner.

  • Read the article to learn how to build one — or join us watching as the first DIOs start to emerge 👀

Let me know if you have any specific questions about web3 for the climate. We read every reply.

With love,
Alex Filotimo & Ale Borda
Building web3 investment systems for a better climate

P.S. know a specific web climate company Aera Force should meet? Here’s their quick referral form.

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This newsletter is for educational purposes only.