🌍 Web3 for Climate #13
Your 5-minute deep-dive into regenerative web3 startups
Happy Thursday,
Welcome back to your favorite #ReFi venture snapshot!
We hope our fundraising updates and curated articles offer hope in an uncertain time. The Aera Force DAO remains an active investor within #ReFi, and we are increasingly bullish on the potential for web3 solutions to build a better world.
Let’s dive in.
Global Ecosystem News 🌊
Fundraises
🌴 SolidWorldDAO, a platform to offer advanced financing to quality carbon project developers, raised an oversubscribed $2.5 million round from investors Yolo, Greycroft, Awesome People Ventures, Allegory, Possible Ventures, Draft VC, and Basecamp Fund.
🐘 Ecosapiens, a web3 consumer-focused carbon offsetting platform, raised $1.5m from Boost VC, Slow Ventures, and Menlo Ventures.
Ecosystem News
📉 The collapse of LUNA/UST has rippled through the crypto markets, affecting the price of a variety of other currencies and causing tens of billions of dollars in losses for retail investors, ecosystem-reliant funds, and startups that stored their treasuries in the stable coin.
🌍 The Catalyst Fund started calling for startups building Africa-focused climate adaptation and fintech solutions. Applications are open for their next cohort in July.
🎓 Australia’s RMIT University launched the “Green Crypto Lab” for students to design projects reducing bitcoin’s energy demands.
🏭 NYC-based Brookfield Properties has partnered with ClearTrace, a blockchain-based startup that raised $4M in 2020, to measure their buildings’ carbon emissions from electricity use.
👟 Adidas adopted the blockchain solution TrusTrace to prove the sustainability of its materials in order to assist Adidas with consumer trust and compliance requirements.
🪨 Celo, a layer-one cryptocurrency, agreed to purchase $10M of tokenized carbon credits from web3-startup FlowCarbon.
🏠 The #ReFi industry started lobbying, as 30 blockchain-based climate-focused organizations submitted a joint proposal to the White House Office of Science and Technology asking them to consider our industry when designing crypto regulations.
Newly Launched Projects 🚀
Founders, feel free to submit your project here.
🎁 Pledge launched a donation app that makes it easy for consumers to donate crypto to UN-sponsored carbon reduction projects.
⚡ UrbanChain, a UK-based company that has created a peer-to-peer renewable energy system, is raising a $7M Series A.
🌊 Keep Sea Blue created a blockchain solution to track the ocean plastic waste volunteers collect. The protocol, developed by Oracle, improves incentives for volunteers to collect plastic both by showing outcomes of their work and by creating opportunities for corporations to pay volunteers as a form of plastic “offsets.”
Events
🗽 NYC-based founders and investors — feel free to join the Aera Force and Dream DAO meetup from 3-7 pm in NYC.
Curated Insights 📚
1 - The case for a small investment in Regen Network: If you’d like to learn more about Regen Network, this 30-minute article outlines their unique theses, progress to date, and “the investment case” for purchasing Regen’s tokens today. Regen Network is popular amongst our #ReFi sector as one of the earliest decentralized climate-focused projects. Microsoft recently purchased 100,000 carbon credits from them. Many ecosystem service startups we profile (i.e., Earthbanc’s $1.5M raise last week) have also built their carbon tokens on the Regen Ledger.
2 - A long-form breakdown of the Celo Protocol: Celo is a cryptocurrency increasing in popularity as both significant corporations (i.e., Kickstarter) and many emerging #ReFi entrepreneurs start to work within their ecosystem. Celo’s grand mission is “to build a financial system that creates the conditions for prosperity for everyone.” In this 50-minute deep-dive, Packy McCormick outlines their approaches (i.e., building mobile-first for global inclusivity), how they see money evolving (i.e., nature-backed currencies), and the details behind some of the startups using Celo’s carbon-negative blockchain.
3 - Launch of the ImpactDAO Poster/Book: This book — released by Kevin Owocki from the Gitcoin DAO and Ale Borda from Fifty Years VC — profiles the emerging field of “Impact DAOs” in web3. They ask the fundamental questions: How do novel blockchain aspects solve real-world problems? What are examples of these projects? And how can founders work together to help create an economy that grows while improving natural ecosystems? In doing so, they profiled 100 startups and created beautiful poster:
And If-You’re-Bored
Can the Blockchain Give This Island Nation Threatened by Climate Change a Digital Future? Tuvalu — a chain of islands that will be covered by rising sea levels within 50-100 years — is building a blockchain solution. The nation plans to store citizenship documents, maintain its economic assets (like fishing rights in its economic zone), and conduct governance over cultural matters long-term.
If you have questions about the terms above (i.e., what is #ReFi), feedback, or article suggestions, I’ll happily reply to any direct emails.
With love,
Alex Filotimo and Aera Force Contributors
Researching web3 venture investments for a flourishing future
P.S. If you want to help drive research into web3-climate startups, Alex created this open-source insights repository.
This newsletter is for educational purposes only. While we strive for accurate and unbiased information, none of it is verified or intended to help as investment advice.