Discover more from Venturing in #ReFi — Web3 for Climate
Happy Monday founders, investors, and generally passionate humans.
Thank you to everyone who responded with positive feedback and article suggestions last week! Here’s your weekly snapshot of our fascinating intersection:
Global Ecosystem News 🚀
🇺🇸 The White House released an executive order on digital assets. It includes a request for information on how blockchain tools could improve climate action.
If you want to contribute to a community submission by #ReFi Twitter folks, Ellie Young from Common Action is creating a weekly working group.
💰 Gitcoin, a web3 community funding platform, launched its 13th round of grants with $1.2 million in matching funds.
🌲 Open Forest Protocol partnered with Kenya’s forestry service to test their monitoring and funding product.
If you’d like to learn more about OFP’s platform, John Ellison interviewed them on the ReFi Podcast.
🦎 The Wildlife Conservation Society and Everland created a new REDD+ partnership to create $2B of climate and biodiversity offsets.
🏭 Provenance, a company that verifies corporate sustainability claims, raised $5 million from investors and angels including Nordic Eye VC, the Brandtech Group, the Digital Currency Group, Blockchain.com, and the singer Peter Gabriel.
Events
iXO World is hosting a Twitter call to discuss coordination failures with Kevin O’Wocki from Gitcoin DAO — 12 pm EDT on Tuesday.
Article Summaries 📚
Could the Blockchain help save the Amazon? (15-minute read)
The Amazon is in a dire situation. While the rainforest provides $8.2B annually to the global economy in immediate economic benefits, deforestation is increasing and the rainforest is reaching a tipping point (past which the flora risks drying out and becoming prone to wildfires).
How can blockchain help change that? Some estimates show that investments of $100M-$1B annually could fund its preservation. The article showcases nine startups funding rainforest preservation with blockchain, including:
Invert (a metaverse “backed” by existing land in the Brazilian and Ecuadorian Amazon)
Teratree and Gainforest (who use smart contracts to fund rural and Indigenous communities who are restoring forests)
Moss.earth (a carbon startup which recently raised $10M to scale their tokenized carbon credits)
(Author’s note: As climate investors, we also need to consider other complications —
making the Amazon a globally-funded public good could incentivize malicious actors to start damaging other global assets (like the ocean or other forests) to demand payments.
successful blockchain applications will still require effective long-term enforcement.
preventing rainforest deforestation alone does not slow climate change. Governments and web3 carbon credit companies must keep IPCC targets in mind to ensure global decarbonization efforts stay on track.
if you want to contribute your research or insights on this area, I’ve started to open source my research notes)
Gitcoin launched its 13th round of public goods funding 🎉 (5-minute read; 1hr of work if you want to donate)
Gitcoin’s web3 community aims to improve the funding of public goods through “quadratic funding.” In the next week, your donations can receive matched funding (up to $11 for each $1 donated).
Example projects: TMO.eth put together this huge list of 80 climate projects currently raising funds. Ale Borda, an occasional contributor to this newsletter, is also raising donations to create a DAO mapping impactful web3 startups.
World Bank Program Looks to Blockchain to Solve Data Issues (5-minute read; 20-minute video)
The World Bank’s “Climate Warehouse” division is working to create a blockchain record of all climate emissions globally. They are working with a consortium of blockchain and climate organizations including the Chia Network (a layer one blockchain like Ethereum).
Why? The Paris Agreement, an international climate change treaty adopted in 2015, created a global regulatory framework for countries to adopt in order to reduce carbon emissions. But it has led to messy and fragmented carbon assets data, fraught with double-counting, data mistakes, and signs of fraudulent behavior as it relates to tracking and reporting. An open-sourced blockchain data product could avoid these issues by creating “the ground source of truth” for every nation and corporation’s climate emissions.
(Author’s note: in prior newsletters, we’ve discussed the promise of creating this type of product in web3 — it is exciting to see the World Bank taking a lead on this initiative.)
As we adapt these newsletters for you and this ecosystem over the coming months, feel free to hit reply with your feedback!
With love,
Alex Filotimo
Building web3 investment systems for a flourishing future
P.S. if you want to help drive research into web3-climate startups, the Aera Force Discord is open to passionate contributors.
This newsletter is for educational purposes only. All figures quoted are found at the time of writing, and not to be used for investment decisions.