Happy Tuesday, founders, investors, and generally passionate humans,
Hereâs your weekly snapshot of our burgeoning ecosystem:
Global Ecosystem News đ
đި Validere, a Houston-based commodity management platform, raised a $43M Series B from investors, including BlackRock Funds, Greylock Partners, and Wing VC.
đ˛Â Solid World DAO, a project creating a mechanism to pre-fund carbon removal projects, raised an oversubscribed round (undisclosed amount) with participation from Allegory Labs.
đ¨đłÂ China plans to create a blockchain solution to help implement the âBeijing Plastic Pollution Control Action Plan.â
đ˘Â Diginex expanded its environmental supply-chain platform to include labor and human rights tracking in partnership with Coca-Cola.
đ Plasticoin, a startup offering rewards for plastic collected from beaches, partnered with the Uruguayan government.
Diatom DAO recently launched a similar incentive to reduce ocean pollution globally (profiled in a previous newsletter).
đ˛ Cambium Carbon, a reforestation startup building a regenerative wood supply chain, raised $3.2M from investors including MaC Venture Capital, Soma Capital, Blue Ivy Ventures, and others.
âťď¸Â Green Mining, a Brazilian company leveraging blockchain for reverse logistics, was shortlisted in Shellâs Smart Cities Accelerator.
đŤÂ Koa, in partnership with Seedtrace, launched a system to pay farmers and track the cacao supply chain with blockchain.
Traditional Climate-Tech News
đşđ¸Â In a move in-line with 30 other countries, the SEC released a proposal yesterday to mandate US corporationsâ emissions disclosures. Climate Tech VC wrote this great breakdown on the proposed change, and it could have immense implications for web3 emissions-data projects.
Events
đ The Aera Force DAO hosts its first community-wide meeting next Monday. We welcome founders, VCs, angels, students, and passionate researchers to join the Discord if you want to contribute to web3 investments shaping our planet.
Curated Insights đ
What failed in prior waves of blockchain startups? (2-minute summary)
In this 2019 Wired article, Whatâs Blockchain Actually Good for, Anyway? For Now, Not Much, the author profiles the failures of a variety of promising startups: âNot long ago, blockchain technology was touted as a way to track tuna, bypass banks, and preserve property records. Reality has proved a much tougher challenge.â
Why did they fail? Some projects â particularly complex processes like supply chain tracking and property title software â were less effective because it was easier to build complex traditional software. Additionally, the speed and cost of Ethereum transactions hobbled many of the projects.
(Writerâs note:
Has that changed? We partially created the Aera Force because those factors have subsided. In the last three years, the infrastructure for creating useful decentralized software has drastically improved. Additionally, new networks (and upcoming updates to Ethereum) significantly improve transaction speed.
At least one of the failed projects (Colu) that raised a $20M ICO could feasibly succeed now that the industry has continued to advance. Aera Force has seen startups tackling similar issues, and the founder ends the article by sharing that âI have no doubt [blockchain] will reinvent the global financial system,â Meiri says. âItâs just not there yet.â
What should venture investors keep in mind? 1, we should still consider timing â is the landscape going to be ready soon for these decentralized applications to succeed? 2, we must remain aware that blockchain is not a solution in and of itself. Unless decentralization offers blockchain projects a fundamental advantage, well-designed software (that leverages platforms like Stripe and Amazon Web Services) is faster to build. 3, like traditional venture investing, a teamâs ability to learn and develop exceptional âproductsâ (/communities) is still more important than their initial plan.
Do you have insights on prior blockchain failures â particularly climate-focused ones? Reply, or feel free to contribute directly to my notes in this open-sourced document.)
A web3 investorâs views on regenerative crypto investments â Episode 7 of the ReFi Podcast (1hr15minute listen)
The Refi podcast interviewed Tomer Bariach from Flori Ventures. Flori Ventures invests in regenerative startups built upon the Celo ecosystem (a similar protocol to Ethereum).
Tomerâs primary investment criteria is a clear plan to decentralize the project. He believes decentralized approaches will win out over even the exceptional centralized founders: decentralized systems are more resilient, âless prone to weaknesses of large corporations,â and âI trust a well-designed incentive structure economies more than people.â
Tomer also shares his thoughts around how blockchain networks will re-organize successful economies (i.e., building UBI into the monetary systems in a net-positive manner) and reorient incentives to encompass the value of nature (i.e., underpinning every dollar with CO2 removals). Other topics discussed include Tomerâs current insights into carbon market protocols, approaches for building universal basic income, and his preference for currencies that are mediums of exchange like Ethereum/Celo vs. stores of value like Bitcoin.
Blockchain tracking sweetens the pay of Ghanaâs cocoa farmers (15-minute read)
The article profiles the Swiss-Ghanaian startup Koa as it partnered with Seedtrace to create a transparent supply chain that demonstrates whether cocoa farmers earned a living wage.
Whatâs the benefit of blockchain? âWe verify each transaction and store it on an open, low-emission blockchain,â thereby reducing inconsistent data that causes payment disputes or obfuscates the cacaoâs source.
Perhaps interestingly, the article also profiles two different but already successful supply-chain applications:
Walmart Canada partnered with DLT Labs to create the DL Freight supply chain network in March 2021. Harvard Business Review recently showed that the closed (private) blockchain reduced the rate of invoice disputes from 70% to 1%.
Walmart USA also uses computer giant IBMâs Hyperledger platform to track and trace food-borne illnesses. According to Nasdaq, the system has âcut the time it takes to find specific data on food items from 7 days to just over 2 seconds.â
Useful Extra Links
The Founder of BasinDAO collated this list of #ReFi projects raising funding on Gitcoin. The list showcases a variety of fascinating startups, and every $1 you donate before March 24 is matched by up to $11.
If youâre looking to work in web3, the author of A Project Managerâs Guide to Building in Web3 collated introductory reading, videos, and pathways to find a web3 job at the bottom of this newsletter.
If you have questions about the terms above (i.e., what is #ReFi), feedback, or article suggestions, Iâll happily reply to any direct emails.
With love,
Alex Filotimo
Studying web3 venture investments for a flourishing future w/Aera Force
P.S. if you want to contribute to insights on web3-climate startups, Iâm creating this open-source insights repository.
This newsletter is for educational purposes only. The figures quoted may not be accurate, and you should not use this content as investment advice.