🌍 Venturing in ReFi #22
Your 5-minute deep-dive into regenerative web3 startups
Happy Wednesday/Thursday!
We are publishing your newsletter early this week.
Why?
So you have the opportunity to donate to Gitcoin Grants (one of the most exciting, already-impactful Ethereum projects).
Why would you want to?
You can support fascinating startups (i.e., in their Climate Solutions category)
Every dollar you donate is multiplied by >$10-400 from sponsoring funds.
Hands-on involvement lets you directly understand why Gitcoin may shape our future (and how it’s changing the present with >$65M donated)
The deadline to donate is tomorrow at 11:59 pm UTC, 2:59 pm ET, or 7:00 am NZT
Global Ecosystem News 🌊
Fundraises
🔋 London-based startup Tesseract raised $78M to develop an app allowing customers to trade tokenized renewable energy.
🤖 Aera Force announced their second investment into Digital Gaia, a company creating proof-of-impact scores for natural capital.
🌥️ dClimate acquired Oasis Hub, a Europe-based climate data platform, to add thousands of new datasets to dClimate’s decentralized data network.
Ecosystem News
🤝 Gitcoin offset more than half its historical carbon emissions by partnering with tokenized carbon projects (including Nori, KlimaDAO, Zero Labs, and Regen Network).
⭐ Ethereum finally merged to proof of stake, reducing its energy usage by 500x.
(Editor’s note: you may like this non-technical explainer on the “merge.”
🚜 LandX, a protocol that sends farmers money for regenerative actions, announced a partnership with Menthol Protocol so farmers can calculate their carbon footprint.
🧹 KlimaDAO removed over 670K low-quality carbon credits from its treasury to improve the integrity of its credit offering.
Gitcoin Grants
You can browse Gitcoin’s Climate Solutions category to explore new climate-focused grants. We also collected a tiny sample here.
🔱 New Atlantis is developing methodologies to create “blue carbon credits” that incentivize regenerative ocean actions that improve biodiversity or capture carbon dioxide.
🔬 inTheory Research Markets by Impact Finance is an open source decentralized science (DeSci) platform to accelerate scientific research.
☕️ Coffee Carbon Collective is a ReFi project helping direct capital to coffee farmers using regenerative farming practices.
🌊 ReFi DAO is an impact and networking community of ReFi project founders aiming to build a regenerative world economy.
🎥 Banking on Nature is an 8-episode documentary series exploring ReFi projects worldwide to spotlight how blockchain drives impact.
❄️ ERC-Cool is creating an Ethereum contract to automatically purchase carbon removal credits as individuals trade NFTs.
🌐 Digital Gaia is raising funds to help create an open-sourced “proof of impact” network. Its success could solve significant challenges in valuing ESG and unlock billions of more dollars for ReFi projects.
(Editor’s note: the Aera Force DAO has an interest in sharing this project due to a recent investment from the community)
Founders, feel free to DM us a project @AlexFilotimo
Curated Insights: Your Gitcoin Guide 📚
1 - What is Gitcoin?
Gitcoin is a donation platform that has rapidly become one of the most prominent crypto projects. It has already facilitated >$65M in donations from people like you.
Your donations are amplified. Every $10 you donate could result in >$100s of dollars going to the project.
i.e., my first donation was $2 to 31 different projects I liked. The projects received $2556 in matching funds from my $62 donation.
Gitcoin makes donating exciting
Individuals may donate $BBs of more capital to their hobbies and local communities.
Quadratic funding makes a person’s donations feel more valuable and “fair” in a world where less-wealthy individuals feel disenfranchised.
Local councils could use similar technology to allocate budgets
Its algorithm (quadratic funding) assigns money based on what’s most important to a community.
Why is Gitcoin more efficient than a simple online tool?
Using crypto (in this case, a stablecoin backed by the US dollar), your donations automatically send to the startups globally without needing to pass through banks
2 - How can I get involved??
Selecting and donating to projects can take as little as two minutes. Or, it could take one hour if you’re new to crypto. Here’s a comprehensive guide to help.
Or, skip the guide. Browse and collect the projects you’d love to support:
There are hundreds of projects in Gitcoin’s Climate Solutions category.
This newsletter’s Ecosystem News section shares seven options ^
Two lists of curated projects from Twitter:
3 - What is ‘Quadratic Funding’?? (the technical part)
Quadratic funding is the mathematical algorithm Gitcoin uses in the background. The founders claim it is “the mathematically optimal way to fund public goods in a democratic community.”
The linked website describes the concept in a simple 90-second video.
Fun extras
If you’re looking to build a startup in ReFi, the ReFi Roundup focuses on helping our industry’s founders. 📚
If you’d like a regular analysis of on-chain carbon markets, Toucan Protocol runs the excellent deCarbonized newsletter. 📚
Feel free to reply if we can help you or if you want to suggest articles that help crypto/climate investors. 📩
With love,
Alex, Yoshi, and the Aera Force DAO
Researching web3 venture investments for a flourishing future
P.S. If you want to contribute research into web3-climate investing, feel free to contact us or contribute to 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.
Great newsletter as always frens! The Notion links aren't working unfortunately.
Both the Gitcoin guide and the open source insights repository...