🌍 Venturing in ReFi #27
Your 5-minute deep-dive into regenerative web3 investing
Happy Thursday!
Amidst this FTX and market turmoil, it is nice to remember that blockchain technology is a tool to solve real-world problems.
Few problems press upon society, like improving how we coordinate — resources and talent — or redesigning our economy for long-term sustainability.
This week’s newsletter includes your typical global #ReFi news. But also,
🌊 A demo day of #ReFi startup pitches
⛓️ Technical details on Hash Algorithms
📊 A partnership to bring crypto weather-insurance closer
We’re excited to invest in this emerging sector with you. Let’s dive in:
Global Ecosystem News 🌊
Fundraises 🚀
🔄 Circularise secured an €11M Series A round to grow their blockchain-powered circular economy platform.
🍃 Ureca, a Singapore-based carbon offset marketplace built on the Algorand blockchain, raised $1.5M in pre-seed funding.
Ecosystem News
🎇 FutureQuest, a ReFi project accelerator, announced a $1M grant pool to support projects in the Web3 climate space.
🧊 The Giving Block, a startup helping nonprofits to accept crypto donations, announced that it recently processed a $9.4M donation, its largest single donation ever.
🚛Mercedes-Benz partnered with GreenPlat to develop Web3-powered software to monitor its transportation fleets’ greenhouse gas emissions.
⚡️ Climate-focused blockchain Bitgreen announced a partnership to fund a $110M hydroelectric facility in Sierra Leone, where only 26% of the population has electricity access.
🎣 The Mar de Cortés Forum presented a plan that leverages blockchain features to turn the Sea of Cortez, the largest fishing area in Mexico, into a carbon-neutral economic zone.
🌱 Seafields, a UK firm growing seagrass for carbon removal, announced a plan to tokenize 1B tons of carbon credits through its partnership with on-chain carbon marketplace JustCarbon.
Newly Launched Projects 🤔
🌐 Gitcoin announced a partnership with UNICEF to launch a new grant protocol to bring transparent, community-driven funding to the NGO (non-governmental organization) sector.
⚖️ Leading Web3 companies launched the Ethereum Climate Platform, an initiative to offset Ethereum’s historical carbon footprint by financing decarbonization projects.
📱 Pozzle Planet launched a public beta of its Impact-2-Earn app, where users can verify positive environmental and social actions to earn tokens.
🤖 Entertec, a Romanian startup, launched new software that leverages blockchain and AI to help companies to track, manage, and report their carbon emissions.
🌸 Flowcarbon kicked off the auction for their climate-positive Flow3rs NFT collection, where 2/3rds of the proceeds go to retiring carbon credits.
Founders, feel free to DM our editor a project on Twitter @AlexFilotimo
Curated Readings 📚
1 - #ReFi Investments Demo Day | Youtube Recording 🥳
Flori Ventures, one of our fellow web3 climate investors, hosted a pitch night showcasing fifteen projects.
The 90-minute Youtube showcase includes:
23:00: ▶️Carbonpath (Shutting down gas wells)
58:32: 🍥Spirals Protocol (Climate Impact Staking)
57:21: 🌎Solid.World DAO (Derisking Forward Carbon)
8:28: 📗Greentrade (Carbon Marketplace)
1:18:45: 📔Covalent (Blockchain-based infrastructure for carbon removal)
Thank you to Rel Lefekc for curating the time stamps for these startup pitches!
2 - Shamba’s partnership for “parametric insurance” infrastructure (an interesting #ReFi startup ) 🧑🌾
This press release shares that Chainlink is converting real-world data (i.e., from NASA and satellite providers) into a crypto format through an “oracle”. With that, Shamba creates a web3 data source of how the environment has changed.
In Newsletter #25’s third article, we discussed blockchain’s potential to offer insurance to African farmers. Shamba’s data product enables other entrepreneurs to build those applications.
For nearly a year, the Aera Force DAO has tracked Shamba as a potential investment. Alex Filotimo was impressed by their founder, thoughtful product development, and strong engineering team.
3 - Hash Functions Intro ⚙️
A 9-minute lesson focused on hash functions (a critical technical component of cryptocurrencies).
Hash functions are basic algorithms that take an input (i.e., a text message) and transform them into a seemingly-random set of numbers. Often used by companies to check your passwords, hash algorithms allow computers to compare users' identities.
This blog from Nakamoto covers the technical details and security concerns for these functions.
Fun extras
🦜 If you’d like a regular analysis of carbon markets, Toucan Protocol runs the excellent deCarbonized newsletter.
🛠️ If you want to build a startup in ReFi, the ReFi DAO runs various programs to support our industry’s founders.
Feel free to reply with feedback, suggestions, or fantastic articles for 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 to 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 is verified or intended to help as investment advice.