Welcome, great to have you on this journey.
This newsletter is to help founders and investors interested in climate action understand how blockchain applications (or ‘web3’) can change our economy.
I’m Alex. I studied environmental science in university before working at three climate funds. I’ve worked with hundreds of climate scientists → Series B founders and am contributing to a new investment vehicle at the intersection of web3 and climate.
New incentive systems and communities built on blockchain mechanisms are creating a thriving, frothy, rapidly changing ecosystem. There is a movement of talent and funding diving into this space, with at least 60 “companies” in the ecosystem and new projects emerging each week.
This newsletter will share ecosystem news and three to five curated articles each week. In doing so, helping you filter through the noise and shining a light on projects authentically improving our planet.
Possible Reading
The Crypto Climate Revolution: Why a Technology Condemned by Environmentalists May Become a Key Solution (8min read) — this article from The Mantis is an early outline of the ReFi (regenerative finance) ecosystem.
What is regenerative economics? The crypto community adopted regenerative finance (#ReFi) as a rallying cry for many web3 projects. However, it is a concept that John Fullerton has pushed for years, and Walmart recently included in an investor report. In essence, the regenerative economics movement is a shift to operate economics within planetary boundaries and replenish nature as we extract. John Fullerton gave this two-minute speech concisely covering it here.
Aera Force is happy to discuss the concept with any investors or founders interested in exploring this space. Respond by email if so: I’ve been studying John Fullerton’s model for the last two months & Derek Handley considered the topic’s intellectual predecessors when he built Aera’s first impact strategy.
Demystifying and starting to understand climate crypto (5min read; hours of potential work) — if you have time on your hands, Cody Simms put together this extraordinary thread after months of exploring the regenerative finance space. It includes guides on how to buy cryptocurrencies for the first time.
A list of climate projects — ReFi evangelist, jΞ, has created a directory of climate projects at the crypto intersection. He also works at a leading web3 climate project, Toucan Protocol, and has focused on building out this climateXcrypto ecosystem for months.
Setting the record straight about web3? (5min read) — @ChrisCantino outlines common misconceptions with blockchain in this semi-technical, clearly written Twitter thread.
Bonus: if you want to start working in crypto, Justin Alanís created this extraordinary guide to start getting involved
Ecosystem News
Respond to this email if you have any community submissions, fundraising news, or upcoming event suggestions. For this first edition, I’ll focus on highlighting the early voices illuminating this space:
Open Forest Protocol is raising funding and I’m happy to make an introduction for any of you with their team. We recently met Jeremy and were impressed by OFP’s climate background & what they’ve built so far.
Gitcoin is an extraordinary organization that drives grants and funding to projects (or science) that needs it. They recently ran a climate funding round.
John at Toucan is driving many of the underpinning resources in the climate crypto space (like this directory of projects).
TMO is a central voice in the #ReFi ecosystem and is creating a project to acquire billions of dollars of land for regenerative purposes.
dClimate is a protocol working to reduce all the messy data providers in climate, to instead offer one global climate record.
Toucan Protocol and Klima DAO deserve a huge shoutout for catalyzing this sector. They provided the infrastructure and vehicle for driving up the prices of recent carbon markets. Toucan is working on infrastructure for bringing carbon markets to blockchain.
Feel free to reach out if you have any specific questions or feedback for future editions.
With love,
Alex Filotimo
A passionate climate nerd & core team member @ Aera Force
None of this newsletter is meant as investment advice nor solicitation, consider it for educational purposes only.