Blockchain the immutable ledger which has been mocked by many for its emissions and impact but what if I told you that today's blockchains are not just carbon neutral but even carbon negative multiple times over and how this technology is totally changing the way Climate projects and carbon offseting systems work!
First, we need to get some terms and ideas straight- When most organizations say that they will be carbon neutral by x year it doesn't mean that they will not be producing any carbon footprint but means that they will be offsetting the amount of carbon they produce.
The Corps outsource the work to projects by giving them the money and getting carbon credits aka tokens that signify the amount of carbon removed. As more and more countries and companies are setting goals to be carbon neutral, carbon credits become the best way for them to reach this goal and do pr stuff for their customers which has nothing wrong but showing the potential of carbon credit and tokenization of carbon offsets.
But there is a problem, Old Carbon credits, and their markets arent that trustworthy. One of the most common ways these carbon credits work is that projects plant trees in specific land and make credits of that specific land and sell them on carbon markets but as these the data is siloed and there is very less consensus between different projects, the same piece of land is double-counted and turned into multiple credits reducing the actual offset by many times.
There is a big lack of standardization and communication with normal users which leaves the idea of carbon-neutral to only orgs that can hire brokers and lawyers leaving the biggest part of the population. The lack of Standardization makes it harder to compare different types and qualities of carbon credits as some projects offset carbon by planting trees and some by using machines to capture carbon directly from the environment. Lack of transparency and verifiability is one of the biggest drawbacks of buying carbon credits from traditional markets which has made this inefficient system which is one of our biggest hopes to tackle climate change and the degradation of the environment.
Carbon markets are predicted to grow 15x by 2030 and 100x by the year 2030. are we doomed to inefficiency or we can do something better?
we can build better systems with blockchain to tackle some of the biggest problems in today's world that can help us heal the climate! Most of the people in crypto are familiar with Defi meaning decentralized finance which has got a bad reputation because of some centralized lending companies' calling them "defi protocols " and for most of the part, defi itself has been about getting returns through complex mechanisms. But One of the most vocal and solarpunk movements is also taking its root in the blockchain ecosystem called "Refi" meaning regenerative finance which as the name suggest tries to regenrate the world by setting up mechanisms that incentivize people to make the world a better place and more solarpunk
One of the main goals of refi is to restore the balance in the ecosystem by introducing more transparency, and local impact, and reducing the bad impact humans have led so far.
Refi is solving some of the biggest problems in traditional carbon markets by bringing and verifying carbon assets on-chain. One of the Projects Named Toucan protocol built on the carbon-neutral polygon sidechain brings off-chain carbon credits onto the polygon and allows anyone with an Ethereum wallet to buy these tokens and offset carbon which is considerably higher in quality and transparent than older ones. Earlier people had to go through brokers and sign a million papers to buy these credits which has been democratized now
Structure on how Toucan Protocol Works
Projects like the Ivy protocol are reducing the friction for entrepreneurs to start regen projects by reducing the platform fee by even up to 10x and while earlier only considerable projects with millions in funding were able to get verified now more and more are being launched with the help of smart contracts which are open and can be audited by anyone.
If you just recently took a trip and feel like your carbon footprint on the earth increased a lot just head over to Klima and burn some tokens so that the tokens could not be traded anymore and just keeps doing their work rather than multiple people holding it over time
But one of the biggest positive impacts is being done by Celo, Celo is a Layer -1 blockchain that is 8 times carbon-negative meaning it has offsets 8 times more carbon it produces. Taking the idea of programmable money further, as one of the quotes from the book Sacred Economics says -
if you back money with more of the things you want to see in the world, you’ll get more of those things.
Celo's native stablecoins are backed by forestland which makes them carbon negative themselves as more celo tokens are minted the more forest cover they represent. Celo has been developed by keeping sub $1 payments which can be done through any smartphone with a connection which is introducing financial democratization for the Unbanked, working on the initial vision for which crypto was built. Its ability to run light clients makes it potentially one of the most decentralized blockchains out there.
PoS(Proof of Stake) blockchains that have less than 0.1% carbon footprint than the older PoW(proof of work) chains like bitcoin make it easier for people to develop their own blockchains for the requirements they need to be programmed. Open Forest Protocol made a side chain to the Carbon neutral Near Blockchain and is trying to develop products to help projects verify their carbon impact and bridge the big gap of transparency.
Wanted to add the fact that Solana one of the biggest and most scalable blockchains which has even more active wallets than Ethereum and bitcoin out there is carbon neutral and is pushing for even greener protocols while Ethereum the largest blockchain which can run smart contracts has been PoW will transition to PoS and it has been promised to wit some partnerships that Toucan protocol will offset all the emissions done by Ethereum to date when it transitions fully!
These are just so many of these amazing projects that are making a real-world impact and making the world a better place by using the tech to heal climate and building systems that help others do the same and the best thing is that they are not building in isolation but collaborating and sharing their ideas with everyone who wants.
One of the biggest propagators of this idea is the word "regen" which we use in communities to refer to people who are committed to making the idea of a solarpunk world. With the Release of Kevin Owocki's book "Greenpilled : How Crypto Can Regenrate the world " the idea that crypto could be used for the public good is more alive than ever. The book also makes the case for GreenPilling meaning to show the value of public goods and how they impact the world for good. In the Dream DAO which is the biggest reason I am here writing this, it’s an honor for anyone to be called a regen, and as this tweet by Marc and Elon says memes have a big impact we are trying this fun slang to green pill more people.
It’s been a little over 2 months since I started learning and working in refi and it's been the most optimistic I have ever been! it's hard to be pessimistic when you are working with people who truly believe and are creating systems to regenrate the world. Working at Aera Force a VC fund dao with amazing people and meeting passionate founders and researching projects leaves me more energized than ever. While investing in regen web3 startups you never stop to be amazed by just looking at how new initiatives are leveraging web3/blockchain for true social and ecological impact.
Check this Ted talk by my fren Monty, Regens are everywhere!
PS: Thank you folks for once again being here till the end and this topic is what I am totally consumed by these days. It sometimes feels totally new at first but starts seeming the right thing.
This blog post is the part of Explorers program in Dream DAO as a Learning Artifact. The explorers program is one of the main offerings of the dream dao where we help place young folks at regen web3 organization as interns because you learn the best by doing and regen web3 is so new that it could be hard to find the right fit at first.
Some of the best resources which took inspiration from for this blogpost-
really interesting piece! never heard for regen before. question: are there any regen protocols running on POW, and are there any significant centralization concerns with these regen protocols?