Nature-based Solutions are critical for responding to Climate change and stop the extinction of critical biodiversity, which are existential threats to humanity in the longer-term, and frankly depressing today if we don't have a way out.
The positive news is that tokenised nature-based economies are starting to be built, with the potential to cover vast areas of critical habitats and regenerate both local economies, and the ecological health of our planet.
In this week's feature article we learn more about Nature-based Solutions and take a look at an important new initiative in Namibia that has begun building a digital twin of conservation areas across the country. This is a step towards creating a Tokenised Nature-based Economy that will bring new ways of financing conservation efforts, using outcomes-based ReFi mechanisms and verified data.
Mathilda de Villiers
Earth State Markets
Here's the latest intelligence on the DeFi to ReFi tokens and markets that are contributing to growth of the Tokenised Earth Economy.
State of the Markets
The crypto markets seem to have gone through both a bull and a bear market in a few short days! Russia announced that cryptocurrencies are now legal. KPMG Canada put ETH and Bitcoin into their treasury. Markets rallied on news of these mainstream developments. But then we heard that the US is facing the worst inflation in 40 years! This hawkish news slowed the BTC rally. Could high inflation lead to BTC becoming an inflation hedge and finally uncouple cryptocurrencies from the dollar standard?
In other news the story of the week has to be the Bitfinex hack. In 2016 this large crypto exchange was hacked for 120,000 Bitcoin (about $70 million at the time). The Bitcoin price crashed 40% on the heels of that news. But this was not the end of it –you can’t easily off-ramp big amounts of BTC from a public ledger, without someone noticing! The hackers tried various methods to cash out their loot, mainly using the Monero privacy coin, but they didn’t succeed to cash out much. Recently, chain analysis picked up large movements of Bitcoin related to this hack. The Department of Justice monitored these transactions and watched them move into the wallet of Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife, Heather Morgan – who is a YC founder, and rapper. The police raided their house and found the seed phrases on a shared drive on their computer! This challenges the mainstream narrative that Bitcoin is a boon for criminals.
📈Reference Markets over the past week
📊Impact Markets over the past week
📉DAO Shares over the past week
ℹ️ Remember that DAO’s with a rebase mechanism should be valued on their treasuries, and market cap increases are a more important metric than token prices, as high yields try to outpace price fluctuations.
Market Opportunities
- Stake - Bitcoin is coming to the Cosmos with nomic.io in a few weeks. Earn over 1300% by staking your $NOM!
- Get an Airdrop - Head to spacestation.zone to see if you qualified for the Gravity Bridge airdrop. Snapshot was in June 2021!
- Farm - Earn over 270% APR on osmosis when you pool SOMM/OSMO!
- Preserve the amazon and buy an NFT from the Amazon Moss Collection.
- Learn how to use and contribute to decentralised apps, earning tokens based on your on-chain activity through Rabbithole.
- Invest - Use the new cross-chain router Rango and purchase $IXO from almost any chain!
Token Analysis
This week Romain takes a deep dive into $AAVE and finds its Relevance to ReFi is about democratising people's access to money, with regenerative financing innovations that are built on decentralised money market mechanisms that don't need intermediaries. Aave has recently announced a partnership with decentralized operating system Centrifuge to launch a new market called Real World Assets (RWAs), for collateralising loans and earning yields against real-world assets. This is the start of something big, as the economic space of real-world is almost unlimited –especially when we include natural assets!
Romain NEBOIT
Earth NFT of the Week
Through the Moss Amazon Forest NFT, you’re able to own a piece of land in the Amazon Forest. By doing so, owners are contributing to creating a ‘Green Wall’ of properties that are focused on conservation, becoming an active part of this innovation to save the forest by monitoring their part of the Amazon preservation project.
Earth State Technologies
- Using Artificial Intelligence to hunt down trafficked wildlife. Project SEEKER, a first-of-its-kind initiative, develops multi-species AI models to automatically detect illegally trafficked wildlife that is concealed in luggage and cargo. Illegal trafficking of wildlife is an industry worth $23 billion per year, making it the fourth-largest illicit trade globally.
Daniel Haines
Earth State Change
- Rewilding nature with NFTs. WildEarth attracts more than a million people worldwide, tuning in to catch sightings at game reserves such as Djuma Game Reserve, part of Sabi Sands in South Africa, for a 24/7 dedicated safari channel. The NFT ‘Genesis set’ will contain 25 of their most popular animals, and the NFTs will not run on high energy chains but on Polygon - a more energy-efficient chain. The money raised will go directly towards conservation efforts. WildEarth is a firm believer in building these NFTs around tangible and real-world purposes instead of purely the expectation of profit.
David Henning
- Planet-saving coordination and cooperation. SavePlanetEarth is developing the first-ever Gold Standard certified carbon credit NFTs, minted on Phantasma – a carbon-negative blockchain designed for NFTs that is entirely powered by renewable energy. This will include a carbon credit exchange in which $SPE will be the exclusive currency.
Earth States-Person
Lohan Spies is a South African member of the Earth Program team, who has a passionate for Self-sovereign Identity, and the development opportunities in Africa –especially when it comes to youth. Listen to the recording of this week's Earth State Space conversation with Lohan about his leadership role in a UNICEF-led coalition that is creating YoMa –the Youth Marketplace for skills, employment, and entrpreneurship opportunities, that is built on self-sovereign digital identity and the ixo Internet of Impact blockchain. Their target is to scale usage of the YoMa platform by more than a million youth in Africa, by the end of 2022.
.png)
Lohan is the chair of Sovrin Steward Council, trustee on the board of the Sovrin Foundation, and an Identity and Security Advisor at ixo. Together with Shaun Conway in 2015, he was a trailblazer in building Global Consent as a significant proof of concept in the nascent Self-Sovereign Identity sector, and through Trustlab (based in Cape Town) since 2015 they together conducted some of the first demonstrations of how blockchain technology can be used for social impact applications –in collaboration with UNICEF Innovation.
Earth State Tweet of the Week
The criticism laid on @wwf_uk’s @0xPolygon #NFT collection raises a question of values (as well as an understanding of blockchain technology).
— John Ellison (🌳,🌳) (@climateXcrypto) February 6, 2022
If you had to prevent only one ONE of these from happening which would you choose?
Earth News
- ‘Big Oil’ in the hot seat over climate change ‘deception.’ Some of the world’s most powerful energy companies are facing a reckoning for their part in creating – and attempting to cover up – the climate crisis. US Congress will question them under oath on Tuesday.
- Russia is expected to regulate crypto as legal money. The country’s draft legislation will reportedly be drawn up by Feb 18. It stands as a reversal after the Bank of Russia proposed a ban on miners and various crypto operations last month.
Stephen
- The public has been left disappointed as leaders fail in the fight against climate change. An in-depth poll that includes citizens worldwide finds that most people are dissatisfied with how governments are handling climate change and that large corporations – especially those involved with “the dirtiest fuel on the planet” aren’t doing enough.
Ryan Heath
Earth Gatherings
- The ReFi UnConference is around the corner. Financial protocols for Planetary Healing. The CCS (Crypto Commons Association), a non-profit organisation is facilitating this event, and it will be held April 30th - May 6th. They are inviting the ReFi community to join the UnConference at their newly-founded Crypto Commons Hub in the majestic Eastern foothills of the Austrian Alps.
- Blockchain Africa Conference 2022: ‘Ready for Business?’ is back on March 17 and 18 online, bringing speakers from across the globe with a focus on opportunities and use cases for blockchain technologies.
Earth State Actions
- Read about the newly launched Nature Carbon Tonne (NCT) standard developed by Toucan Protocol.
Ela Khodai
- Listen to Defiant’s talk with Griff Green, co-founders of Giveth, which is using Ethereum as a gateway for non-profit organisations to join the Web3 economy.
- Read about what 'Permanence' means in Nature-Based Solutions – is carbon being sequestrated, or are the emissions being reduced/avoided so that it will be permanent?
Neal Spackman
- Hack! The DAO Hackathon is a four-week hackathon dedicated to building tools and use-cases for DAOs.
- Learn about the 'Emissions Gap'. The heat is on as scientists are warning that time is running out to limit global warming to 1.5°C.
- Journey through the critical nature of the part that indigenous cultures play in maintaining the world's biodiversity – and that we should be protecting them at all costs.
Krystyna Swiderska
- Watch Cryptocito speak about the Evmos launch that is bringing Ethereum smart contract into Cosmos, covering its tokenomics, Rektdrop, EVM compatibility, and more.
🌍 For the Earth!
We are only just starting to scratch the surface of the potential for the Nature-based economy to form the foundations of the Tokenised Earth Economy, that we beleive could become "THE ECONOMY" in future. Watch this space grow, and get involved –you are still early and there are going to be abundant opportunities for you to become an effective and successful contributing stakeholder, with the Earth State intelligence we will continue to gather and share.
Join the weekly Earth State Twitter Space every Tuesday at 15:00 UTC, where we discuss what's moving in ReFi and the Tokenised Earth Economy.