ReFi is now more than a meme. It has become a phenomenon – within a year!
Climate has become a crypto play, as the solution space is moving from TradFi, to DeFi, and now to ReFi. This is creating important new narratives for Web3, which until recently has been dominated by public perceptions that blockchains are bad for the planet, and that crypto is a speculative wild-west, driven by greed.
Ask your banked friends what they think...
Results of this survey show "Regenerative DeFi" #ReFi as the top choice for how we describe the transformative power of DeFi to build citizen-centric, sustainable, regenerative new economy
— ixo (@ixoworld) June 28, 2021
Much of the momentum building over recent months has been catalysed by the success of KimaDAO and the creation of DAOs with the purpose of building treasuries that can be directed through decentralised governance, to invest in carbon assets and Green Economy projects –from regenerative farming, to reforestation, clean energy, and funding public goods.
We believe that ReFi is also about fundamentally regenerating communities, society, and the economy – from local to global, and we see ReFi beginning to expand into all sectors relevant to the 17 Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Crypto-enabled regenerative finance, or ReFi, is emerging as a distributed, democratized system of value-creation around decarbonization, sustainable agriculture, biodiversity, ecosystem restoration and social justice, all tracked, measured, verified, enforced and settled on blockchain. – Impact Alpha
To see how quickly this new market category is gaining momentum, check out the Refi-DAO database where new initiatives are being added by the day!
But what real difference are these initiatives really making? What claims about the impacts of ReFi can be verified, and how much capital is actually being deployed into credible projects that can create positive outcomes?
The scale of financing socio-economic and ecological regeneration must move from Billions to Trillions, and this must be done in the right ways, to achieve sustainable impact that will shift the current trajectory of the world.
Over the coming editions of the Earth State Briefing, we will further explore these questions and deepen our collective intelligence about what's really going on in ReFi and the Tokenised Earth Economy, to identify what opportunities this is creating. We plan to take deep-dives into themes such as:
- ReFi for Nature
- ReFi for Personal Finance
- ReFi for Clean Energy
- ReFi for Social Protection
- ReFi for Health
- ReFi for Sustainable Infrastructure
- ReFi for Skills and Job Creation
- ReFi for Climate Action and Climate Resilience
- ReFi for Education
- ReFi for Sustainable Capital Markets
- ReFi and Good Governance
- ReFi for Responsible Consumption and Production
ReFi is a call for action for us to all, to participate in transitioning the world from Degen to Regen.
Earth State Markets
Now let's look at the tokens and markets that are contributing to growth of the Tokenised Earth Economy.
State of the Markets
🔴 There's blood on the streets, and the bears love it. Tech stocks have been reporting their earnings, and it’s not looking great, with many Nasdaq stocks down 20-50% from their recent all-time highs, and unfortunately crypto falls into this category. Another interesting problem is that DeFi is creating handsome yields on stable coins, so investors are re-allocating their capital to these 'safer' protocols, which negatively affects investments in Alts.
📈 Demand is down, with BTC reserves in all exchanges still declining.
📈 Whale Accumulation continues, with BTC futures trades mostly coming from whales, and not retail traders.
😐 Market Sentiment has turned negative, with decreased investor interest, high leverage, and aggregated funding rates down.
😐 On-chain Indicators have not moved significantly over the past week.
📈Reference Markets over the past week
📊Impact Markets over the past week
📉Impact DAO Shares over the past week
We are seeing the systemic impacts of bad actors. Just because it says decentralised and autonomous does not mean DAOs are immune from corruption, and there's important lessons to be learned as TIME – otherwise known as Wonderland – hit a major controversy. The community uncovered that Michael Patryn, co-founder of a notorious Canadian crypto exchange that defrauded investors of upward of $190 million, allegedly used the DAO treasury assets to prevent his personal liquidations as the crypto markets unravelled. This may have triggered a massive sell pressure to all rebase DAO’s, has threatened the peg of MIM, and also spread FUD to other algo coins, such as UST –which we know has already been under scrutiny.
ℹ️ Remember that DAO’s with a rebase mechanism should be valued on their treasuries, and market cap increases are a more important metric than token prices, as high yields try to outpace price fluctuations.
Token Analysis
Solana ($SOL) is a fast and energy-efficient blockchain that has made strong commitments to climate action, including through carbon offsets & removal of GHG. This week we also explore the innovation of Rebase Token protocols, which are the engine of KlimaDAO and a growing number of climate-focused DAOs.
Romain NEBOIT
Market Opportunities
- Earn & Stake: Juno staking rewards are at 120%, which is higher than the JUNO:OSMO pool and has no impermanent loss.
- Offset: Mint a green NFT and offset carbon at Arkanauts.
- Farm: Earn 100% on your IXO in the sifchain DEX.
- Trade! Supply ATOM on KAVA and earn over 50% APY.
Earth NFT of the Week
Project Ark is a blockchain-powered conservation platform built in partnership between Carbonbase and leading international organisation World Wildlife Fund Panda Labs.
Project Ark hopes to revolutionize the traditional fundraising model for conservation efforts around the world.
Their "Purple Penguin" NFT's are purpose-driven that will help save the last 1% of African penguins from extinction by directing 30% of the minting revenue they generate to the organisation Saving Penguins.
Earth State Technology
- AI for Good now connects you, with intelligence. The AI for Good Neural Network enables AI Innovators to more easily find and connect with Problem Owners, assisted by intelligent matching algorithms, and you get AI-powered personalised suggestions for content, virtual exhibitions and social networking.
Earth State Change
- Gathering moss, to capture carbon with KlimaDAO. Moss aims to enhance the Carbon offsetting process with guarantees of traceability and transparency, using blockchain technology. KlimaDAO has begun accumulating Moss $MCO2 tokens into its treasury.
KlimaDAO
- Rehabilitating natural habitats at scale. Natural State plans to use the latest AI, remote sensing and cellular technologies to catalyze large-scale critical habitat restoration and rewilding, by working closely with local communities, industry, government and conservation leaders. Check out their flagship projects in Africa.
Investment in nature-based solutions has the potential to be the single largest funding source for large-scale restoration and rewilding.
Earth States-Person
Raphaël Haupt is a founding member of Curve Labs and founder of the Toucan Protocol –an originator of KlimaDAO. He is passionate about building tools to address Climate Change, which he sees as the biggest coordination failure of our time. Based in Berlin, he qualified as an Energy Engineer and got hooked on DAOs in 2018.
ixo
Reflecting on the since his State of the World interview with Shaun Conway in August 2021, which was recorded shortly before the launch of KlimaDAO and its meteoric rise over just a couple of months, Raphaël reflects that “Ultimately, it’s the best thing that could have happened" by bringing attention to the potential of DeFi for Climate and sparking explosive growth in crypto initiatives for climate – even though this has drawn in speculators and bad actors. He's optimistic that this experience has demonstrated the need for further innovation, which is being responded to by a growing community of builders who are iterating on improvements.
Earth State Tweet of the Week
To date, a total of almost 18m carbon tons has been bridged onto the blockchain via Toucan Bridge 🌉 https://t.co/dgSPpxuqCV
— Toucan Protocol (is hiring!) (@ToucanProtocol) January 18, 2022
That's close to the annual emissions of Sri Lanka 🇱🇰—a country with a population of 21.5m!
Probably nothing 👀?#ClimateAction pic.twitter.com/rz2nIGvTQI
Earth News
- The next unicorns will be green energy companies according to Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock.
- Bigger parks will not be enough for the world to stop and recover from the destruction of nature.
Patrick Greenfield
- World Bank is banking on a tokenised carbon marketplace by co-developing the standards for a ‘Climate Warehouse’ mechanism.
Earth State Actions
- Recap what Ethan Buchman has to say about ReFi and the Internet of Blockchains, with this synopsis of his interview on DeFi Decoded.
ixo
- Read about the potential for regenerative change at intersection of Web3 and carbon markets, from Regen Network.
Regen Network
- Contribute news and other content to the Earth State Intelligence platform.
ixo
- Subscribe to Toucan’s new free weekly newsletter deCarbonized that aims to demystify carbon markets.
John Ellison
- View the 40 incredible project proposals that will be supported through the Regen Network 2022 Community Funding Program.
Regen Network
- Hear what the Bankless crew have to say about what's moving in DeFi, including the OlympusDAO crash, OpenSea Dharma, and USDC vs Tether.
🌍 For the Earth!
The ReFi revolution is only just getting started! The way this is shaping up gives us cause for hope, and is creating opportunities for us all to get involved as stakeholders who can contribute towards creating positive Earth-State changes, and grow a Tokenised Earth Economy that is truly regenerative. You can help shape this narrative over the coming months, and we encourage you to join the conversation!
Join our weekly Twitter Space every Tuesday at 15:00 UTC, where we discuss what's moving in ReFi and the Tokenised Earth Economy. This week, our guest is Raphaël Haupt from Toucan Protocol, talking about Tokenised Carbon Markets.