What is the biggest, and perhaps most important, Public Good?

Nature.

How long do we need to steward Nature for?

Forever. (or at least as long as humans are around)

The best way to do this?

A Hyperstructure to solve the biodiversity and climate metacrisis.

.basin

.basin is a climate & nature hyperstructure. The Basin Protocol is designed to steward ecosystems and natural carbon sinks in perpetuity.

Basin is utilizing the largest market in the world, real estate, combined with the biggest opportunity in crypto, #RWA (Real World Assets), to scale climate, nature, and carbon project development, and land and habitat restoration and conservation.

We are building a new real estate investment class on blockchain rails to attract global capital as our partner in creating a nature positive future. The global real estate investment market is $1.3 Trillion per year. Our goal is to divert or add 10% ($130B) of that to climate & nature finance. We expect several billion of that to be on chain as impact certificates and carbon/biodiversity credits.

REvalue

The benefits Nature provides to humans, Ecosystem Services, come from five Realms: terrestrial, freshwater, marine, subterranean, atmospheric.

The terrestrial Realm just happens to give us all of the tried and trusted legal and financial frameworks we need to scale ecosystem and carbon sink restoration, conservation and regeneration. In our current society, private property rights are one of the best tools we have to change the course of climate change and nature loss. Yes, there is a major juxtaposition with private property and the Commons but private property can and will be the Commons if implemented as we will in the Basin Trust.

Our REvalue methodology looks at internal and external values and costs to arrive at the Higher and Better Use of Real Estate as opposed to existing myopic valuations. REvalue works at the property level and uses an Ecosystem Services (ES) bundling approach. It factors real estate value, baseline ES, and opportunities for outcome based ES activity on top. It works for all IUCN GET 2.0 biomes/land covers and accounts for over 22 types of values. It is specifically designed to work in conjunction with TNFD (Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures) and other international disclosure frameworks, all which will play well with DeSci and dMRV.

REcerts (aka $STRMS), are certificates of impact, flows of value, and collective shares of healthy functioning ecosystems and a society of well being. They are all tied to or come back to Place: a pin on a map or a polygon. Properties are just polygons. It is what is on that polygon and what is done with that polygon that matters. Every polygon that is part of .basin has many, most, or all of these "things":

Food Provision, Energy, Buildings, Raw Materials, Human Use (grazing, housing, storage, etc), Air Quality, Pollination, Climate Regulation, Soil, Habitat, Hazard, Risk Reduction, Erosion Control, Water Security (supply & storage), Water Quality, Recreation & Tourism, Biological Control, Existence Value, Cultural & Spiritual, Medicinal & Genetic, Ornamental Resources, Research & Education, Aesthetic Value, and more

As a holistic property and nature assessment, REvalue quantifies the Value of these benefits in $'s. Whether you call them real assets, natural capital, or environmental assets or simply the necessities of a good life, it does not matter, REvalue accounts for them.

Pilot Projects

Examples of the value of Nature (Ecosystem Services) using the basinStack:

Why a Hyperstructure?

Jacob of Zora covers hyperstructures at length but it is worth covering the basics and how .basin is designed to be one.

A Hyperstructure is defined as a crypto protocol that can run for free and forever, without maintenance, interruption or intermediaries. The main tenets of hyperstructures are that they are: Unstoppable, Free, Valuable, Expansive, Permissionless, Credibly Neutral, and Positive-sum.

How does .basin do this? The biggest challenge for us is linking the metaverse (aka blockchain) with IRL. Just because something is on chain does not mean it is that way on earth. With this in mind our version may be akin to a "modified hyperstructure" with more human involvement and/or checks and balances than Jacob originally envisioned.

• Unstoppable: currently deployed on Polygon our ERC-721 (.basin) and our ERC-1155 (REcerts aka $STRMS) will be be polycentrically governed, have perpetual value flows through .basins (i.e. Sablier/Superfluid) modeled after the natural water cycle, and have a "kill switch" that prevents upgradability to set the protocol to run forever.
• Free, Valuable, & Expansive: we chose Polygon because of the low gas as compared to mainnet and the number of mainstream corporations and brands building there. This creates low cost, interoperability and composability for brands looking to reduce risk, increase resilience and take part of the renewal economy. Like nature and trophic energy transfer, the Basin Protocol uses a 10% rule to create expansiveness: 10% of every transaction or value transfer is passed to the Basin Trust to steward ecosystems in perpetuity. We expect numerous business units and services to be created to serve the needs of the network.
• Permissionless & Credibly Neutral: subject to progressive decentralization, anybody will be able to mint a .basin for free. Subject to a simple name availability check and a suggested donation, anyone, anywhere can create a .basin. Subject to a code of ethics, polycentric governance will monitor what can projects can be created and enhanced but not take away that which has already been built. Built on a cooperative model, every .basin is either a person, place or purpose, all which are members of the of the co-op. Every .basin can be owned individually or governed by a group or DAO and of course be bought, sold, and traded.
• Positive-sum: the basinStack, Climate Lease, and ecosystem fee creates protocol owned properties to be managed as Commons. These mechanisms create legacy incentives that balance the short term with the long term and allow the individual to prosper while the collective flourishes. Our REcerts ($STRMS) are resilience and renewal certificates that are part product, part patronage token, that are flows of value created by members for each other and society.

The end result is a "rich ecosystem of potentially competitive participants organizing on and utilizing the same piece of infrastructure to the net benefit of everyone through shared liquidity and the network effect of integrations".

Thank you Gitcoin Community

Gitcoin has been instrumental in helping us get to where we are. You can read about the journey of past GR# rounds and the Alpha Climate Round. These cover what we have done with previous funds. For current info on our Traction and Roadmap please ping TMO.

Dig Deeper

If you want to dig in more to the why, how, or what of .basin, including but not limited to the basinStack, the HOP model and the Climate Lease, more can be found at docs.basin.global.