TLDR ✨

Regen Atlas grows green finance by coordinating its entire value chain on one global marketplace.

In the context of Token Engineering, the Regen Atlas represents a unique library of knowledge, a sandbox of experimentation, as well as research into (green crypto-assets) methodologies

For this GG21 round, the Regen Atlas introduces a new design of its prototype v2, a database extension, new partnerships, and more.

Vision 👀

The climate crisis requires trillions in funding that is not being spent today. Traditional methods for producing and trading green assets often lead to issues with quality and reliability, reducing trust and effectiveness. Global participation in trading green crypto assets remains low compared to other sectors, and outdated processes with heavy reliance on intermediaries hinder monetization and innovation. The current industry focus on carbon offsets overlooks other vital green assets like biodiversity credits. Finally, there is a pressing need for innovative financial instruments, such as futures, indexes, and nature-backed currencies, to effectively drive market liquidity.

➡️ The Regen Atlas is set to transform this landscape by providing a global, open-source platform for individuals and organizations to support or invest in environmental projects. ⬅️

Solution: The Regen Atlas 🗺️

The Regen Atlas is a location-based green crypto-asset marketplace designed to address market inefficiencies by displaying all existing green crypto assets and aggregating their entire value chain (i.e. issuers, tokenizers, certifiers, raters, regulators, buyers). Specifically, the platform aims to offer:

1. Support for Diverse Green Assets: The number of green crypto-assets has been constantly growing over the last years. On the Regen Atlas, users have access to a broad spectrum of green crypto-assets (and soon corresponding stakeholders) that go beyond just carbon assets, including but not limited to biodiversity, agriculture, green and blue bonds, and forwards contracts.
2. Aggregated Certifications: The platform will compile and display ratings from specialized certifiers, offering users a centralized resource for assessing the quality and potential impact of various environmental projects. Aggregation will empower users with the information necessary to make informed decisions around green assets.
3. Top-down Territorial Incentives: As a geo-interface, the Regen Atlas plans to allow users to create and publish incentives tied to specific geographic locations, developing natural capital in the most impactful areas
4. Support for Existing Green Assets: In the future, the platform will enable the tokenization of existing green assets on the blockchain, making them more accessible and tradable.

The Regen Atlas will impact the Optimism ecosystem by:

• Evolving Standards for the Production of Green Tokens: The Regen Atlas aims to broaden the scope of tokenized green assets available for exploration, trading, and funding. Our platform will support a diverse range of environmental assets beyond carbon, addressing a gap in the current market and providing a more comprehensive suite of options for users interested in environmental sustainability. Additionally, we aim to close the quality gap by aggregating certifiers of material claims for green tokens, building a competitive marketplace for certification where any service provider can provide verifiable claims.

• Enhancing its Real-world and Climate Awareness: The Regen Atlas distinguishes itself as a geographic aggregator for location-based crypto-assets produced by real-world communities. This specificity allows non-virtual communities to engage with the Superchain in a place-based manner that has thus far been underexplored by Web3.

What has been done since the last round ✅ 💪

Since our last update, the Regen Atlas has spinned out of Ecofrontiers, the team has expanded, and made significant progress on the Regen Atlas prototype v2, evolving it into a more refined and user-friendly version. We’re just a few weeks away from releasing our Prototype v3, which includes a major update to our database, as well as a brand new UI and interface design. Other key updates include:

1. Team Expansion: The Regen Atlas now counts five members working together for the future of green finance.
2. Enhanced Design and UI: The interface of prototype v2 has been overhauled for better usability and aesthetic appeal. There’s now a new feature to filter assets by chain.
3. Database Expansion: Our asset database has seen substantial growth, now boasting over 109 assets from 18 different providers, compared to the initial 26 assets from 8 providers of prototype v1. We’re receiving new listing demands every week.
4. New logo: We worked with a designer to create our new logo and visual identity.
5. New Partnerships: The Regen Atlas is joining forces with LandX to list all of their farms producing xTokens. Learn more about this partnership here
6. Speaking at EthCC[7]: The Regen Atlas’ team was in Brussels this year, attending and speaking at some key events, from the main conference to the Regen Village, or the Blockchain For Good Unconference. (Re)watch our EthCC talk here

Outputs 🧑‍💻

A lot is happening lately, and the Regen Atlas team is planning some major releases (prototype v3 almost out of the door, serious MVP planning, listings in the pipeline…). Contributions to this GG21 will directly support those major milestones ahead.

Grant work will result in the following concrete outputs, from most to less likely depending on donations:

• Add additional green assets and providers to the database, focusing on the Optimism ecosystem. Currently absent from the Atlas, we aim to make Optimism’s green assets the priority of the next database expansion.
• Launch the v3 UI, which includes Certifiers: a special stakeholder group in green assets that evaluate the quality of the assets.
• Secure and complete additional partnerships like the recent LandX one
• Pay for a part-time communication / growth manager to develop the Atlas’ listings, including upcoming listings for Certifiers.
• Deployment of an MVP by EoY that can support up to 100k assets simultaneously.

Contributions to Token Engineering in the Context of the Superchain 🔴

The Regen Atlas currently supports green tokens for Superchain members Celo and Base, as well as Superchain’s L1, Ethereum.

Overall, the Regen Atlas as a geo-interface and marketplace for green tokens promotes visibility, standardization, collaboration, and compliance. As a platform, it drives significant advancements in how tokens are designed and utilized to support environmental goals, specifically advancing token engineering for its listed projects by:

• Standardizing Metrics and Criteria: To list green tokens, the Atlas applies a methodology that evaluates the material impact of tokens. As this listing methodology evolves, it normalizes common benchmarks for sustainability within token engineering. The design of green tokens can integrate specific features that promote sustainability, such as rewards for eco-friendly behavior or penalties for actions that harm the environment. This pushes the boundaries of traditional tokenomics by embedding environmental considerations.

• Incentivizing Transparency and Accountability: The criteria and metrics used for listing promotes transparency and holds projects accountable to their material claims, encouraging a market for more rigorous environmental assessments, certifications, and reporting. Upcoming releases of the Atlas will furthermore highlight the regulatory aspect of green tokens, helping listees track and adhere to environmental regulatory requirements.

• Collecting Data and Analytics: The upcoming v3 release of the Atlas provides access to valuable data on the performance and impact of green tokens. Researchers and developers can analyze this data to understand what works and what doesn't in the context of sustainable token engineering, evolving a repository of case studies and best practices for designing, implementing, and maintaining green tokens. This can help in the development of more effective and impactful environmental blockchain solutions.

At the end of the day, the growth and development of the Superchain is contingent on the growth of the stakeholders it provides services to. The Regen Atlas has identified five groups of stakeholders essential to the production of green tokens:

• Producers: The projects that produce green tokens.

• Certifiers: Projects that evaluate and certify the authenticity of material claims associated with green tokens, commonly using digital monitoring, reporting, and verification technologies.

• Regulators: Legal authorities and adjacent parties, such as KYC/AML providers, that sanction the production and certification of green tokens.

• Tokenizers: Service providers and frameworks that facilitate the technical production of blockchain-based assets (e.g. a carbon credit that is tokenized).

• Buyers: The purchasers and holders of green tokens.

The Regen Atlas provides the following services to these stakeholder groups, thus growing the ecosystem of the Superchain:

• Visibility and Support for Diverse Green Assets: Producers and Buyers will have broadened visibility to the green token market beyond just carbon credits, including but not limited to biodiversity, regenerative agriculture, water purification projects, green and blue bonds, and forward contracts.

• Aggregated Certification: The platform will compile and display certifications from Certiers, offering users a centralized resource for assessing the quality and potential impact of various environmental projects. This aggregation aims to empower Buyers with the information necessary to make informed decisions around green tokens, and Regulators with the transparency they need to evaluate tokenized green markets.

• Support for Already Existing, Non-tokenized Green Assets: The platform will eventually enable the tokenization of existing green assets by aggregating Tokenizers, making them more accessible and tradable through the Superchain. This feature intends to bridge the gap between traditional environmental assets and the blockchain, offering users a mechanism to request tokenization of assets that currently lack global visibility and liquidity.

Team 🌀

1. Louise is leading research for the Atlas. Over the past three years, she has made significant contributions in ReFi through her in-depth research on the space, digital Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (dMRV), nature-based asset markets and environmental tokenomics, notably for the Kolektivo Framework. Beyond her involvement with the Regen Atlas, Louise is advising several regenerative DAOs, and writing a book on natural capital capital production with Ecofrontiers.

2. Christoph is providing operations and business development support for the Atlas. Previously, he was the COO of Curve Labs, involving him in the management of the operations of several Web3 projects such as Kolektivo, Giza, or PrimeDAO.

3. Pawel is the CTO of the Regen Atlas. He is a seasoned full-stack developer with Web3 experience, and has contributed to greenfield projects and MVPs various startups and agencies. Notably, he has contributed to projects such as PrimeDAO, and Kolektivo.

4. Pat is providing a mix of product, strategy, and marketing services for the Atlas. He started his Web3 journey in 2018 as the Marketing Director of DAOstack, where he served as the pilot manager of the first functioning DAO on Ethereum. He then co-founded Curve Labs in 2020, a Web3 agency which incubated or worked with notable Web3 projects. Beyond the Regen Atlas, Pat is advising several regenerative DAOs, and writing a book on natural capital production as Ecofrontiers.

Resources 📚

🖥️ GitHub 🌐 Website ✒️ Blog 🐦 Twitter

We thank you for your generosity! 🙏