Earth State Briefing #16: Engineering ReFi

This week we learn about powerful new ways of engineering regenerative finance systems at the intersection of programmable money, game theory, and mechanism design, as we deepen our intelligence on Refi & the Tokenised Earth Economy.

3 years ago   •   14 min read

By IXO World

From meme to mechanisms - Web3 leaders are taking action and creating REgenerative FInance solutions to some of our biggest global challenges.

Guest curator – Jessica Zartler

With innovative design, we can build purpose-driven financial systems that embed more healthy patterns - think permaculture economics, local currencies and reciprocity networks, and institutionalised regenerative processes.

In this vision of a new world economy, capital flows are driven by people who care about the well-being of their communities and our planet.

  • We can see it in our minds - but how do we bring it into our reality?
  • What tools do we need to create more efficient and accessible financing systems?
  • How can we apply more data-driven decision-making to our processes?
  • What mental models and assumptions do we need to examine to avoid repeating the same dysfunctional patterns?

We continue to explore these ongoing questions through the many eyes, ears and hearts of thousands working tirelessly in this ecosystem of our Earth State stories.

In this week's feature article from BlockScience we learn how risk-adjusted bonding curves are purpose-engineered to revolutionise how capital gets programmed to produce impact alpha. In partnership with ixo, and with support from Interchain Foundation, BlockScience engineers and researchers built a model and ran simulations of this novel crypto-economic primitive that is now being implemented in an impact bond pilot in India, to gather evidence of its ReFi potential.

Engineering Alpha Bonds
Alpha Bonds implement Risk-adjusted Bonding Curves as a new versatile crypto-economic primitive for results-based financing that has a wide number of potential applications, from ReFi Social Impact Bonds, to local currency systems that incentivise collective action towards desired outcomes.

While new tooling design is essential, narrative design is also crucial in motivating action and change. Regenerative Finance now has a book! We interviewed its author Kevin Owocki, who is also the highly regarded founder of Gitcoin, about the powerful new ways to to fund, design, develop, and market regenerative web3 era applications and digital assets at the intersection of programmable money, game theory, and mechanism design.

From coordination failure to a regenerative future
We speak to Kevin Owocki the founder of Gitcoin, thought-leader and author of GreenPilled, about his recently published book on regenerative crypto-economic systems, and the potential to overcome coordination failures.

Just published today in VentureBeat is an opinion piece by Shaun Conway on why we need DeFi regeneration, hoping to get more Degens & TradFi folks to think about the possible systemic future of finance with #ReFi

We need DeFi regeneration: Examining the systemic future of finance
It’s time to move past the DeFi degenerative moment and apply what we know to crypto and regeneration that can heal the earth and society.

Earth State Markets

Here's the latest intelligence on the tokens and markets that are contributing to growth of the Tokenised Earth Economy.

State of the Markets

It seems like we have a bull and bear market every other week. Currently, inflation has been grabbing the world’s headlines, with US inflation standing at 7.9% for the year. That is the biggest spike since 1982! Gasoline prices are up 38% and are expected to rise. Fuel price increases drag most prices up. Anyone using $ETH knows how it feels when gas prices rocket! This isn’t just a US phenomenon. Inflation in the Eurozone is up 6.3%, UK 5%, Argentina and Turkey are both over 50%. The economics of the fiat financial order are failing us.

Many people feel that $BTC may be at its bottom. Supplies of stablecoins are very high on exchanges, ready to purchase any significant dips. $ETH whales keep buying up the dips. It seems we are in for a choppy but mostly sideways ride, though anything can happen in this market. Bitcoin has never really gone through a significant war, so TA trades and on-chain analysis struggle to make predictions. Sage advice is that you don’t always have to buy the bottom or sell the top. Rather buy at the knees and sell at the shoulders!

One positive is President Biden's latest executive order: The US is now officially taking the right step to create a crypto innovation and governance framework. This is like 1997 when the government woke up to how powerful the internet is. Maybe bullish?

📈Reference Markets over the past week

BTC

The OG of cryptos

-8.4%

$38,996.98

Biden signs executive order on digital assets, causing this coin to surge.

ETH

The king of Alts

-9%

$2,581.81

Did you know: Right now, about 13k ETH are created every day in the form of block rewards. After the merge, issuance of ETH will immediately drop upwards of 90%.

-> 13K ETH a day in pow to ~1-2K ETH daily.

ATOM

Interoperable Blockchain Chain

-19%

$27.64

Interchain Accounts Take Cosmos Interoperability to the Next Level- Entire blockchains can control accounts on separate chains! 

OSMO

Yield Farming on cosmos

-15.5%

$9.44

Osmosis is deciding on which bridge to use. The DAO will decide. See the options here.

CRO

Crypto.com 

-10.8%

$0.38

Crypto.com has given users in excluded countries one week to repay loans of their loan program, the decision coming within a month of BlockFi’s $100 million penalties for its lending products. 

Band Protocol
High Performance Cosmos Oracle

-13.5%

$3.43

Band will embark on creating BBV – a suite of high-quality dev tools to serve the growing community of builders in the coming 3-5 years!

JUNO

Smart-contracts on IBC

-12.5%

$39.83

The new Juno website is now live. Check out the new, fresh look here

XPRT

Liquid Staking, synthetics and NFT’s

-3.4%

$3.24

The Persistence bridge to transfer ERC-20 $PSTAKE from Ethereum to the @PersistenceOne Core-1 chain is now live.

Visit the Bridge interface.

LUNA

Terra ecosystem

+7.5%

$97.38

Luna surged 25% to an all-time high this week. Strong demand for Terra’s stablecoin is said to be behind this big move.

📊Impact Markets over the past week

REGEN

Ecological State Ledger

-22.9%

$0.85

Catch up on their Community Dev call that happened this week. 

IXO

Internet of Impact

-22.1%

$0.40

Ixo World’s Roadmap was posted this week! Read it here

EWT

Energy Web Token

-8.9%

$4.76

Energy Web welcomed e-regio, a regionally operating energy utility based in Germany, as its latest partner. 

BCT

Toucan Protocol: Base Carbon Tonnes

-21.9%

$2.72

Increasing $BCT pool quality. The earliest vintage start date for the BCT pool will move from 2008 to 2012 or 2014. This would increase the lowest cost of production and improve the minimum quality TCO2s permitted into BCT.

CELO

Seigniorage stablecoins collateralised by crypto and natural assets.

+2.5%

$2.62


CELO, cUSD, and cEUR are now available for purchase and trading on Edge Wallet!

📉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.

KLIMA DAO

Carbon Credits as its treasury

-31.4%

$10.77

Treasury:

14,626,252 TONNES CO2

KlimaDAO has locked over 17 million tonnes of tokenised carbon credits to date. That’s more than the annual CO2 emissions of Croatia. 

Olympus DAO

The largest DAO built on Ethereum

-20.2%

$30.49

Treasury:

$435 million

$19M in bond revenue for OHM over february and most of that is stablecoins, increasing the risk free backing of each $OHM 

Gitcoin DAO

GTC - Platform to find meaningful open-source work

-11.3%

$5.64


GitcoinDAO raises $700k towards humanitarian aid for Ukranaians!

BitDAO

The world's largest DAO directed treasury

-10.3%

$1.09

BitDAO enters the gaming space with A collective built to accelerate the blockchain gaming industry through grants, education and strategic initiatives. Join here.

Ocean Protocol DAO

Ocean Protocol 

-6.6%

$0.57

Not sure what OceanDAO is? Watch this video explaining staking data, selling data and building data.

Earth Fund DAO

1earth 

-55%

$0.01

$1Earth lists on Gate.io!

Popcorn DAO

-6.8%

$1.11

Popcorn partners with Bankless to help spread the word on ReFi!

Market Opportunities

  • Trade: Earn a 44% APR on your LUNA using prism protocol with no impermanent loss.
  • Earn: Want to sit it out in stable coins? Earn 29.51% using Tarot in the Fantom Ecosystem.
  • Get an Airdrop: Qualify for the cronus airdrop Groups eligible: 1) Evmos Community (Stakers & LP Providers  2) JUNO+ATOM+OSMO Stakers. Multiple snapshots until March 28th!
  • Offset your personal and company carbon at Moss Earth.
  • Farm: Did you know the highest yield at the moment on Osmosis is the UST/UMEE pool at 296%? Their external rewards are 233% and 27% from Osmo.
  • Apply for a job at ECF - Ethereum Community Fund. They are looking for a senior engineer (lead), frontend engineer and a comms lead.

Token Analysis

This week we have an update on the Terra network ($LUNA) and see signs that the $UST algorithmic stable coin has great potential to become an alternative to fiat-backed currencies. This could be an important enabler for growing tokenised earth economies and the adoption of #ReFi solutions for the real world.

$LUNA Technical Review (Update)
This update on Terra ($LUNA) finds the $UST algorithmic stable coin is becoming an alternative to fiat-backed currencies. This could be an important enabler for growing tokenised earth economies and the adoption of #ReFi solutions for the real world.

Earth NFT of the Week

Becoming a Guardian of Earth has never looked so easy. All you need to do is obtain an NFT. Each NFT holder gains access to DeFi and game mechanics to earn rewards and optimise their collection. The Nemus NFT is a collection of NFTs to protect the Amazon rainforest. Their goal at Nemus is to secure sufficient amounts of rainforest properties to form a protective belt within the Brazilian Amazon, implement conservation of the land, and protect it from deforestation.

With this approach, Nemus can become an engine for positive change and use cryptocurrency to power a new model for environmental action, helping us rediscover our lost balance with nature.

There are several groups working together on this and it’s an impactful trend moving DeFi >> ReFi.

Collectible NFTs to Protect the Amazon Rainforest | Nemus
Nemus is a collectible NFT experience designed to conserve & protect the Amazon Rainforest.

Earth State Technologies

  • With the increased development of AI science, it’s deepening the stimulation of human consciousness. This in-depth article delves into the current direction of AI and what the future holds within this vast and ever-expanding space.
4 current and future trends in AI
Wang Xinhui, General Manager of Wireless Standardization, and Industrial Relations, ZTE Artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing at an increasingly

Earth State Change

  • Human collaboration in the ReFi space is going a long way. Celo has partnered with impactMarket to provide Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) for Ukrainians through a ValoraApp wallet. Unchain.fund has launched a crypto-native fundraising campaign to support Ukraine.
  • Empowering local communities through ReFi. Kolektivo enables local communities to create and manage their regenerative economy to prosper. They offer a grants program, tools and methods to develop local impact economies, and projects and organisations supported by Kolektivo.
Local communities are the best driver for positive change.
Primer on Natural Capital Currencies
Anatomy of Kolektivo (Part 3 of 3)
  • Hope to deliver more value to landowners and farmers worldwide. CCIPL (Carbon Check India Private Limited), a global validation, verification and certification body headquartered in India, has joined the Open Forest Protocol (OFP) validator network. OFP’s vision is to build transparent, accurate and consistent ecosystems on top of blockchain technology – reaching even the most minor forest project owners. This collaboration ensures the benefits are reaped from a high-end validation service.
Globally Accredited Carbon Check India Joins the OFP Validator Network
Carbon Check India Private Limited (CCIPL) is a global validation, verification, and certification body headquartered in India. It offers a…

Earth State Person

In honor of International Women’s Day, in this edition we’re highlighting the work of an individual who spends a lot of time behind the scenes, holding the space between to create connections, nurturing relationships and communities in a way that is sometimes not as visible or valued in our current systems. We hope to continue to create space and acknowledge the Invisible Economy, care work and the space betweeners, no matter what gender they are in form.  


Meet Jessica Zartler - our guest curator for this week’s edition, Co-Founder of Governauts, Communications Advisor, Token Engineering Researcher & Resident Mememancer for Block Science, as well as an Advisor to the Token Engineering Academy,  Founding Steward of the Token Engineering Commons, and Trusted Seed member of the Commons Stack. She is a token engineering and governance researcher, and award-winning journalist, who likens her work to tech anthropology - studying regenerative economics, computer-aided governance, complex systems, algorithmic policy design and memetics.

Jessica's work has appeared on Hacker Noon, CNN, the Associated Press, and MSNBC, and she has spoken at and organized several international events on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. Jessica is passionate about nature! nourishing food, music, yogic science, token engineering and harnessing ReFi to enable flourishing of all life on this planet.

We have more power than ever before to become active and responsible stewards of our local and global communities, and benefit mutually when they flourish, sharing and regenerating value creation. I hope to see the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) space harness these powerful new economic mechanisms for real world impact, specifically in the realm of environmental restoration and providing at least, basic needs for all. – Jessica

Earth State Culture

If we think of the world “culture” within the token economic ecosystem, what does it mean? Watch Livia De’s talk on this topic at the recent ETHDenver. She discusses the importance of a healthy culture in an ecosystem and how an unhealthy culture fails to meet Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Livia is a Steward of the Token Engineering Commons and Cultural Build lead at the Commons Stack.

Earth State Tweet of the Week

Earth News

  • As Ukraine bleeds ctypto-currencies are flowing support. It is a logistical struggle to get humanitarian aid into the country due to ports being blocked and roads made treacherous by bombings. Crypto donations are pouring in and the implications aren’t being stopped by borders or conflict.
“This is the first time that we’re seeing sort of a public concerted effort to raise funds to finance an ongoing conflict through cryptocurrency,” said Chris DePow, a regulation and compliance expert at Elliptic.
Charities struggle to deliver humanitarian aid into Ukraine
Charities say they cannot send humanitarian aid into Ukraine through normal channels, with ports blocked and roads made treacherous by bombings
  • Merkle Science is tracking crypto donations to Ukraine. “Crypto for Ukraine: Powered by Merkle Science” provides a live dashboard for tracking donations.
Crypto for Ukraine: Powered by Merkle Science — Live Tracking of Crypto Donations for Ukraine
As crypto donations to Ukraine increase amidst the news of the Russian invasion, Merkle Science has launched a new dashboard to monitor crypto donations made to efforts on the ground
  • DrFi star quitting tanks token prices. This week, Andre Cronje announced on Twitter that he was “closing the chapter” on developing protocols in decentralised finance. The market reacted violently to the news, with one AMM tumbling as much as 75%.
Dozens of Tokens Tumble as Prolific Developer Andre Cronje Calls It Quits
Investors are running for the exits as a mercurial developer leaves DeFi development behind.

Earth Gatherings

  • Celo Connect in Barcelona (April). Get your tickets here. “Through Celo Connect, we aim to align and empower the world’s changemakers with tools, knowledge, and inspiration to contribute to a new financial system…”
Celo Connect 2022
Join us at Celo Connect! April 4-5, 2022 at La Llotja de Mar de Barcelona. The Celo Foundation believes in a future where people everywhere can thrive from financial inclusion, a healthy environment, and connectivity through innovative technologies.

Earth State Actions

A Vision for A Pluralistic Civilizational Scale Infrastructure for funding Public Goods
The objective of this post is to articulate how ImpactDAOS on Ethereum could scale to support all different types of public goods. I envision a Public Goods Rebel Alliance that grows to build, fund, and maintain all sorts of public goods. Such an alliance would be a pluralistic, global, decoupled,…
  • Catch Up on a recent Twitter Space hosted by BICOWG on “Climate & NFTs”.
  • Watch and learn what “Quadratic Funding” on Gitcoin is and how it works – in 60 seconds.
  • Dive into the KlimaDAO economy by taking a look at their Dune Analytics dashboard.
Dune Analytics
Ethereum Ecosystem analytics by and for the community. Explore and share data from Ethereum Mainnet, Matic, Optimism and xDai for free.
  • Learn about the legal implications of a DAO at lexdao.
LexDAO
LexDAO is a legal engineering guild

🌍 For the Earth!

Let's continue to build ReFi Solutions using well-engineered and safe crypto-economic mechanisms, as we grow the Tokenised Impact Economy to change the state of the world.

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. This upcoming week, our guest will be Kevin Owocki – founder of Gitcoin.


This article is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. For tax advice talk to your accountant. Do your own research.

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