#14: The Nature-Based Economy

This week we deepen our intelligence on building Tokenised Nature-Based Economies for responding to Climate change and the ongoing extinction of biodiversity.

3 years ago   •   13 min read

By IXO World

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.

A digital twin is being built of Natural Conservancies in Namibia, as a first step towards growing a tokkenised nature-based economy for sustaining and scaling nature conservation, whilst regenerating local economies. 

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.

Zoning in on the Nature-based Economy
Nature-based solutions are critical for responding to Climate change and the extinction of biodiversity. Tokenised nature-based economies are starting to be built. Learn about an important new initiative in Namibia.

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

BTC

The OG of cryptos

+17.2%

$43,400

Bitfinex will use up to 80% of any Bitcoin recovered to buy and burn their LEO token in a controlled sale over time to avoid huge sell pressure.

ETH

The king of Alts

+16.3%

$3101

Price is holding above $3k, but on-chain data is still pointing to a few bearish catalysts where bulls may get trapped.

ATOM

Interoperable Blockchain Chain

-2.1%

$28.89

The Cosmos SDK v0.42 (Stargate version) has come to an end this week. Make sure to upgrade to Cosmos SDK v0.44 or v0.45 to ensure development continuity. Questions? Get them answered in Discord.

OSMO

Yield Farming on cosmos

+7.8%

$8.67

Interesting read on how Osmosis launched the Stargaze Zone into a $500 million market cap in a few weeks!

CRO

Crypto.com 

+27.8%

$0.51

They have become the official title partner of the Miami Grand Prix, after signing a 9-year deal with Formula. 

KAVA

The DeFi chain of IBC

+9.8%

$3.65

Get ready for ETH to connect to Kava on the 8th of March!

JUNO

Smart-contracts on IBC

+18.7%

$27.99

JunoDrop is now Juno Tools. It’s a multi-purpose dApp for interacting with various smart contracts on the network. For more info go to their Discord

XPRT

Liquid Staking, synthetics and NFT’s

-6.7%

$3.13

Persistence has been integrated into CitadelDAO’s platform. Users can now manage, send/receive and stake $XPRT via Citadel’s user-friendly interface.

LUNA

Terra ecosystem

+6.7%

$54.45

Terras popular Anchor protocol, famous for its close to 20% APR on UST reserves, was running low. They were just topped up with another $450 million! Long live the 20%.

📊Impact Markets over the past week

REGEN

Ecological State Ledger

-4.7%

$1.07

If you missed their Community Dev call this week, you can watch it here.

IXO

Internet of Impact

0.1%

$0.47

A few weeks back, ixo held a design workshop with Europe’s leading eco resort, launching in Q2 with a DAO Ecoverse on ixo.world. 

SCRT

Private smart contracts

+34.1%

$6.81

$SHD Airdrop will be ready to claim February 21st! Shade Protocol is an array of connected privacy-preserving dApps built on SecretNetwork. Featuring Silk, a private burn-based algorithmic global stablecoin.

BCT

Toucan Protocol: Base Carbon Tonnes

-12.5%

$4.44

To get your hands on some nature-based carbon, head over to SushiSwap on Polygon. For more info and the contract address, visit their recent Twitter post.

📉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

-31.7%

$30.06

Treasury:

15,627,101 TONNES CO2

By staking $KLIMA, you own a piece of their treasury as a reward for helping fight climate change. Watch this video to find out more. 

Olympus DAO

The largest rebase token DAO built on Ethereum

+22.8%

$76.88

Treasury:

$554,660,870


Olympus is starting to grow again. Posting an impressive $44 million in revenue for January!

Gitcoin DAO

GIT - Platform to find meaningful open-source work

+21.7%

$8.79


Volunteer for Gitcoin at Eth Denver for their shelling point event.

BitDAO

The world's largest DAO directed treasury

+11.2%

$1.63

BitDAO now has over $2.3 Billion in AUM – that's bigger than Uniswap’s DAO!

Ocean Protocol DAO

Ocean Protocol 

+13.7%

$0.62

OceanProtocol is excited to announce the launch of @dataxfi  – financed through @OceanDAO_, Ocean’s community-curated grants program. The project aims to build DataFi infrastructure on Ocean to onboard masses to the data economy.

Earth Fund DAO

1earth 

-9.6%

$0.06

Listen to the recording of their recent Twitter Space, where they spoke on Impactful social projects with an anthropologist. #ReFi 

Popcorn DAO

+27.1%

$1.23

A new collab has recently been announced between Popcorn and Loa Labs – “friends cultivation of Blockchain4Good squad.”

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!

$AAVE Technical Review
Aave is a leader in decentralised money-markets. Its relevance to ReFi is all about democratising people’s access to money, and the regenerative financing innovations that can be built on these new types of money market mechanisms that don’t need intermediaries.

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.

Moss NFT innovation to save the Amazon sold out in one hour
In an unprecedented initiative, NFT buyers from the Amazon become owners of one hectare of land in the Amazon region

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.
Project SEEKER: Using artificial intelligence for good - Microsoft Industry Blogs
Project SEEKER is pioneering multi-species artificial intelligence (AI) models built using Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Services. It can automatically detect illegally trafficked wildlife concealed within luggage and cargo. Illegal wildlife trafficking is worth $23 billion per year1. That makes…

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.
WildEarth rolls out NFTs to raise money for conservation
WildEarth will now create NFTs - non-fungible tokens of popular animals in the reserve to raise money for conservation.
  • 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.
Save Planet Earth - Cryptocurrency Token
A worldwide carbon sequestration Cryptocurrency project dedicated to developing programs aiming to combat Global Warming and Climate Change.

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.

Yoma | Unlock Your Future
The Yoma platform enables you to build and transform your future by unlocking your hidden potential. Make a difference, earn rewards and build your CV by taking part in our impact challenges.

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

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.
‘Big Oil’ board members face hot seat over climate ‘deception’
Oil industry insiders will appear before US Congress as powerful companies face a reckoning for the climate crisis.
  • 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.
Russia Moves to Recognize Crypto as a Form of Currency - Blockworks
Russia’s draft legislation will reportedly be drawn up by no later than Feb. 18 and is expected to regulate crypto as a form of currency
  • 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.
The world is on fire and our leaders are failing, poll finds
Poll respondents voice frustration at being left to take on climate action on their own after governments and companies fail to act.

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.
ReFi Unconference

Earth State Actions

  • Read about the newly launched Nature Carbon Tonne (NCT) standard developed by Toucan Protocol.
NCT: a nature-based carbon token on Toucan Protocol
Introducing Nature Carbon Tonne (NCT): Web3’s first open, pooled, nature-based carbon reference token.
  • 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?
Nature-Based Solutions III: Permanence
There are entities today (looking at you, Switzerland) that do not accept nature-based carbon credits, primarily because of concerns over…
  • 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.
Emissions Gap Report 2021
With climate change intensifying and scientists warning that humanity is running out of time to limit global warming to 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels, 2021 has been a fraught year for the planet.The Emissions Gap Report 2021: The Heat Is On is the 12th edition in an annual series that provides a…
  • 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.
Protecting indigenous cultures is crucial for saving the world’s biodiversity
The world’s millions of indigenous people play a critical role in conserving biodiversity.
  • 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.


Not financial or tax advice. 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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