Get Involved with Regen Network: Quarter 3 Virtual Events, Resources & Project Milestones, 2020
Greetings and Welcome to Quarter 3!
In the midst of unprecedented times on this planet, we are not simply weathering the storm, but doing our best to meet the moment.
We acknowledge systemic racism and have been working, both as individuals and as a team, to ensure that Regen Network is doing its part to help dismantle it. We are currently at an audit phase: we’ve formed a diversity task team within the company, are crafting a diversity statement, and are beginning to upgrade our company strategy to more explicitly address issues of social and racial justice.
In terms of shelter-in-place protocols, we are thankful to have operated as a remote company since day one, so although our team members have been experiencing personal hardships related to coronavirus, these rules have not slowed us down as a company. In fact, we are happy to be actively growing our team!
From all of us at Regen Network, we are excited to share the significant milestones that have been evolving in our ecosystem, what we are looking forward to this quarter, and upcoming events we hope you’ll join us for!
This Thursday: Cosmos AMA on Telegram
Next Wednesday: Cosmos Community SDK Development Call
Platform Updates
Our goal is to help farmers get paid for their ecosystem services and we have made great progress over the last quarter in facilitating this through the development of Regen Ledger, a blockchain that enables the development of credit issuances within our registry application interface:
- Regen Network has begun a new role as the maintainer of the Cosmos SDK. We are currently focused on the Stargate upgrade of the Cosmos SDK. MainNet launch will be postponed until Early Q4 of 2020, however, are excited to launch with IBC (Inter Blockchain Communication Protocol) enabled, making Regen Ledger the first inter-blockchain carbon and ecosystem service registry and marketplace in the world. According to @ICO_Analytics, Regen Network is among the 10 most anticipated #POS networks based on the number of independent staking providers ready to support the launch of staking
- The first release of Regen Registry will include core features such as issuing, transferring, tracking, and retiring credits. We have chosen to innovate our user interface and deviate from the typical tabular view of existing registries, in favor of highlighting land stewards, their stories, and impact on the land. To that end, each project page will provide these unique stories alongside full monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) data associated with each credit vintage.
If you’re interested in getting involved on the technical side of our work, please join in on our monthly open Cosmos Community SDK Dev Call and Regen Network Community Dev call. If you can’t make it at the monthly calls, not to worry; you can always watch the recordings on YouTube and ask any questions you may have on our Developer Telegram channel.
CarbonPlus Credit Update
We are glad to share that the growth of voluntary markets for carbon and other ecosystem service credits has grown significantly over the past 18 months and the launch of our CarbonPlus Grasslands credit has been able to meet the market right where it’s at.
Regen Registry’s first issuance of regenerative agriculture-backed carbon credits are in the final stages of roll-out. The CarbonPlus Grasslands credits, issued to Wilmot Ranch, in New South Wales, Australia, represent verified carbon sequestration and a suite of other verified co-benefits.
Wilmot Cattle Co has managed through rotational cattle grazing to increase soil organic carbon to 4.5% (3x compared with conventional grazing) and remove 22,500 tons of CO2e in just two years!
This positive feedback has led us to accelerate the onboarding of additional ranches and initiate conversations with several international corporations interested in using CarbonPlus Credit as part of their diversified offsetting strategy.
Please feel free to connect with us if your company may be interested in purchasing these CarbonPlus Credits.
Say Hello to New Team Members
Amaury Martiny, Senior Software Engineer: Amaury is a software engineer who has 3 years of experience in blockchains and is now working on the Cosmos SDK. He believes in using technology to tackle the climate emergency, especially in developing transparent regenerative agriculture practices. Based in Berlin, he enjoys reading about history and philosophy.
Emily Rogers, Marketing and Communications: Emily is a digital marketing maven and visual storyteller passionate about utilizing her skills to help build a better world. With a background in environmental stewardship, digital marketing, and design, Emily supports Regen Network’s marketing and communications to build momentum around blockchain’s unique capacity to regenerate the planet.
Sophia Leiker, Data Scientist and GIS Assistant: Sophia is looking forward to optimizing remote sensing and GIS related research alongside the Regen science team. Her previous work was with NASA DEVELOP, a dual capacity building program under the Applied Sciences division at NASA where she partnered with public and private stakeholders to help incorporate remote sensing analyses into land management decisions. In addition to studying the natural landscape through satellite imagery, Sophia enjoys spending time in these landscapes and recently completed a thru-hike of the John Muir Trail.
Read Our Latest Thought Pieces
A Time for Listening, Reflecting, and Acting: As nationwide dialogue around police brutality and equality in the United States continues, we recognize the need to listen, reflect, and act.
Mobilizing Community Co-Creation for Soil Health: Delve into the genesis of OpenTEAM and get a look inside our collaborative efforts in building tools to address soil health within the agricultural context.
OpenTEAM Update
Regen Network has been hard at work collaborating with OpenTEAM partners to create a shared data ontology library providing farmers with tools to measure carbon sequestration and other ecosystem services.
We are currently working on several exciting open-source integrations with Cool Farm Alliance. One such project being the Cool Farm Tool Perennials Module, which uses a greenhouse gas model to generate carbon credits from regenerative cacao agroforestry projects.
In the pipeline as well is making Our Sci’s survey stack tool, a universal data collection tool, ready to digitally sign data collected in certifications, credit and token generation events, and more.
Check out our project tracker to get an inside look at everything that is in motion for the OpenTEAM Technology group!
Exciting Prize and Program Updates
Regen Network has been awarded a significant grant from the The Interchain Foundation (ICF) to lead the Stargate upgrade of the Cosmos SDK and form a long-term SDK development community stewardship plan.
This support from ICF will further propel innovation of the Cosmos community and the realization of Cosmos as the ‘Internet of Blockchains’.
Stay tuned for further announcements on this front!
The Latest Planetary Regeneration Podcast
Listen to recent episodes including conversations with Shaun Conway and Jeff Emmett, as well as, Moon Hooch saxophonist Wenzl McGowen.
Science Update
The methodology for the CarbonPlus Grasslands credits has been fully developed, enabling the usage of satellite remote sensing and GIS for monitoring Soil Organic Carbon stocks, as well as, changes in whole environmental health such as animal welfare.
During this quarter, we hope to scale the adoption of our CarbonPlus Grasslands Methodology to different climate zones all over the world, releasing the first version of these CarbonPlus credits that we have been testing in NSW Australia.
Another exciting project underway for our Science team is a research project funded by the Ecosystem Services Market Consortium (ESMC) and co-created with Repliculture to build a review of the opportunities, state of the art methods, and technologies for measuring Soil Organic Carbon. This includes the use of satellite remote sensing and GIS coupled with Machine Learning.
In addition, we will be participating in two groups focusing on soil and environmental sciences: the OpenTEAM Field Methods development and The Lexicon’s Regen1 Measurement group supported by Google Food Lab.
Personal Updates
- How we’re faring with the shelter in place mandate. A number of Regen Network team members and their families have been celebrating an opportunity to social distance in the backcountry as summer comes on! CEO Christian Shearer spent six days hiking the Kings Canyon / Rae Lakes Loop in late June, our newest hire data scientist Sophia Leiker spent the Independence Day weekend hiking the California Coast in Big Sur, and product manager Cory Levinson will be hiking the Trans-Catalina trail later this month.
- How we’re educating ourselves. CEO Christian Shearer is reading Me and White Supremacy, by Layla Saad. The book leads the reader through a 30-day journey of introspection about what role white supremacy has played in their lives, in the hopes that what has been hidden comes to sight for white readers. Here’s Christian’s review: “I’ve found it an eye-opening and extremely helpful workbook. It’s an approach tied to my own personal experience and has helped me understand some of the ways I explicitly and implicitly benefit (and/or oppress) because of white supremacy.”
- What we’re listening to. Read This, Not White Fragility. With Jared Loggins and Wendi Muse, from ‘The Dig’ podcast from Jacobin magazine that discusses politics, criminal justice, immigration, and class conflict. The Rabbit Hole Podcast, produced by the New York Times, helps us to understand how suggestion algorithms and YouTube influencers unwittingly contribute to a divisive and toxic culture of extreme views and mistrust in society.
We endlessly thank you for your continued support and following along of Regen Network.
Onward!
Team Regen Network
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