Regen Network Q2 Development Update
Learn what Regen Network been up to in Quarter 2, and where we’re headed in Quarter 3.
“Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth… these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women’s empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all.”
— Ban Ki-moon, former secretary-general of the United Nations
Sometimes you must look back to see how far you have come. As we draw close to the end of our second quarter, taking the time to acknowledge the progress our team has made on the ecological, science, technology, and business development fronts provides the inspiration we need to continue growing, continue learning, continue building, and ultimately to continue creating the impact that this project is all about.
So, what’s been going on at Regen Network?
On the Tech Front…
New Testnets Launched
Regen Network’s first public testnet is up and running! Launched June 5th, this testnet will be running for several weeks in order to test several iterations of the coordinated upgrade progress and bring online key Regen Ledger modules, an important feature for improving the coordination and ease of upgrading a live chain that does not have breaking changes. To see the status of our testnet, visit our published fork of the Lunie block explorer. You can also inspect the genesis.json and xrnversion.txt for this testnet on Github. Here’s to consensus, social coordination, and an unstoppable movement to regenerate the planet powered by Cosmos ✊ Read more and get involved.
Our first governance upgrade will be to implement a delegated permissions function which is a highly extensible option for solving crypto’s hardest user adoption problem: key management. You can dig into the delegated permissions documentation on Github.
Looking forward, we are working to clarify the specs and timeline for the Houstatonic Release (Testnet #4).
Our Partnership with Cosmos Continues to Grow
We cannot speak highly enough of the Cosmos/Tendermint team 🙌 We chose to build our blockchain on the Cosmos SDK, and have only grown more fond of its intricacies and their team in our journey.
Gregory and Aaron spent time at Full Node Berlin at the Interchain Foundation Conversations and Cosmos Hackathon event. Regen Network’s CTO Aaron Craelius teamed up with the team leads of other projects in the Cosmos ecosystem like TruStory, IOV, Althea, and Wallet Connect to win the Cosmos Hackatom!! Their work integrated a WASM VM with Rust smart contracts into the Cosmos SDK and linked it to permissions management tools creating a powerful system “like Ethereum but easier to work with,” according to Jehan, the founder of Althea.
We are looking forward to setting up joint virtual meet-ups in the future for our development community. Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know when!
From our recent close interworkings with Cosmos, our team has been inspired to write thought pieces that include Cosmos. Check them out:
- How to Choose a Blockchain, by Gregory Landua and Aaron Craelius: How do you chose a blockchain or distributed web technology stack to build world-changing applications?
- Community Stake Governance Model, by Gregory Landua: How can Proof-of-Stake blockchains become more decentralized by broadening the set of constituencies given a voice in governance?
Building Our Developer Community
To continue maintaining transparency within our product model and building our developer community with eco-minded folks, Chief Technology Officer Aaron is hosting public weekly development calls. These calls are framed to be half an hour of product update and half an hour of Q&A. We’d love to have you join the next one, happening Tuesday, June 25th at 2 PM EST; invitation will go out via our Twitter.
On the Science Front…
Pilot Projects
We have officially launched 3 pilot projects!
- Rainforest Foundation | Payment Traceability — Hundreds of millions of dollars have been deployed to South America to stop deforestation. The Rainforest Foundation works with local community members in the Amazon to gather deforestation data on the global ForestWatch app and write reports to verify their on-the-ground work. We are partnering with Rainforest Foundation to dramatically increase the scale of direct investment to front line forest protectors and give donors transparency around the use of their funds. Our aim is to have zero reforestation money lost to bribes and inefficient government bureaucracy. Learn more or donate now.
- Walkers Reserve | Land Classifications— For the last 50 years, Walkers Quarry has provided sand to the island of Barbados. In 2011, the quarry decided to turn the extracted areas to ecologically-thriving, forested ecosystems that provide habitat for biodiversity and food for local communities while increasing carbon sequestration to help fight climate change. Together, we are working on a pilot that connects conservation funding to on-the-ground action for conversion of an active sand quarry to a vibrant food forest in Barbados. Landing page coming soon.
- Eco Cacao | Ecological Verification and “Regenerative Premium” Functionality — Working with a handful of forward-thinking cacao brands and a regenerative cacao cooperative in Ecuador, we will track, verify, and help craft agreements for regenerative premiums on this cacao based on verified ecological performance of farms. Landing page coming soon!
On the Economics Side…
New Economics Paper Out
Gregory, Kyle, and Will have been hard at work writing the Regen Network Economics Technical Paper. We are working on the final touches and will have it on the website within the next week. This economics paper gives an overview of the token economics of the Proof of Stake network securing the decentralized finance and ecological claims utilities of Regen Network.
New Thought Pieces Out
- Punished by Rewards, by Will Szal: What can the cryptocurrency space learn from the social sciences?
- Expanding the Set of Feasible Allocations, by Kyle Birchard: What can economics tell us about mobilizing group action?
- Liquidity and Token Economics, by Will Szal: How can token mechanics bolster the preservation and regeneration of ecological principal?
- Towards Ecological Economics, by Will Szal: The token design evolution of Regen Network.
- Triumph of the Commons, by Gregory Landua: Towards an ecologically regenerative human economy.
On the Growth Front…
A Shift in Roles
We are excited to announce that exciting change happened this quarter as Regen Network evolves. Gregory has shifted his role at Regen Network to Chief Regeneration Officer, while Christian has stepped in as CEO. Read more.
New YouTube Series: Project Updates from the CEO
From our CEO to you, our newest YouTube series is a live project update from Regen Network co-founder Christian Shearer. Get caught up and subscribe to the playlist.
New Weekly Open Development Calls with the CTO
Join the Regen Network Development Team for weekly calls open to the public. Led by Chief Technology Officer Aaron Craelius, these calls are designed to update our development community on the latest product news (approximately 30 min), and engage our network in a Q&A (approximately 30 min). We look forward to seeing you there!
Welcoming our Newest Advisor: Jae Kwon of Tendermint!
“I predict that Regen will become a vital component of our world recovery plan.”
— Jae Kwon
It’s our pleasure to announce Regen Network’s newest advisor: Jae Kwon, CEO & Founder of Tendermint and All In Bits Inc! Jae’s advice has been an integral part of Regen Network’s infrastructure and product development decisions, and we could not be more excited to have him. Jae created Tendermint, and along the way, discovered that using quorums and cryptography instead of energy and hashing affords many advantages such as speed, scalability, and far less electricity. Energy efficiency was a critical component in our path to choosing Cosmos for building Regen Ledger, and as we continued to work with Jae, we discovered more and more aligned values, from decentralization to regeneration. Join us in giving him a warm welcome!
Regen Network Announced Keeling Curve Prize Finalist
Each year, the Keeling Curve Prize award hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money to projects across the globe that have significant potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or increase uptake. The KCP was founded in 2017 by Jacquelyn Francis, to advance the knowledge, development, and implementation of contemporary solutions that will make a prosperous future viable. To support our project, we submitted an application for The Keeling Curve Prize — and were recently announced as a finalist! Stay tuned for the winner announcement this month.
Token Sales & Fundraising
We are currently running a private token sale and are looking ahead towards a Public Sale launch in Quarter 4. Here is our token allocation plan:
More information can be found on our Investor page.
Events Galore
- Earth’s Call with Savory Institute, Kiss the Ground, and Carbon Underground | Aspen, CO
- Investor Happy Hour at Here Collective| San Francisco, CA
- Paleo Conference | Austin, TX
- Transform Series | San Francisco, CA
- Network Gathering at Yeshua Adonai’s home | San Francisco, CA
- Sustainable Brands 2019| Detroit, MI
- Blockchain for Good Summit |Miami, FL
- Cosmos Hackathon |Berlin, Germany — Regen Network announced a winning team member!
Partnerships
“Soil is the greatest capital asset on the farm. We are using scientifically validated metrics to extract insights from the soil so growers can take action.”
The FoodShot Global #GroundBreaker Seed Prize is supporting Dorn Cox’s collaborative Open Technology Ecosystem for Agricultural Management (OpenTEAM) to democratize access to environmental data and provide universal access to site specific global agricultural knowledge. We are proud partners of OpenTEAM and are thrilled to hear the news of our mission to empower farmers and ranchers to revitalize our soils and transform agricultural lands for a sustainable future coming to life!
Recent Features
People are talking about us!
- Blockchain for Agriculture: Regen Network Helps to Cut Waste in Food Supply: Karma Impact interviewed Christian and wrote a feature article on the impact we are making. Read now!
- Environmental Crisis Heats Up, Can We Use Blockchain to Reverse the Tide? Podcast with The Crypto Lark: How we can heal our broken environment by leveraging the power of blockchain? Christian joins The Crypto Lark for a riveting conversation on reversing the tide.
- The Cosmos Ecosystem: Some of the highest profile projects of Cosmos can be found on their ecosystem page, and include applications in gaming, content distribution, music, ecological monitoring and regeneration (hint hint! 😉), blockchain interoperability, and more — the wide diversity of use cases made possible by the modular and general purpose infrastructure that we’ve open-sourced.
Onward!
We endlessly thank you for your continued support and following along of Regen Network.
- Team Regen
