Announcing… Participating Teams in Sovereign Nature Initiative’s Winter 2022 Hackathon Challenge

30 teams from Bangalore to British Columbia to Berlin will participate in SNI’s upcoming hackathon.

SNI’s upcoming Winter 2022 Hackathon Challenge will be the largest and most creative gathering of tech, design, create-for-nature Web3 teams ever assembled on Planet Earth.

After an astounding wave of interest surrounding Sovereign Nature Initiative’s Winter 2022 Hackathon Challenge, the SNI team is delighted to announce that 30 teams will be competing and collaborating over three days from February 4–6, 2022. Our incredible cohort of competitors represents 10+ countries and includes accomplished developers, outside-the-box thinkers, theorists, and artists, as well as deeply-rooted Web3 game-changers.

This huge response shows we are part of a genuine movement to achieve a thriving planet by radically reconfiguring nature’s value. We’re thrilled to have teams participating from all over the world, from Bangalore to British Columbia to Berlin, working together to imagine and create radical experimental approaches to ecology, ‘flipping the economics’ to sustain biodiverse life on Earth.

Our upcoming hackathon will also mark the debut of SNI’s brand-new Metaverse space, created and customized by our partner, Odyssey Momentum. This platform features collaborative spaces, opportunities for interaction with subject matter experts, technology support, and chances for cross-pollination between teams.

A preview of SNI’s new metaverse space created by our partner, Odyssey Momentum.

The Challenge

We have invited teams to develop ideas and applications that enable the representation of non-human life, establish governance models, empower ecosystems to act in their own interests, and produce and capture value in their own right.

Throughout the hackathon, teams will be encouraged to define ‘value’ broadly and consider beauty and inter/intra-connectedness in addition to practical ecological value. Ideas and solutions created over the three-day period should support SNI’s broader goal to go beyond common approaches towards sustainability and break the cycle of human dominance over ‘nature.’

The Teams

The SNI team is proud to welcome an amazing array of talent to our Winter 2022 Hackathon Challenge. We can’t wait to watch the collaboration, competition, and chemistry that will occur when these teams collide.

• Basin DAO
• Sattva (Curl Analytics)
• TreeDAO
• Centree
• A Wild Life
• BATOPIA
• SusNet
• Public Land Protocol
• Momentinauts
• Recheck
• Biocenosis
• KODADOT
• Greeny Cycle
• Space4Good
• Sustayn.Earth
• Metabolic
• OpenForest
• Pines & Electronics
• Foreststart.io
• Arceco.io
• Mpowa
• NorthEasternUniversity
• Green Deeds
• Data Union
• X-Initiative
• IBMED
• EntDAO
• Hyphal Network
• Peranto

The Judges

Check out our esteemed panel of judges! (Don’t get intimidated… they are friendly, promise.)

Our jury includes two co-founders of SNI (Andrea Leiter and Ewald Hesse) along with our CEO Catherine Bischoff, who bring a diversity of perspectives on technology and innovation in pursuit of SNI’s goals. We’re honored to welcome to the panel of judges Trent McConaghy of Ocean Protocol, who is working on democratizing data for the planet, Danielle Bennett of BlueYard Capital, an advisor to high-impact entrepreneurs, and Karl Burkart, Deputy Director of One Earth, who works on the edge of climate and energy science.

The Prizes

A combination of cash and cryptocurrencies will be awarded to winning teams. Three winners and five runner-up teams will split the majority of the funds. All participants who complete their pitches will receive tokens as well in appreciation for their participation.

One member from each winning team will receive transportation and accommodation to attend SNI’s Experimental Zone Event in May 2022 at De Ceuvel in Amsterdam.

During the hackathon, teams will also have a chance to vote on their favorite idea created by another team. The winning team will receive the “Most Symbiotic” award at the conclusion of the competition.

Technical Partners

KILT Protocol provides a decentralized identity blockchain network and crucial technical components for teams that rely on trusted, self-sovereign verifiable, revocable, anonymous credentials for building nature-focused Web3 solutions.

Unique Network allows teams to mint NFTs and create marketplaces where these assets can be traded. Through these interactions, teams can create value that can then be captured and stored by nature.

Ocean Protocol is a decentralized data exchange protocol that allows data to be shared and sold in a safe, secure, and transparent manner. This gives teams the opportunity to explore new ways to create value for nature.

Odyssey Momentum provides participants with a metaverse environment that enables large collectives to connect, dynamically collaborate, and showcase work from any internet-connected corner of the world.

The Inspiration

SNI’s hackathon is inspired by our partners at De Ceuvel in Amsterdam.

De Ceuvel is a post-industrial reclaimed former shipyard in Amsterdam that operates as a sustainable planned workplace for creative and social enterprises, a unique land trust, and a laboratory for new ideas. We are working with them to plan an ‘Experimental Zone’ event in Amsterdam in May 2022 where we will showcase and celebrate the ideas created in the hackathon and seed new collaborations. This end-point means that we have invited teams to respond to the De Ceuvel project as part of their work in the hackathon.

Competing teams’ solutions may address some of the following real challenges faced at De Ceuvel’s unique space as examples of practical applications of a built environment where human/nature harmony is the goal:

• Land Stewardship (“Land Trust”) and models of public / private / nature governance
• Supporting the efforts for Phytoremediation and other nature-based solutions
• Enabling better data collection, visualization and sensoring (air quality monitoring, toxicity testing, etc.)
• Creative incentives for rewilding and native species restoration
• Other ongoing sustainability-related projects at De Ceuvel

Overall, whether or not teams directly address the De Ceuvel projects, we are interested in solutions that acknowledge the challenges and opportunities of human design and architecture in dialogue with nature.

The competition’s results will be broadcast on SNI’s YouTube channel and beamed into the cosmos on Wednesday, February 9 from 5–6pm CET. Winners and runners-up will be showcased at SNI’s Experimental Zone event in May 2022 at De Ceuvel in Amsterdam.