ReFi is NEAR: A Guide to Regenerative Finance on NEAR

The rise of Web3 and rapidly growing blockchain ecosystems like NEAR are challenging and changing the very notion of what economies are and how they function. As part of that, the concept of regenerative finance has been gaining widespread visibility for its potential to drive positive social and environmental impact while also generating value within communities.

What is regenerative finance? In its simplest form, it’s deploying capital to create economic value that also drives access to opportunity, social and environmental justice, and improved quality of life.

In traditional investing, regenerative finance is often categorized as a subset of impact investing and commonly involves environmental and climate-based projects and initiatives that also benefit their surrounding communities.

In crypto, regenerative finance — and this is particularly the case on NEAR — casts a much wider, varied net. In addition to projects with positive environmental impact, many aspects of the NEAR ecosystem incorporate regenerative finance’s core principle: giving all stakeholders a compelling path to value creation while restoring and improving the status quo.

Along with environmental projects, this can also look like grants for the developers and creators who will contribute to the protocol’s future success, prioritizing funding to support community projects, or a DeFi project’s governance using a portion of fees generated to fund a climate initiative.

“Most banking and lending practices still ignore social and environmental impacts…. Regenerative finance meets this moment. It integrates various types of capital — investments, loans, grants and more — to give social enterprises, community-led projects and restorative cultural and environmental initiatives financing that’s tailored to maximize their success,” writes RSF Social Finance CEO Jasper van Brakel in Impact Entrepreneur.

Not surprisingly, a regenerative approach to finance is a natural match with the community-driven, carbon-neutral NEAR ecosystem.

“We are listening to what’s happening in the world and are putting human beings at the center of what we do. NEAR is addressing the global warming challenge too. I feel that NEAR is on the best path to bringing the dream of Web3 to reality,” says Yessin Schiegg, CFO, NEAR Foundation, on the protocol’s efforts to create value in a multitude of ways.

To explore these ideas further, follow our guide for a selection of destinations where regenerative finance and its core principles are currently at play in the NEARverse

Regenerative Finance projects on NEAR with environmental impact

Raiz Vertical Farms: On a mission to make fresh produce accessible by transforming under-used urban spaces into hydroponic vertical farms, Raiz is leveraging blockchain technology on NEAR as part of its commitment to sustainability, circularity, and scalability. This means simultaneous fundraising and community building through NFTs on Mintbase, creating a DAO with its stakeholders as members, and using blockchain technology for increased transparency. For a deep dive into Raiz and its plans in the coming months, check out our recent NEARWEEK post An Introduction to Raiz Vertical Farms The Farms of the Future.

Open Forest Protocol: This open-source protocol working to combat deforestation, “connects forestation project developers with validation organizations, funding partners, and entrepreneurs in a decentralized community.” Here’s how it works: forestation projects register on the Open Forest Protocol and submit data via the OFP’s mobile app. Validators around the world use satellite, AI, IoT, and drone technology to confirm the accuracy of the data, which is stored for public view on the blockchain. Validators receive fees for their work, while successful forestation project developers gain access to carbon financing thanks to the transparency and trust that comes with decentralized validation.

NEAR funding opportunities and projects

NEAR Grants: The non-profit NEAR Foundation oversees a number of different paths to funding for creators, builders, and entrepreneurs. Both grants and venture capital funding are available to serve the growth and development of new projects and initiatives. According to the NEAR Foundation, “Most VC funding opportunities will usually occur post-grant funding once a project has developed beyond the initial grant application stage, however, each project is different.” Applicants work with the NEAR Foundation to determine the most appropriate funding vehicle.

There are three primary verticals for grants:

• NEAR Foundation grants program: The main grants program awards grants for the widest variety of projects and is the best place to start exploring funding opportunities in the NEARverse. With over 400 projects funded thus far, there are many examples of regenerative finance at work fueling growth on NEAR through community-led efforts. Grantees include NFT marketplace Mintbase, blockchain game NEAR Lands, virtual NFT gallery project 3XR and many others.
• NEAR University grants program: Launched in support of the University program’s mission to educate and enable one million people by 2023, this program run by the NEAR Education team awards grants to teams and service providers for the creation of educational content and products.
• Proximity Labs DeFi grants program: For DeFi projects, the NEAR Foundation recommends heading to Proximity Labs, a research and development firm that announced plans to award $350 million in grants to decentralized finance builders last fall. Grants are awarded through Proximity’s Grants DAO, which has funded projects such as Rift Finance, Burrow Cash, Aurigami. For more information, you can apply here.

NEAR Community funding: Thanks to a $5 million community fund, additional paths to funding are available through a variety of different community-led groups in the NEARverse. Each group operates slightly differently in terms of what and how they award funds. Once you begin to explore community groups, which include both guilds and DAOs, you will find opportunities to request funding from DAOs such as the Creatives DAO and Marketing DAO (disclosure: I am currently a council member of this DAO), bounties offered to conduct work for various teams, participate-to-earn opportunities from Open Web Sandbox and much more. Because the opportunities come from community groups across the ecosystem, the most important first step to take towards funding is to first be involved in the community. A great place to start familiarizing yourself with the community, current initiatives, processes, and groups is the NEAR Governance Forum.

Aurora Grants: NEAR’s layer two Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) offers grants to support initiatives in areas that include Dexes, NFTs, derivatives, stablecoins and more. Grantees receive funding alongside benefits like technical support, recruiting help, VC introductions, and access to talent for growth marketing and scaling operations.

Open Source Software DAO: This initiative launched the $OSS token designed to send open-source developers airdropped rewards on Aurora based on their Github use and reward open source software projects for their contributions to tech.

The Octopus Network Accelerator: This accelerator program counts NEAR as one of its partners and seeks to fund web3 projects. Focused on appchains, the accelerator launched a spring cohort in 2022 with five teams receiving up to $50,000. While the spring program application deadline has passed, the team welcomes those interested in future iterations of the accelerator to connect via their website and watch their Twitter @oct_acc for news and updates. Past participants include NEAR-based projects such as Fusotao and Atocha.

Immunefi Bug Bounty program: Blockchain bug bounty platform Immunefi is collaborating with the Octopus Network to offer projects a bug bounty program that seeks to help improve security and fix vulnerabilities in their technology. If you’re a project building appchains in the NEARverse, you can offer bug bounties to Immunefi’s White Hat army of hackers, who work to expose security problems.

Mintbase project funding: NEAR NFT marketplace and community Mintbase offers funding for ecosystem projects and bounties for different activities through its DAO. The best place to look for more information is to visit Mintbase DAO on the NEAR governance forum.

The above opportunities to engage in regenerative finance on NEAR and grow your ecosystem project are a selection of what currently exists — and with such rapid growth in web3 and in the NEARverse in particular, there will no doubt be many more to come.

Do you have a regenerative finance initiative on NEAR that we should know about? Tell us about it on Twitter at @NEARWEEK.