The Interchain Lab Ep. 8— Regen Network
The Interchain Lab occurs biweekly on Fridays at 3PM ET (20:00 UTC) in the Osmosis discord lounge. This week on the Interchain Lab: Hosts Robo, Togg and Waterspinner sit down with Will and Sarah from Regen Protocol to talk all about Regen, carbon credits, and their newly launching NCT token!
Will Szal got started with Regen in 2017, coming to the crypto space from a local economics and food systems background. He has recently moved from the development side to working on the non-profit side with the regen foundation.
Sarah Baxendell has been with Regen network since 2019. She is currently Regens Director of Ecosystem
What is Regen?
Regen Network’s goal is to allow those who manage communities to be able to use the financial system to create ecological action and restoration. Regen Ledger provides the infrastructure for ecological assets and the verification of claims, while the Regen token is involved in network security and governance.
Would you mind giving us a background on Regen network and the idea of regenerative finance?
Sarah: ‘Originally Christian and Gregory were working as designers and consultants for agricultural supply chains. In their work they came to realize that there was a need for more financial incentives for land stewards to participate in these projects, as well as systems to monitor the outcomes. By including the voices of the community in these systems and standards, the blockchain provides the software, governance, and tooling that allows that vision to emerge.’
What’s the difference from the Regen token and the NCT token?
Sarah: ‘The Regen token is the governance token of the Regen network blockchain. If you want to participate in governing our technology or ecological science standards, you need a Regen wallet and some Regen network tokens. All eco credits (of which NCT would be considered an eco-credit) are separate from the Regen token, and are assets issued on top of the Regen blockchain. They are essentially two different layers’
What is NCT, and what does it look like on the supply side? What real world activity underlies it?
Sarah: ‘Regens primary use case is to address carbon markets. The way these markets work is that they are commodities- where real projects (land/solar/etc) that have carbon removal activities are quantified across the globe. What Regen network is trying to do is disrupt the current market system. ‘
Blockchain technology helps to make all claims/science/data that goes in to a carbon credit completely transparent. Right now, it’s not possible to see what that science or raw data is. It’s hard to hold a claim accountable because the data points to replicate it are hidden away. There’s also centralization involved in who gets to buy these credits. Regen has its own registry that is designed to serve standards processes and standards governance.
NCT, or Nature Carbon Tonne tokens, are a way to segment nature assets. These are higher quality assets in the current legacy carbon market. It’s an inclusion criterion for what represents a nature credit — Water, soil, forest credits, etc.; all can go in to the fungible token standard of NCT. Regen is working to help bring as much of this nature market to the blockchain as they can, and have been waiting to bring the Regen owned liquidity to the cosmos. These can offset protocol emissions, validator emissions, be used in decentralized applications, etc.
Will: ‘NCT is in some ways a transitional way of bridging legacy and blockchain in to one approach, where you have a basket that creates fungibility between broad swaths of carbon backed nature tokens. Regen also has a radical vision of funding regenerative projects, whether large or small. There’s many ways to engage in regenerative practices that aren’t captured by the legacy systems in place. NCT is an important step in the right direction towards inclusivity.’
Why is Cosmos the place for regenerative finance to flourish?
Sarah:’ We see Regen as the home of regenerative finance. The chain is built from scratch — because Regen network has its own registry to produce credits, we’re essentially the supply source on the blockchain. From the perspective of Cosmos, it comes down to how each chain is its own app specific world.‘
Will: ‘We had considered other approaches before cosmos. One thing that hit us early on was that it seemed like the community cared what you were building. There was a ‘we’re all in it together’ attitude. Four or five years later the cosmos is now a much bigger place, but that special community still remains.’
Can you talk a bit about the NCT pool on Osmosis, and the incentives structure around it?
Sarah: ‘There was a point early on where a large number of Regen tokens were given to the Osmosis community. There are going to be 2 pools sprung from this — one NCT/OSMO and one NCT/REGEN. They should be around equal size to start. They’ll be incentivized with the leftover REGEN from building these pools as well as OSMO rewards.’
What kind of hopes for demand for NCT do you have?
Sarah: ‘Our hope is that people will buy it and retire them for carbon credit claims. That’s the most efficient way for us to create climate action at scale. But these are liquidity pools with rewards, and campaigns in place for validators/projects to go carbon neutral. It really depends on how the Cosmos ends up integrating NCT in to dapps, projects, etc’
How will Osmosis’ purchase and retirement of NCT translate to carbon emission offsets? What does it look like from purchase to retire?
Sarah: ‘NCT credits are redeemed for the eco credits backing them and the eco credits are then retired to the users regen wallet. You’d be retiring on behalf of every token holder –the technical aspects are quite simple. So far with Cosmos zero there are dozens of validators and multiple different chains (Stargaze, evmos eg) that are on board and going through the governance process.’
The Cosmos ZERO initiative invites protocols and validators to achieve carbon zero via their community pool spend. Additionally, it encourages protocols to maintain carbon-neutral status by committing to re-evaluating and offsetting their carbon footprint over time.
These steps involve calculating your validators or protocols carbon footprint, submitting a carbon neutral governance proposal, and the purchase and retirement of NCT.
What’s to come?
In addition to the launch of NCT, Regen expects to have its own version of a liquid staking derivative from Quicksilver in the near future. This will allow users to participate in governance while being able to simultaneously participate in DeFi applications and earn yield through staking rewards.
For more information on Liquid Staking derivatives, check out the previous TIL episode featuring Quicksilver Protocol! https://medium.com/osmosis-community-updates/the-interchain-lab-ep-6-quicksilver-protocol-f9c75e33418f
Make sure to catch the full recording of this episode of The Interchain Lab on the @OsmosisCC Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-GdayPv5ng\
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