Aims of the $REGEN Community — Foundation Investment Assessment

Our previous article delved into future scenarios for our network, discussing emerging trends, possible trajectories for Regen Network, and the cultural and institutional strategies needed to reach the successful “Ministry for the Future” state. This mindset is best exemplified by the Regen Foundation and its csDAOs program, which emphasizes the decentralization of power to communities. This approach ensures that the regenerative revolution, open-source technology, ecological and web3 policies are all community-owned and governed.

So in this piece, we’ll focus on the investment activities of the Foundation around “open source technological development aimed at ecological applications in blockchain, remote sensing, IoT, machine learning, and fintech”. And focus on 2 other aspects “rewarding regenerative ecological outcomes” and “Incentivising accurate ecological data to be produced and shared” for the next articles.”

Foundation Financial Health

The foundation was designed as a main investor in the network development holding: 35% of the initial issuance → ~25% at the time of writing the total $REGEN token supply. It was intended to select and onboard local ecological communities & methodologies developers, putting regenerative income and governance rights in their hands.

The initial fundraising campaign organized by the RND happened in 2019 and collected $10.5M from ~200–400 individuals (source). The token price on the all-time high was ~$6, and about $0.06 now after a long bear market.

The Foundation is constantly fundraising for its administrative budget for its team of 4 people. Now it has a runway till Q1 of 2025 (monthly burn rate of $22k feels tight), not accounting for the $REGEN tokens. The Foundation also stakes its tokens and has now even more tokens than at the start (35M → 47M). Additional funding was also provided by Biome Trust and Ripple.

Foundation Investments Analysis

With ~10% staking rewards, now current holdings can yield 4.7M $regen by the end of the year. Each cohort receives 2.5M $REGEN (5 x 500k). 2 cohorts are launched and 2 are planned to be launched by the end of the year.

Cohort 1: non-web3 people and organizations (2022–2023)

Of the first cohort, 4 of 5 are active within the $regen ecosystem, e.g. build methodologies or participate in the governance. The yield from staking in the current prices is estimated at around $250/month per csDAO and the total collected rewards are ~$50–100k for all participants since 2022. Below is the list of the projects with the behavior and benefits. “UBI” tag indicates constant activity over the account (mostly withdrawing rewards), while some “HODL” for longer time.

• Commons Stack: UBI, HODL 100k $REGEN ($7.5k)
  TEC, ABC, Praise, Trusted Seed, RegenScore
• OPEN Team: HODL for 2 years, 225k $REGEN ($17k)
  Supporting the tokenomics, validator, and technical dev team
• Kulshan Carbon Trust: UBI, HODL 20k $REGEN ($1.5k)
  Currently building Biochar methodology
• Terran Collective (Empowerment Works) HODL for 1 year 120k $REGEN ($9k)
  Built Hylo which is used by the Regen Network community and has become an active platform for governance and creating peer-to-peer learning networks that support mutual growth.
• Smart Agro Germany: UBI, HODL 110k $REGEN ($8.3k)
  Building a small Holder farmer methodology in Cambodia: supporting and incentivizing farmers move from traditional farming practices towards regenerative practices.

Cohort 2: doing regenerative work (2024)

like biochar methodology, social communication app builders, etc.

In this cohort 4 out of 6 build within $regen ecosystem. We can’t analyze their activity yet, as they just did the initial setup.

• Foundation for Regeneration
  Building a carbon methodology/ urban city planning credits, that will be listed on Regen Marketplace. Supporting the development of the buyer ecosystem in Regen.
• Ekonavi
  Validator, Building agroforestry credits that they want to list on Regen Network through permisionless credit class: using $REGEN for retroactive compensation for being onboarded on Ekonavi platform.
• Chatafisha
  Creating a plastic methodology and a dapp for selling impact NFTs from their work.
• Shamba Network
  Building dMRV systems in East Africa
• Earthist Network
  They are interested in developing a Hemp methodology and listing on Regen: participating in DAO DAO pilots, using the governance layer, and also a validator.
• Canopy Collective
  The establishment of three nature interpretation centers, innovative educational tools such as forest songs and virtual reality videos, and the remarkable creation of a community reserve, sheltering the critically endangered Bugun Liocichla

Other investments (than csDAOs)

Before 2024

• Kado (investment in the infrastructure) — saved 60% of tokens ($7k)
• Cerulean (kinda internal VC) — constant activity, ~4M $REGEN program-related investment ($300k).
  There was an intention of co-investing into projects, but it’s expected that the projects that want to build would need more stable/fiat for that. Consequently, it will lead to $REGEN sales and further price drops. Thus it was on hold for now.
• Tokenomics WG $10k (our group)
• CosmWasm Upgrade ~$25k (in $REGEN)

Next steps

Define the funding needs of the csDAOs

Recurring income is a nice start, though probably the current level (~$250/month) might not be enough to push the impact locally. Also probably some specific liquidity pools for csDAOs and extra matching funding (with the coop bank proposal, grants, philanthropic organizations, chains, etc) could be of great value.

$REGEN retribution model

As csDAOs draft their own charters in return for staking we could suggest some ideas connected with the ecosystem funding or token integration. For example, a part of eco-credit revenues could be shared back to the community pool for further project funding. As well if you hold $REGEN in treasury or lend to the pools.

Improving the metrics for further analysis

The quantity of tokens, staking history, and governance participation are perhaps the standard terms that define how beneficial an actor has been in relation to token health. Given that Regen is now closer to the “app chain”, with a clear purpose statement around eco-social regeneration, we could make some amendments to the metric.

If an organization creates an ecocredit for sale, how can this affect the health of the token? For instance, Sharamentsa in Ecuador appears to be positively influencing the token price, even though they don’t hold any tokens. Their project’s integrity seems to be driving the token price up. Potential metrics could include:

Financial metrics

• Value of ecocredits produced or sold
• Project type (individual pilot, data service provider, dMRV, etc)
• Staking / Saving / Investing %

Engagement metrics

• Governance participation (Commonwealth, Hylo or X)
• Presence of the project page
• Participation in other working groups (like ours)

This research is co-authored by Max Semenchuk (Regen Tokenomics) and Nena Jain (Regen Foundation). Special thanks to Will Szal and Austin Wade Smith.