Network Design for social coordination
The role of specific stakeholders in the success of blockchain networks broadly and Regen Network specifically
This blog generally follows an arc aiming to explain to the blockchain community how important it is to have a specific set of stakeholders in mind when designing and bootstrapping a decentralized network. I fall into the trap of also proposing and defending Regen Network’s particular choice of stakeholders: the community working to conserve and regenerate earth’s ecosystems.
I will give you a brief overview of where we are at ecologically and some of the drivers of urgency that are making a real shift possible. I will explain a little bit about evolutionary dynamics and point out some standard misunderstandings that are as deeply rooted as they are problematic.
Why is it an important time to coalesce social coordination around ecological health?
Humanity is at a turning point. The combined result of our economic models, zero-sum violent and competitive approach to the provisioning of goods (both public and private) and governing ourselves, has reached a point where we are not only undermining the health of the planet we call home —we are also degrading the health of our societies and individuals.
The fact is right in front of us: we have 12 years to take substantive and radical action to curb climate change.
The solution, too, is also in front of us — or rather, below and all around us: natural climate solutions including soil carbon have potential to do most of the heavy lifting in fixing our climate, and hold a plethora of other benefits, such as healthier food and cleaner water.
Charles Darwin never once spoke of survival of the fittest; that was a fabrication of Herbert Spencer to justify exploitative economics. However, Darwin did thoroughly explicate the role of evolution in the survival of the fit. That is to say, those that fit an ecosystem and work to increase the health and resilience of that ecosystem have the best fit and will, therefore, continue to procreate and form a stable and important part of the gene pool of that ecosystem.
Now, let’s turn our gaze back to the current state of affairs: businesses and governments that believe the “survival of the fittest” narrative and continue to adopt the infinite growth mentality are, in essence, toxic to the world we know. The simple evolutionary reality is that these businesses, organizations, governments, and even individuals will be selected against in the economy.
Regen Network offers a clear path for organizations, communities, and governments that would like to become fit. Regen Network is here to increase the health and viability of the ecosystems our society’s structure depends upon for economic activity and life itself—to engage in monitoring, measuring, verifying, and making agreements and contracts about the ecological systems they are nested within.
This is the beginning of a new economy. This is the economy of fit.
In addition to the ecological and social imperitives of the present moment, there are also economic signals showing us that social coordination, trust and new agreement structures prioritizing ecological health is in demand.
Economic Signals
Are all of those grand statements above just handwaving? Is there really a new economy being born?
To start, I’d like to share a simple list with a selection of sources discussing the emergence of what we will be referring to as the new ecological economy. Broadly speaking, I postulate that properly-designed market forces can be used as a force for ecological regeneration, as opposed to the general trend of ecological degradation. This new form of economics accounts for public goods, and the right to work to provide those goods may be exchanged on markets. This bears remarkable similarity with the rise of the emerging crypto-economy, in which the rights to provide public goods of a permissionless network (like Bitcoin or Cosmos) are highly lucrative (either in the form of mining or validating). Regen Network sits at the intersection of these two monster trends: the crypto economy and the ecological economy—accelerating both in service to a livable planet.
To review some of the data points:
- USD 4.3 trillion per year: Losses due to land use degradation (Commonland)
- The World Economic Forum (WEF) appreciates the work of Regen Network—next-gen sustainability monitoring, reporting and verification and earth-management platforms (World Economic Forum)
- Analysts estimate that around $4.8 billion was spent in the past ten years on private-market carbon credits (WEF, page 18)
- The UN estimates that there is a funding gap of $5 to $7 trillion per year to meet the SDGs (WEF, page 17)
- $3.1 trillion will be captured through blockchain platforms/networks (WEF, page 11)
- Land degradation costs the world up to $10.6 trillion a year (Economics Of Land Degradation Report)
- Retail sales of labeled fresh grassfed beef grew from $17 million in 2012 to $272 million in 2016, doubling every year (Stonebarns Center)
- There will be $23 trillion of global economic losses a year in the long term without rapid action. This permanent economic damage would be almost four times the scale of the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis. (AGU100, The Guardian)
- $90 trillion in investment needed to shift economy (World Bank)
- Unilever lost $330 million last year due to climate change (World Bank)
- Certified cacao tripled in 5 years (International Trade Centre)
- $350 Billion: the cost of fires and extreme weather have had for the US federal government (NASA)
- The economic value of freshwater is valued at $73.5 trillion annually (Equilibrium Futures)
- Fish stocks are estimated to contribute $2.5 trillion annually to the global economy (Equilibrium Futures)
- Forests provide more than $1.5 trillion in ecosystem services each year directly through forestry and indirectly by providing energy, food, shelter, medicine, soil and water conservation, desertification control and carbon storage (Equilibrium Futures)
Now that we have had a glimpse of the size of the economic opportunity of coordinating the Ecological Economy, let’s think about the sort of services, infrastructure and businesses that are in demand as this economic transition takes place (Spoiler alert: Regen Network).
Science Based Goals: We cannot value what we don’t measure, and we cannot exchange what we don’t account for. At the root of both of these problems is a robust scientific (ever evolving) approach to understanding ecosystem health.
Data Integrity: For good science to exist we need to know who said what, when they said it, where they said it, and any other relevant meta-data that might influence the results of things.
Replicability and Auditability: Claims (whether about biodiversity, carbon, water quality) need to be auditable and computations and other methods of making meaning out of data must be replicable.
All of these can be attributes of a well designed digital marketplace anchored by blockchain. Given that these seem to be fairly objective and universal needs, we can expect a healthy competition to full this economic niche, and provide these services. Competing to be the most effective at providing the public good of an auditable ledger of ecological health means out cooperating the competition. What is unique about Regen Network? Two key things:
- We are deeply connected to the agro-ecological and regenerative agriculture movements, and have been industry leaders in that space for more than ten years.
- We have the technical chops to build deep protocol level innovations all the way to user interface that ensures our blockchain is usable for the stakeholders we are convening around our Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network.
Now, as promised this blog is as much an open letter to the blockchain community to get it’s shit together and focus on concrete users, as it is an explanation and announcement for the realities driving our community to build and launch Regen Network.
Premise: Networks that are built by and for a community will tend to be stronger and more long lasting, in addition to being more valuable (intrinsically and extrinsically).
Focusing on building sovereign blockchains by and for particular communities of users will lead to the launch of a PoS network that will generate network effects. We are building open source tools useful for any group trying to monitor, verify and make agreements about ecological health. If we do a great job magnetizing and coordinating a decentralized group of validators and developers, we will have the most effective network for ecological markets, assets, data and contracts. Full Stop.
Any group that appears to be competing in the natural capital or sustainable ag space, such as Nori, Bext360, Veridium, Poseidon, FlyingCarpet, Indigo Ag’s Terraton Initiative, are all ventures we actually want to support. Each project increased the potential for the rest to succeed. Furthermore each project needs a dedicated public ledger to full fill their value proposition, and our hypothesis is this is best accomplished with a domain specific public blockchain network 100% dedicated to their needs. Projects can fork Regen Ledger and make permissioned zones that are interoperable with the global hub. They can participate in governance and use the public chain. They can even fork and create competing public chains. All of this will further our collective goals, and build the ecological economy that we need. Due to this radical focus on ensuring ecological domain projects have the tools they need, Regen Network offers the best possible solution: a secure public network with ecological data claims and agreements and a strong open source development kit and community aimed at the domain and user community focused on shared goals.
Design Thesis: What Will Make a Successful Proof of Stake (PoS) Network?
In a conversation with between Mehur Roy (Epicenter and Chorus One) and Aaron Craelius (Regen Network), it dawned on Mehur that Regen Network is more like Cardano than say, Veridium or another surface layer application. We are not just making a smart contract on the Ethereum Virtual Machine; we are building a full stack approach that considers the full needs of our stakeholders and use case. We are a deep protocol layer play that brings that protocol layer all the way to the application layer in a sovereign domain-specific blockchain.
As was made clear in our winning HackAtom presentation (link: Gaian Presentation by Aaron Craelius starts at 14:07) from Berlin in June, we are strong believers that design and development should emanate from the needs of stakeholders. We believe that the most competitive, lucrative and long-lasting PoS networks will be those built around a set of stakeholders in which achieving social consensus and coordination is clearly in the interest of all the users, validators and developers.
Many emerging, or proposed PoS networks that have great tech, but are abstract. They seek to express the potential of a technology without grounding that expression in the needs of users.
Without holding a clear community in mind, or better yet, being born out of a particular community, blockchain and open source tech projects will simply be doing expensive R&D for networks that serve a particular group. The network stakeholders of Regen Network and PoS chains like Regen Network will simply adopt the best code and instruments. As long as it is coherent with the core utility and does not compromise security, you will see adoption into Hubs, or Zones maintained by a particular set of stakeholders of a technology that is helpful, not running through a central “microservice” chain.
You might think those of us who have figured out the “start with community and build from there” mantra would keep this quite: however ,I think a paradigm shift is needed. Open source development of blockchains for interdependent sovereign communities of users will be optimal when design, implementation, testing and deployment happen for specific user groups. Everyone benefits if all projects ensure user fit and are explicit about who they are serving and why.
This is the future that Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) and the Interchain vision invites, and if the hypothesis of an internet of blockchains is proven right, many crypto projects that are not building with a particular set of stakeholders in mind, will simply provide code and ideas for adoption by the chains who have a strong community of users, not just some talented developers and a few visionary investors.
As noted above, a stakeholder centric approach: It leads to better design outcomes. You know if you need to do some low level protocol redesign much quicker when you have real user feedback and not just the imagination of smart engineers to guide you.
With all that said, who are Regen Network’s stakeholders and users that we are so damn proud of that I spent a whole blog writing about them in the abstract?
Regen Network’s Stakeholders
As may or may not be obvious to the casual observer, or even to someone doing a deeper vetting process on Regen Network, we have an extraordinary community. From Pilot Partners to Platform Partners we have a clear set of stakeholders we are building Regen Network for, and who are in turn also providing inspiration, and even their own development. This focus on a bottom up, full stack design and development team, with a clear set of stakeholders and a powerful, engaged community is what sets Regen Network apart from other competing chains in the space. Not only does this mean Regen Network will become the standard and benchmark for ecological applications; it also means that Regen Network will outpace core infrastructure players like Cardano, pulling the best design and implementation into the Cosmos ecosystem.
So Who Are the Stakeholders We Are So Proud Of?
We work with world leaders like Savory Institute and powerful collaborative initiatives like Yale Open Labs. From a research partnership with Cornell, and Terra Genesis International in cooperation with the Ecuadorian Government focused on agroforestry in the Amazon, to pilot partnership with Fibershed, we are constantly exploring mutual benefit and collaboration. We are activly exploring deeper partnerships with other blockchain projects like ixo and Nori and generally having an open and collaborative approach with any tech provider who can serve our constituencies. This should be about serving the needs of the humans who are responsible for stewarding land, which is foundational (yes, even in the 21st century) for the global economy. That is the strategy that builds the best technology, results in the best social coordination, the most powerful production of public goods and will be the most competitive in the future.
All these groups and more have one common goal and a common set of problems we are designing for: account for, value and increase the health of ecosystems. Sequester Carbon.
We have signed MOUs with more than 25 users and partners, and some huge announcements to come in the next two weeks.
Visit our partners page for more information about our community!
Read more of our previous writing on Ecological Economics:
