Regen Network Q2 2020 Update
Happy, happy Earth Month from all of us at Regen Network. Last week marked the 50th anniversary of the first celebrated Earth Day and a moment for us all to contemplate on what our next 50 years might look like and each of our roles in shaping this future.
As we reflect on 50 years of honoring Earth Day, let’s celebrate how far we’ve come just as we must consider the seismic shifts that must take place to head off climate change and rapidly degrading ecosystems. Perhaps it’s time to re-frame the way we view our relationship with each other and Earth as we move beyond sustainability and into regeneration. Our CEO, Christian Shearer, dives deep into this topic in our most recent blog.
Regen Network is proud to be living, working, and breathing our shared vision to regenerate the planet. To that end, we are excited to share what’s been moving in the Regen Network ecosystem, what we are looking forward to this upcoming quarter, and what’s on our minds during this surreal time of the COVID pandemic.
Platform Updates
We are creating a blockchain that enables the design, issuance, and trading of ecosystem service credits, and exposes a queryable interface for integrating with the registry application.
On the technical side, we have had huge progress over the last quarter:
- User interface. We have been focusing our attention on the Project Page, which allows land stewards and project developers to register for credits, and allows buyers to see not only the quantitative impact but the qualitative as well, along with being able to better share their climate mitigation story. The project page includes photos, videos, an interactive map, and more cool features. In addition, we have created admin interfaces to issue, transfer, and hold credits — all in support of the upcoming credit sale (see below).
- We are working towards our first credit issuance. Our science team has been diving deep into the soil organic carbon methodologies in order to support the design of our first Soil Health Credit for rotational grazing.
- Integration with Regen ledger has started. We have mock APIs in place and we are soliciting feedback on Regen ledger API definitions through an RFC process.
- Established a database alongside the Regen ledger to provide off-chain data storage for registry data. The goal is to provide a reference design for on-chain and off-chain data integration.
In the upcoming quarter, we are working on upgrading our website, enabling buyer and seller on-boarding, payment gateway integration, ledger integration, and much more.
If you’re interested in getting involved in the technical side of our work, please join our weekly open calls. We switch off every week between Community Development calls and Lead Validator calls. If you can’t make it at the designated times, not to worry; you can watch the recordings on YouTube, read the transcriptions on Medium, and ask questions on our Developer Telegram channel at any time.
Accelerating Our Role in OpenTEAM
Regen Network is a member of the OpenTEAM community, where we work side by side with other scientists to provide standardized methodologies for soil organic carbon assessments and uncertainty quantification.
You may recall us hosting the Gathering for Open Agricultural Technology (GOAT) forum in Denver with OpenTEAM while at Techstars. This year, we were excited to participate in an onsite OpenTEAM gathering at Paicines Ranch, California — however, due to COVID-19, the event went 100% remote and Regen Network was able to support translating the event to an interactive remote experience.
To support our role in OpenTEAM, team member Daniel Swid is transitioning from Head of Design & Collaboration to focus on facilitation and distributed collaboration for the Open Team project.
We look forward to the ways we will grow together.
CosmWasm+ OpenTEAM
As part of the Regen Network’s recent CosmWasm-focused testnet, we invited members from our OpenTEAM community to collaborate with our validator community on our first prototype of an ecological smart contract! One of the final challenges for the Kontraua Testnet involved writing a CosmWasm smart contract that acts as an escrow, sending tokens to an account dependent on a measurable change in some ecological state. As OpenTEAM is a technology initiative around open source tools, soil health, and interoperability for agricultural data management, the member organizations within OpenTEAM served as the perfect group to incubate a prototype with.
FarmOS and OurSci are the two projects from OpenTEAM that took up the offer and each successfully prototyped a basic Oracle functionality into their existing farm data management applications. The result is that real-world agricultural management applications can register a Regen Network smart contract address, and users of these OpenTEAM applications can send live ecological state updates to Regen Network. For a deeper dive, take a look at this example smart contract, and some screenshots of the Oracle interfaces in FarmOS and OurSci.
This collaboration was also shared with the Earthday Open Climate Collabothon in preparation for a global collaboration in which these CosmWasm based smart contracts and ecological state oracles information from FarmOS, Our-Sci, and the Open Analysis Ready Data Pipeline will serve as a foundation for a global climate accounting system that integrates national and international carbon accounting. In this single test, Regen Network proved the potential for open networks to solve complex issues related to valuing ecological health. We integrated OpenTEAM, Open Climate, and the Cosmos Community by bringing together FarmOS, Our-Sci, CosmWasm all on Regen Ledger.
Regen Network is excited to be serving to connect three amazing open-source software and science communities with our work as a platform of platforms dedicated to valuing and rewarding ecological regeneration and holistic climate accounting.
Exciting Prize and Program Updates
Regen Network advanced as a semi-finalist to the next round in the Rockefeller Food System Vision Prize. We will continue to hone and refine our vision until August when 10 finalists will be selected for mentorship and a possible prize of $200,000. Read more about our vision here.
Regen registry has advanced to the next round of the Elemental Accelerator Program in the ‘Go-To-Market’ strategy category. This accelerator selects 15–20 companies that best fit their mission and fund each company up to $1 million to improve systems that impact people’s lives in the areas of energy, water, food & agriculture, mobility, and the circular economy.
Say Hello to New Team Members
Sara Johnstone, COO
Sara has spent the last decade working with tech startups. She has a background in operations, marketing, community management, strategy, and business development. She is committed to moving away from “business as usual” and focusing her energy on “regenerative business” practices for Regen Network.
Sarah Baxendell, Director of Finance and Philanthropy
Sarah brings a decade of relationship building with philanthropic partners through her role in designing, planning, funding, and implementing food supply projects and urban ecological interventions. She was most recently the Executive Director of Hilltop Urban Farm, the largest urban farming project in the United States.
Cory Levinson, Technical Product Manager, Blockchain & Open Agriculture
Cory is a software engineer and technical product manager with years of experience working in data infrastructure at SoundCloud before moving into blockchain in 2017. He is an alumnus of Strelka Institute in Moscow and was recently in residence at Recurse Center working on a Rust client for the off-grid solarpunk social network, Secure Scuttlebutt, before joining the Regen team.
Marie Gauthier, Developer
Marie is an ecologically committed full-stack developer with a great interest in permaculture. She has been developing web and mobile applications for more than 5 years. She values transparency, fairness, and sustainability through the projects she works on. She truly believes in Regen’s mission to promote regenerative agriculture.
Adriana Mihai, Blockchain Community Liason
We also want to warmly welcome Adriana as a new Regen Network contributor. Adriana is a long term community contributor to the Cosmos ecosystem, now helping Regen with community awareness through “Last/This week in Regen” on her Twitter feed. Follow her tweets at @adriana_kalpa.
We’re Hiring: Senior Software Engineer
Are you an experienced blockchain engineer looking for a new challenge? One where you can play a key role in developing cutting edge decentralized technologies and make a positive impact in the world? Want the freedom to work remotely with values-aligned teammates?
The Latest Planetary Regeneration Podcast
Join our Chief Regeneration Officer, Gregory Landua, as he explores the breadth and depth of the movement to regenerate our relationship to Planet Earth and each other on The Planetary Regeneration Podcast. In wide-ranging conversations, Gregory and his guests explore the cutting edge technology, philosophies, practices, and models disrupting climate change and inspiring hope for a better tomorrow. Available for listening on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
Recent episodes include conversations with Loren Cardeli and Dr. Dorn Cox, as well as a special feature Coronavirus Episode.
Events
A Note on Our Work During COVID-19
As a company, Regen Network didn’t miss a beat with the shelter-in-place mandate because we are a distributed team anyway. Four of our employees have children who are now at home, so that does bring a fair amount of extra responsibility onto their shoulders, but our work has maintained its forward progress.
Individually, we are spread around the globe, with contributing members in Argentina, France, India, Switzerland, east coast US, and west coast US. See Dr. Gisel Booman’s recent article on some insight into what we’re dreaming of during these times.
