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How Blockchain is Supporting Gaia's Regeneration
Recorded: Dec. 1, 2022 Duration: 1:01:01Space Recording
Full Transcription
Hello, hello, my friends.
Yeah, so you've got all our speakers here.
Welcome to this Twitter space.
All other Twitter spaces, I always tune in the energy of caring so much about the time and kind of hush into things.
And as today we're talking about,
is when you're breathing, think about all the energy,
and when you're breathing, And when you buzz, and within the energy of the energy, you're spa things like, think about all the things you're doing.
that you drop that becomes the food for other species and just let's do it like a couple of
times, deep breath in and out.
Thank you. Let's ground ourselves. Thanks so much for being here, buddy. So, yeah, let's start our conversation.
Here is Flavia speaking. Here in Common Ground, we are an all-in-one communication platform for DAOs and Web3 communities, and we host, every Thursday we host a chat, and today I'm super, super glad to be talking about Regeneration and Gaia, and having also these amazing speakers with me to have a chat and talk about how blockchain and Web3
can support us and foster regeneration. So, yeah, welcome. Thanks so much for you guys being here to this conversation, and yeah, I would like to invite each and every one of you for a round of introductions.
So, if you could just say a little about yourselves, what you're working on. I always love to hear the background, like how you got into this work, how you got connected to this topic of regeneration and re-thive.
And so, yeah, let's get started. And firstly, I'd like to invite Matthew, which he so nicely accepted to be our core host today. So, I would love to hear from you, Matthew.
Okay.
Are you there? Can you hear me? Well, can you speak?
You cannot hear. You're still muted. So, yeah, I believe you cannot speak.
So, yeah, I'll pass it on to Sarah.
Is that I can hear me?
Yes, I can hear you. Thank you very much for having me this morning.
So, my name is Sarah Baxendel. I'm currently the director of ecosystem for Regen Network, which is a carbon accounting focused blockchain in the cosmos ecosystem that supports credit production and environmental regeneration.
I personally came to this work through about 15 years of climate impact activism and farming and ecology restoration work.
So, a lot of my relationship to regeneration comes from being a land steward myself, having led land steward and land development projects for a decade,
and really just having a very deep personal relationship with nature and ecosystems and feeling very called to do what I can,
whether it's with technology or not, whether it's with technology or not, in order to serve the regeneration of ecosystem function and ecosystems and biodiversity across our planet.
Oh, that's amazing. Thanks so much for joining us and being here.
I know that you have a lot to contribute to this conversation.
Looking forward to listening more about your background as an environmentalist, how this transition to Web3 blockchain, how it affects you and people around you.
Yeah, just thanks so much.
Matthew, can you speak now?
Now I can speak, yes.
Twitter was rugging me. Sorry about that.
So, yeah, go ahead and introduce us out, please.
All right. Yeah, I first became aware of pollution when I studied Superfund sites at Arizona State University in like 1991 or 92.
And so I joined the environmental movement at that time and towards the late 1990s, having traveled a little bit around the world and seen some different things.
As my family become a little bit more financially secure, I decided I wanted to help the world as much as I could.
So I pretty much have been full time last 22 years of just trying to do what I could to raise awareness.
So I've been around activism for 30 years and I've learned some of the things that work and don't work.
And, you know, communication is very key.
And I've also learned that literally it's going to be about 1% of us that are leading the way.
And, you know, local change can happen quicker and faster.
And, you know, I got into permaculture a long time ago and support that.
Ed's here. He's a big regenerative farmer into regenerative farming.
Obviously, love the oceans, all that type.
I've already been pretty much a general researcher and looking at all the challenges and then the solutions.
And, you know, I joined the refi movement on Twitter in mid of February.
And so I've enjoyed connecting with a lot of people.
And I really love what I'm hearing from IIC mainly.
It's the younger people leading the way in Web3.
And it's exciting.
And so I'm just I'm happy to be here and, you know, just going to connect with as many people as we can.
I've got a big project I've been working on to really try and find I know, you know, like creative directories of the best refi as well as not for profits and even for profit.
Because for me, we've got to go to the circular economy, lower pollution, take care of our forests and plant trees in the best ways and stuff like that.
So I'm just really excited about a lot of things that I've heard going on in Web3.
And it's actually exploding.
It's hard to keep up with it.
So that's why I'm looking at working with a big network of people that are communicators and researchers and scientists and stuff and solutions type people to help communicate to the more average person.
And in ways that make sense to them about why we're doing what we're doing and that you can actually make money and do good at the same time.
Yeah, let's let's talk about more about that, like how how it's freaking spart us into regenerating and also having financial incentives tied to it.
But yeah, next, I would love to hear from Contessa.
Welcome.
Thanks so much for being here.
Thank you so much for inviting me into this space.
Super excited to be here and to have these conversations with individuals and companies and organizations that are in this regenerative space.
I am I'm a newbie to crypto, to the blockchain, to the refi movement.
Been in it for, you know, a little less than a year.
And I my question is, how does this impact me?
How does this impact my community?
How does this impact people that look like me?
And how can I get this this this this this this this this refi movement, this regenerative movement to actually mean something to underserved communities, to urban communities, because we don't have access to land or space or water.
And so it's really important that I am impacting my own community here in my backyard.
And so one of the things that I'm working on is how do we use crypto Web3 refi in order to provide for basic needs for people who need it the most, like food, like shelter?
How do we create regenerative communities and spaces where we may not have a lot of resources?
And that's what I'm working on.
Yeah, that's that's the proposition.
So glad that you're that you're here bringing all these questions and entries, because I really would love to dig deeper into the wisdom of our speakers here.
And, yeah, it's such a friendly space that we have now.
I know Diego is here from Algo Forest.
Welcome, Diego.
Also, Adam, Dominic, sorry, a lot of friends here.
If you if you want to jump in and participate, just yeah, just request to speak.
I'd love to hear from you as well.
I know there's a lot of knowledge here in this space.
So next, let's hear from Magenta.
Welcome so much, Mage, for being here.
Could you please introduce yourself?
Thank you, Flavia.
It's nice to meet all of you.
Let's see.
I work mostly with a community called Bloom Network, but also with Diorg, which is a developer collective working mostly on developing tooling.
But, yeah, the stuff I do with Bloom is dialoguing with community organizers from places all over the world about what their gaps are with funding their work.
Well, not just funding it, but like, you know, helping it be more effective, helping more people find it.
So across the areas of restorative justice and agroecology and food sovereignty and community health is kind of like a holistic picture.
And so, and what brought me to Web3 is finding, like, across the board, all of that activity is horribly underfunded.
And at the same time, it's like the highest leverage point to making large scale, like, local community involved change happen much faster than governments are able to and much more equitably than corporations have any understanding of how to do.
And so Web3 is the financial infrastructure that's, you know, it's set up to be decentralized and collaborative, the way those groups work, whereas they have a really hard time accessing centralized institutional capital from, you know, nonprofit or banking or startup.
It's like, they really need Web3.
So that's why I'm here.
Yeah, that's, that's, that's super, super amazing.
So I'd love to, for us to kind of dive deeper into use cases of Web3, as Contessa mentioned, like how for, for my community, as I'm trying to build a community garden, I'm trying to do some regenerative stuff, but I don't have the means to do it.
I don't, maybe I don't have the knowledge into Web3 to do it.
But how can we, how can we sell and explain more than sell, but explain Web3 to those people, the environmentalists, people that are really trying to create a positive and meaningful change in their communities.
So, yeah, how could you do it, how could you explain and, and bring in some use cases to, so we can be easy for them to understand how practical actions they could take and do to, to support it and really benefit from, from blockchain and Web3 community.
That's, that's my point to get.
Who wants to jump in and bring some use cases?
I think this is kind of where a lot of our problems start is how do we do this in a meaningful way.
And, and what I mean by that is that there's a lot of people in my community who don't trust blockchain technology because of what they see and hear in the news that's what's going on in these communities.
And so when you have a community with very little resources, how do we instill that trust that we're going to take this, the, the resources that you have and you can trust us to use this in a meaningful way that it will come back to you without it being, you know, stolen, without someone stealing your wallet, without people running away with your funds.
Because, you know, you know, I only have so much, you know, I only have so much.
And so when we're talking about, I can buy food or I can buy crypto, it's, it's, it's, you know what the answer is going to be.
And so how do we ensure this trust when it comes to using blockchain technology?
And I don't know if answers.
Well, yeah, I mean, I've been in blockchain, um, pretty much full time for the last five years now.
And yeah, we, we do obviously have some issues just because of, um, you know, FTX or the crash with Sam and stuff like that.
And, you know, there are whales, there's manipulation and there's hacks and all that stuff.
One thing that I'm focused on is that there are ways that people, um, without any money can actually earn crypto.
You can earn crypto in a lot of different ways.
And I've heard some young, uh, regen web three years saying, well, Hey, we're going to tokenize just about everything.
So you can actually plant a tree and get crypto.
You can actually pick up plastic and get a crypto.
Um, and that, that's just going to keep expanding.
There's so many different ways.
Um, I mean, you can literally watch videos and get crypto.
And so I've, I've thought about ways to incentivize people who don't have, um, much money and yeah.
And, you know, I come from an IT family back in the eighties.
Um, so I understand how important security is and stuff like that.
I've thought about doing my own blockchain since January of 2018, but I was waiting because of regulations and security and there's still obviously issues.
Um, so yeah, it is important.
Education is very, very important.
And so working with educators and communicators and scientists and experts in their fields.
And we've got the experts.
I mean, Ed's one of the experts down below.
We'd love to have him come up and speak as well.
Um, he, he can provide a lot.
He, and he's got some great news about regenerative farming and what's happening.
And I'm from Iowa, so I, I understand farming quite a bit and, uh, I understand the challenges because I just listened to Joe Rogan show and they were talking about, um, one of our richest people on the planet buying a bunch of land and doing more of the monocropping type stuff.
For me, we've got to go regenerative farming and definitely not going to be easy and definitely not going to be guaranteed.
But I guarantee if we don't, don't do a lot, um, this decade exponentially, it's not going to be fun for most people in, in the next 10, 15 years.
And there's already too many people struggling.
So for me, I don't focus on the 21,500 plus blockchains out there.
I focus more on the low energy ones, the refi ones, and the ones that are, you know, really focused on the solutions and stuff.
And so that's what I'm going to be doing is, is what talking to people and educating them about the best of the best, the ones that are actually supporting more social justice, lowering pollution and, and solutions and helping to onboard people and to have them earn crypto in a lot of different ways.
Yes, Sarah, I would love to hear also, uh, from, from your perspective and, and the work and, and regenerate work on, on this topic.
Yeah, I think we look at, you know, environmental restoration, you know, through definitely the lines that have been discussed, but a lot of the ways in which, um, our protocol operates are really holding in the perspective of land is in direct relationships.
to the humans that live on it, all across the globe.
And these are different people with different cultures and different technical abilities and different capacities for governance and different languages.
And that it's really important to ensure that when we're talking about ecological regeneration, that we are starting that conversation by understanding the needs of the land stewards.
So there's a lot of tools that we build to try to make the participation of the land steward in being paid for their ecological impact, simpler and faster and easier.
But for me, the most important power of web three will not just be tools that bring things to market and not just, you know, banking the unbanked and making the technical aspects easier.
But using the blockchain governance mechanism, which in the world of region network, we are our own protocol, we have our own community of governance.
And making sure that when we're defining ecological impact standards, when we're defining social impact standards for a particular place or project, that the communities that are implementing that project, and who own those spaces day in and day out, that they are not only just a part of that governance decision making process around how a project will be implemented on their land.
But that they own that governance, but that they own that governance, but that they own that governance, that they have the technical capacity to participate as the governors of their community land, essentially.
And so, within the world of region network, there's a number of different organizations, one of which is called region foundation.
And what they were tasked with in our white paper was to take one third of the original 100 million region tokens that are their governance utility tokens, and to hold them essentially in a trust to build a program called community supported endowment.
So what they're doing is they're finding communities across the globe.
That have to have to be held in perpetuity in order to bring everyone who is a land steward and a scientist and someone who is affected by that environmental impact or that climate science to be a part of our whole network's governance mechanism.
And to ensure that when we make decisions as a whole community about what we build and what we serve, that essentially a third of that vote is going to be long term, at minimum, these communities of practice on the ground.
So to me, patterning for governance, but also holding a real sense of, you know, logic, if someone doesn't have a bank account, getting them set up with a Kepler wallet or a MetaMask is like a world of challenge.
If someone, you know, if someone isn't already in some sort of community governance decision making for their community garden, you know, are they going to understand on-chain proposals?
There's a lot of gaps here that we can't make assumptions about, but I do dream of a world where we are taking capital and we're taking decision making power and we're distributing that out to the communities that manage land all across the globe.
It says that they are empowered by that economic shift, but they're also empowered as decision makers at that table.
And to me, with this intersection of Web3, if we don't do that well, we're just another, you know, carbon trading platform.
And that's frankly boring and not interesting to me.
So maybe I'll pause there because I do think it's just really important to think about how communities can be empowered through Web3 because of the tooling and the processing and the culture.
In a way that supports a lot of existing community decision making processes that, you know, we often have under the surface that could come out into the light and be a part of a bigger community decision making environment.
Incredible.
Thanks so much for bringing that up, like the importance of really giving the power and the governance back to the people that are actually doing the work and the regeneration and building the communities and the impact.
It's amazing.
And I just thought of maybe Magenta, you want to add to that and talk about like Bloom and what you're doing?
Oh, sure.
Um, yeah, one thing we've found, um, so we're, we're sort of like a cyber physical social network, uh, just to explain that context.
There's like local hubs around the world.
Most of them are actually urban.
Um, some of them are rural.
They're kind of like decent, almost like decentralized eco villages slash civic participation networks.
Um, but one thing we're finding is a lot of these folks have really solid in-person governance practices and really tight relationships.
Like they're having dinner with each other sometimes once a week or something, you know, like they're not going to go on chain to make a decision.
Um, so one of the things we found as we were getting closer to actually implementing Dow tech, um, is as far as the local blooms go, it's turning out.
It's going to be more effective to have them use a multi-signature wallet to make decisions about where to allocate capital that they do have access to and have aggregated through grants and through like Bloom essentially has like a mechanism to distribute the profits from the cooperative into the local Bloom hubs, into people doing regenerative actions.
Um, so like instead of Facebook, um, so like instead of Facebook making all the money from ads and stuff, our, the money from Bloom goes to the people on the ground.
Um, and yeah, so having the multi-sig wallet for them and maybe snapshot, um, and that's a tool for, and actually snapshot like things are being developed on multiple blockchains now.
Um, but it's basically like a polling tool, but it allows people who are holding the token, um, to, uh, you know, make decisions based on their token holdings or if they hold an NFT.
There's like, I think over 120 different voting strategies.
So you have all these settings for who's, who has more voting weight, why?
So that, that stuff gets into where the tech is actually really helpful, but in many cases, if they have a strong IRL governance process, just like make that decision in person over dinner or like have a, you know, fun in-person experience where you can like talk to each other and, you know, build consensus around what, what are the right moves here.
And then the people who are web three informed then can allocate those funds on chain, um, and, or convert them to fiat capital and distribute them locally.
So it's almost like this bridge between physical structures and digital ones where you rely on the people who are willing to interface and have access to interfacing with the tech, but you don't necessarily require everyone to have that on board.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's super interesting, uh, as well, like, um, this, this point of technology, how can we include them in a way that it's kind of soft and really serves them and not in a way that we are kind of imposed.
And yeah, you need to use, you need to have a wallet, you need to do all this stuff on, on chain and really listen.
Yeah.
From the perspective, what you're doing, how can we support you?
So this was the main question, how can web three support communities, um, regeneration, regenerators, environmentalists, and, and people that are actually, uh, bringing about the change that, that you want to see and restoring our ecosystem.
So we have mentioned already, uh, tokenizing and, uh, the power, uh, of, uh, using blockchain and cryptocurrencies to finance people for the actions, the regenerative actions that we're doing.
And Matthew, you mentioned, uh, picking up, uh, plastic and trash.
And I just remember invite invited, uh, Isaiah from later token here to the space.
Uh, yeah, he just left, but it is a, and the project that is an example of what we do talking about, like they reward people in Nigeria for their later token as they pick up later and trash.
And they, uh, uh, have, uh, um, funded a lot of people through this work.
So this is an example of things you can do in blockchain.
And, uh, Sarah mentioned about the governance, how can we, uh, spread and have a shared, uh, treasury to really strengthen different communities and people around the world and have them as the key, uh, governors of what they do and, and, and to decision-making.
And it's so glad that they brought in, uh, this concept of easing up and understanding what they are doing next and how they are already doing things.
So we can, uh, insert, uh, blockchain technology as a way only to make their life easier.
I wonder, uh, I'm wondering if you have other questions and would like to know more about what you're doing.
I know you had a phrase in your Twitter page about like the importance of educating people with kind of key elements on how they can use web-free and blockchain.
Um, yeah, I'm just wondering like the work that you do and the challenges and if you have like more questions.
Um, I don't have more questions, but I am looking for solutions about how we can create a more sustainable way that goes beyond giving.
Um, because a lot of times when we talk about using crypto in order to provide for basic needs is more of a charity type thing, give crypto.
And then with the crypto, we're able to go and purchase these basic needs like food and shelter and things like that.
But I'm looking for a more sustainable, more regenerative solution.
So we're looking, we're looking at maybe becoming an own, um, validator node.
We're looking at, you know, working with organizations like spiral.
And I was wondering if anybody has any solutions for me so we can look into those types of things that we can do.
So it's almost an automated, automatic, uh, solution rather than reaching out and asking people to give to help out these communities.
Can you share more about what your community use cases are?
Like what's, what's actually happening in these communities and what are you actually looking like?
Either which actions are, would you like to incentivize or what projects are you specifically trying to fund in this context?
Absolutely.
So here in South Raleigh there, we have, um, issues with food insecurity.
There are food deserts, food apartheids here, and we're looking for a way to provide food for individuals who are hungry, starving, um, who, um, don't have enough money to buy for foods in their families, in their households.
And so instead of just asking people to give so that our communities can have food, we're looking for something more sustainable, something a little more automatic, whether it's a crypto drip or something like that.
So we can be able to provide food for needy families.
Um, there's a, I'm going to pop the link in the, as a reply to this space in a second here, but there's a local one called Long Beach Fresh.
They're in Long Beach, California, and they've been, they have some templates up on our site, but basically they've been teaching people, well, and collectively like peer capacity building to do, teach people to form local food businesses.
Um, and so basically creating economic sovereignty, um, um, and the, the crypto can be used to facilitate that, um, but basically, so you're unplugging from reliance on, or, you know, lack of access to, uh, other, other spaces.
And so, you know, how to create a local farm or a community garden or a crop swap and, um, sharing practices with each other.
And like a couple of people mentioned, you know, initially, um, rewarding people with crypto for doing the action.
Um, I think Fabia also has set up, um, a regional tokenomic system.
There's a group called Collectivo as well.
And they're all based around like creating local economies around food sovereignty specifically.
Even if it's like you get permission from the city, there's some empty lot, you get permission to garden on that.
Um, and, uh, there's lots of ways to like get access to lands to make food happen in different spaces.
So I'll stop there.
I'll pop that link in the chat.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate that.
Yeah.
Uh, I can add to that from, from my experience here, uh, in Lula Brazil, we, uh, we support, uh, regenerative farmers and agroecology, uh, producers, uh, through our cryptocurrency.
But we also have like fiat money to do that.
But, but the idea is that we kind of double finance them and, uh, we give some fiat and, and provide some, actually, we kind of buy in advance the products, the production and as a, in a, uh, CSA model.
Uh, and through that, like for the finance incentives and the, the food that they produce based on that, they distribute in our, uh, platform through our social currency.
So people here in Rio Brazil, like in favelas and other communities, vulnerable communities that don't have, as I mentioned before, like they, they don't really have money, get money to, to buy food.
They can buy, uh, food using, uh, agroecology food using our social currency.
So this is kind of what we do in, but we do have some initial, uh, cash and fiat to do that, which is kind of a privilege.
I recognize that, uh, and other, other types of model, it's maybe harder.
For instance, if you want to start fresh, uh, and you don't have like the, um, the, the money to buy equipment and other stuff, it could be kind of more challenging.
But I do know that some, some, uh, there, there's people out there are kind of incentivizing, there's some grants and they're incentivizing people to do this kind of regenerative planting efforts.
So I don't know if Matthew or Sarah wants to, to add to that.
Well, yeah, you know, for me, I've been in this industry for so long that I'm going to continue to work with fiat money.
Um, I mean, you know, we have like a hundred trillion dollar a year industry worldwide and all our, our markets and crypto right now is, you know, trillion dollars plus, you know, with the supporting industries and stuff.
Um, so I really love, you know, to see the, the best of the web three continue to take off this decade.
And I believe that we will be working with trillions of dollars in web three and regenerative finance over the years here.
Um, and so, yeah, working with people in rural areas is something I'm very big on, uh, internationally.
And so, yeah, you know, being able to give them fiat, if that's what they need, or even, you know, like, you know, work for food type thing, you know, if people have some spare time, they can, you know, do a cleanup and get food or plant trees and get food, um, stuff like that.
So there's, you know, there's so much creativity that I've seen in web three.
So yeah, I know some people are, you know, just want to work with crypto and web three, but I really feel that we have to work with the best not-for-profits and the best corporations around the world.
And, and, and work with the local communities and, and give them what they need that works for them, um, versus trying to say, yeah, you've got to have a crypto wallet in order for us to reward you.
So that's some, some things that I'll be working with, with people as well.
Nice.
I know that Ed just joined us.
Welcome.
Do you have any questions or comments or conversation?
Sure.
I thought I'd share some thoughts.
Yes.
Um, as Matt, Matthew mentioned, I've been working with the regenerative ag movement for many decades.
Since we realized in the late sixties and early seventies, that as farmers, we were being told to do practices that weren't producing food anymore.
We had just disconnected our plants and animals from the soil.
And we were just treating them with chemicals.
And so we saw the decline in our food.
We saw in the nutrient density and spectrum of it, the taste of it, the, uh, degradation of our farmlands, our erosion of our top soils.
And so, um, regenerative agriculture comes from really a long soil health movement created by farmers and farmers working together.
Farmers are individuals.
We don't, we're not part of companies that have offices and factories all over the world or something like global food sort of is thought of.
We have, we have our own little piece of land, our own ecosystem.
We have the ecosystem around us and, and we're very collaborative.
We never thought of ourselves as being competitive only in a very friendly way.
So we worked together for many years to develop what is now known as regenerative ag.
We didn't even real, we've never wanted to name it.
Um, we didn't want to call it all natural in the sixties or seventies.
We didn't want to call it sustainable.
Even law is one of the first to really use that term, but it's been changed or regenerative because that really misses out on the complexity of ecosystems and food and growing food and nutrition and how it's gotten to people and decentralization of the food system.
So, but we've made incredible progress and you don't hear about it in the news, but in the United States where I mostly work, while I connect with people over the world, um, it's just a booming thing.
People don't realize it's happening, especially with farmers at scale, because as much as I was a very small farmer doing intense quality and looking at epigenetics, which is local adaptability.
Of the plants and animals that we raised, um, I realized that to really get change, it needs to be with a lot of the medium and larger scale farmers around the world, because once they change, then the control of the system by the interests that want to keep it under control and not give farmers a voice, um, that would, that would then help.
It would convince, you know, uh, it would convince, you know, that instead of USDA or power saying, you know, well, the majority of farmers are doing this, you know, Bill Gates style of biotech and everything.
Um, that no, this is a farmer movement and this is a people's movement.
It's a decentralization movement.
And so I've just been connecting with the whole crypto community because you're into regenerative finance, you're into regenerative regeneration in general, you're into ecosystems and nature.
And so that's the connection we need, um, forever going to create, uh, decentralization of the food system.
We're going to need infrastructure.
So going to local banks to say, I mean, we need a place to store food.
We need a place to do some minimal processing.
Um, the present system isn't into that.
They're supporting the centralization of food.
And of course, the communities, the farther away that centralization is away from you, the harder it is for, for people to get food that are hungry.
And so the more localized it is, the more that you can work together with your local system.
And we now have technology of communication.
So we can connect all these little networks of local systems because at the root of regenerative agriculture is we've sort of made a foundation of, we look at the five principles of soil health that are universal around the world.
Nature works basically the same all over the world.
So that's our universal language, but then we added what we call context and that's the local context.
That's the culture, that's your weather, that's the economic system.
And so it really fits with, I think, everything that in the crypto or refi, the good, good part of the movement is really trying to do.
And so that's why I try to bridge these two movements together, because I think that's really where it needs to happen.
It needs to work with, you know, basically individuals.
As much as we organize into organizations, we have to be a little careful not to get that organization.
Because what we found is as organizations grow and grow and grow, they're less flexible.
They're less individual representation.
They become power structures.
And so we want to avoid that.
That's what farmers have learned over the years.
It's why you don't find like, where are all these regenerative farmers coming from?
You know, where's the big organization?
We don't really have a big organization.
We just organize as individuals.
And anybody who's dedicated will do that.
People that aren't dedicated, maybe we'll just get involved with a giant organization.
And then you're really doing anything.
So I'll leave it at that.
But I thought I'd share what we're doing in the regenerative agriculture from farmers perspective movement.
Well, thank you so much for joining and sharing your wisdom.
Thank you so much.
It's so important to hear.
And as you were speaking, I was thinking so many things.
Mentioned a lot about the health of the soil.
The soil is a living thing.
And it just reminded me that I put Gaia Regeneration in the title.
And then later with the CG team, I realized not everybody knows what Gaia means.
And it totally relates to what you were saying about interconnectedness of our planet and understanding that Gaia is actually a system, a living system of different ecosystems and microbiotes and all the things that are connected and interacting to form this planet that we live in.
And so we are deeply dependent on each other and part of this whole.
So, yeah, I was just thinking about that and I forgot to explain what Gaia means to people that are not used to the term.
And it's a Gaia theory from James Lovelock and Lee Margulis.
So, yeah, thanks for bringing this up.
And I really, when I thought about this space, I really wanted to invite people that are not into refined movement yet.
So they can see and understand how they could benefit from being part of the movement.
So there were a lot of really good insights already.
So for us to finalize, I would love to hear from each of you some key tips, like what you would just say for someone that is completely new to the space and wanting to be part of it.
Like what would be the main steps lower would say, yeah, that's the thing you should do first.
And how would you guide them into diving deeper into refined movement?
And yeah, what would be the tips for people new to the space?
Well, one thing I would say is, you know, you can do a search in the search Twitter, do hashtag refi.
And then take a look at the different things that pop up there.
You know, the Regenerate Network is doing great.
Definitely follow them.
But yeah, then just, you know, see whatever your interest is, because there is there's a lot of refi things out there and there's a lot of spaces out there.
And so, you know, connect with the communities that work, you know, in your area or that you're passionate about, because there's a lot of things, a lot of things happen right now.
One of the things that I tell people when they ask me, Contessa, how did you get into refi?
How can I get into refi?
Understand there's a lot of information out there and a lot of it, it can be overwhelming and it can be extremely technical.
And you may feel like that you don't belong in this space.
There are some times where I'm like, is this really where I'm supposed to be?
Yeah, because sometimes I feel like I'm having a different conversation than everyone else is having in this space.
And I want to encourage you, if you feel like you don't belong, that you do.
If you feel like that people are talking about things and you seem to be talking about something different, keep talking, keep showing up, keep asking questions.
My inbox is always open, and if I don't know the answer to something, I can reach out and start asking questions for you.
But know that you are needed in this space and that there is space for you here.
So beautiful.
Yeah, to add to that, I think that it's blockchain can be bewildering.
And there's a lot of stuff going on and it's all very technical.
So I recommend that when people are coming into this space, they carry the same lens that they do locally.
You know, community garden participation is local.
You're making local decisions.
There are tools to receive benefits for the outcomes of your local actions.
And it's really important to ask the question, what is my use case?
Like, what am I really building in the real world?
And then what technology can help to serve that or fund that or make that more public or transparent?
And it's at those intersections where there are some amazing tools that really exist uniquely in Web3 for funding, for public decision making,
that I really do think are designed to help these movements.
And it will just take a long time for farmers to be more comfortable with more technology in general.
And there's a lot of baseline education that I think we as a Web3 community in ReFi need to do to non-Web3 communities in the way that we speak,
the tone that we use, the words that we use.
And we need to really be willing to always start back at the beginning with someone who is interested in learning more to make sure that this environment is as accessible as possible.
Because I think our personal perspectives as people in tech, you know, we always assume that, well, maybe we don't.
But I think a lot of people assume that most people have a certain technical baseline.
You know, we assume people can use computers and phones.
But that's not the case all over the world.
And I think we forget that a lot.
And we need to kind of come down out of the clouds to be able to be of service to communities they practice more directly.
I guess the concluding thing I have to share is the example of low interest loans in this space.
Like the first time I heard you could put up some of your, well, crypto collateral.
I think there's other ways to do it too and have like far under a 1% interest rate for a loan to, you know,
purchase an affordable community housing or a piece of land or start a business or some upgrade needed for your business.
That's one of the biggest use cases of this infrastructure because there are no middlemen siphoning value out of that exchange.
It's kind of like automated.
So because it's often challenging to finance projects that regenerate Gaia and ourselves because the dominating economic system is based on, you know, extracting value and life out of things.
And so there's a bunch of tools, I think, in refi that are well suited to help us create financial and ownership and governance flows and autonomy that, you know, circulate resources back within the community instead of it being pulled out.
So there's a lot of, yeah, finance tool, tool sets there for regenerating Gaia and yeah, low interest loans is one really awesome one.
Yeah, thank you so much for Magenta for bringing this up.
Do you have like some recommendations on how people could, could find those projects could, yes, begin understanding how to get those funds?
Well, the only one I've used so far is MakerDAO's, I think they have some different vaults they're called.
One is I think called Oasis and you can put, say Bitcoin or I think Ethereum, they have different vaults into it and then withdraw that stable coin to pay project contributors or, you know, some piece of infrastructure you need to get your business to the next level.
And then once revenue comes in, you can pay it back, and then during that time, anyway, during that time, you don't like, like if the market goes down or something, I forget, if it goes up, like you're not spending your crypto if you're like hodling.
So that's like if you're a crypto native already.
There's an Ethereum Foundation researcher, I think his name is Marcus, I have to go grab it and I'll try to add it to this thread as well.
But he has a solution for low income, low interest loans applied to low income housing.
He's from Guatemala, so it was like designed with that solution in mind.
So I'll tag him in this thread.
It's not fully up and running yet, but it's coming online.
Those are the only ones I'm aware of.
I'm sure there are more out there.
Amazing.
Thank you so much for the resources.
I'm super glad for this conversation.
I think a lot of knowledge was shared and I think also a lot of hope.
It's really, for me, it's really amazing to see how many people are doing and into regeneration, are taking care of ourselves and the planet and making sure that we have a future for the upcoming generation.
So, yeah, thank you so much for being here.
I would like to open up a little for people in the audience.
If you have any questions or any comments, please just request to speak.
And, yeah, if you have also our speakers, thank you so much for joining us.
If you have some final thoughts, yeah, just share here, please.
This has been extremely informative.
I appreciate all of the resources, the thoughts, the conversations.
I am always trying to be in spaces like this because every time I show up, I learn something new.
I'm going to be going down a rabbit hole for the rest of this week, looking up all the resources and the names and the systems and the tools to see what our next steps are going to be.
So I appreciate everyone in this space.
Thank you all for participating here today and hearing about this topic and working in your own local communities to create the change that you can see that is immediately around you and within your life every day.
Yeah, so I think that's it.
Thank you so much, Matthew, Sarah, Ed, Contessa, Magenta, and everybody listening to us.
I hope that somehow this conversation sparkles into other actions and education and find its way.
Oops, we got someone requesting to speak.
Okay, disapproved.
Hi, Klaben.
Do you have a question for us?
Comment?
Klaben, can you hear us?
We were just finalizing the space.
So, yeah, if you cannot speak, I would just, yeah, just finalize.
And thank you so much, everybody.
Yeah, have a great day and keep regenerating and keep the good and amazing work that you're doing.
Thank you so much.
Bye.
Thank you, Flavia.
Thank you, everybody.
Yep, thanks, everybody.
