Go to https://wallet.keplr.app/chains/regen, search for Chorus One from the list of validators, and click on it.
Go to https://wallet.keplr.app/chains/regen, search for Chorus One from the list of validators, and click on it.
Enter the amount you want to stake (leave some amount in your wallet to pay for the fees)
Click on the Delegate button
Click on Delegate and then Approve the transaction in your wallet/ledger. You're now staking with Chorus One!
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NCT tokens are backed by nature-based ecocredits issued on the Regen Ledger blockchain in a 1:1 ratio. Ecocredits are converted into IBC-compliant tokens for use in the Interchain economy. NCT basket tokens may be exchanged for ecocredits, which can be retired using a REGEN wallet address on the Regen Ledger.
Regen Ledger provides a network dedicated to monitoring, verifying and contracting or paying for ecological health outcomes would be impossible. For these, smart contracts, secure payments and a robust data verification framework is needed.
Regenerative Finance aligns economic incentives with regeneration. Regeneration is the growth of vitality, viability and evolutionary capacity of a system.
Find more here
Climate change is not a new phenomenon and no country is spared from its pangs. Governments & institutions have been slow in tackling it and the results are for everyone to see. The devastating hurricanes in the Atlantic, the extended droughts in the West, and the horrific floods in South Asia are all examples of the increased intensity of natural disasters due to climate change. Though there has been a gamut of initiatives that have promised to fight climate change, one of the most promising ways has been the use of carbon credits.
Carbon credits are a type of environmental commodity or certificate that companies and individuals can trade that represent carbon dioxide that’s kept out of the atmosphere by some act of conservation like reforestation. By putting a price on carbon emissions, carbon credits can help to internalize the costs of climate change and encourage businesses and individuals to find ways to reduce their emissions. Additionally, carbon credits can be traded on a market, which allows for the flexibility to find the lowest-cost emissions reductions and to reward those who are able to achieve the largest reductions. But the carbon credit market has long suffered from issues like lack of transparency, double counting, and/or creative accounting.
Tokenizing these carbon credits on the blockchain is obviously a better solution since the credits can’t be sold/traded once they’re retired, the data is publicly verifiable, and immutable too. That’s why Chorus One collaborated with Regen Network, a platform that originates digital carbon assets unlocking regenerative finance in the world of web3 to offset our carbon footprint for the years 2021 and 2020. We run and operate nodes for Proof-of-Stake networks that are extremely energy-efficient compared to, say, Bitcoin, but that’s not the end of it. We calculated our approximate CO2 emissions for the last 2 years by estimating our team’s device usage, travel to company retreats and conferences, emissions by the data centers we utilize, etc.
This also contributes to the Cosmos ZERO Carbon Campaign, an Interchain Foundation initiative for the entire Cosmos ecosystem to achieve net-zero carbon emissions for their network validator node infrastructure and operations.
CosmosZERO is the first all-ecosystem governance process, and not only keeps Cosmos at the cutting edge of competitive advantage with protocol governance leading the way across the ecosystem to offset our carbon but also is helping usher into the IBC ecosystem the new asset class of interchain carbon credits, which many believe will be uncorrelated with the crypto cycles —
Gregory Landua, Co-founder, Regen Network
We arrived at a total of 130 tons and used the Regen Marketplace to retire an equivalent amount of CO2 via The Mai Ndombe REDD+ Project and The Kasigau Corridor REDD Project. Regen Marketplace was recently launched and allows individuals and institutions to buy, sell, and retire on-chain ecological assets in a few clicks. You can view Chorus One’s portfolio of retired eco credits here.
We hope to encourage more organizations to retire their carbon offsets on-chain. At the end of the day, we have to remember that this planet is the only one we have and we have to do our part to protect it.
Regen Network uses blockchain to solve problems seldom-found in carbon credit marketplaces now of double-counted carbon credits and unaccountable parties not enduring penalties for not following protocol. Regen Network has opted to use Cosmos SDK to build a blockchain that is able to track the provenance of carbon credit issuance and exchange.
Please note that the unstake period is 21 days. This means that you can only unstake and withdraw coins to your wallet after this time has passed. We wish you profitable staking!
In case you don't have the keplr extension installed in your browser visit https://www.keplr.app/ and click on Install extension.
Click on Install Keplr for Chrome if you are using a Chrome browser or Brave if you are using the Brave browser and follow the installation instructions.
Click on the extension in the Chrome/Brave toolbar and the following page will open up.
In case you do not have an existing Keplr account you can create a new account
You will be shown 12 words as your mnemonic seed. Select24 words option for a more secure mnemonic. Back it up securely (read the warning below)
Back up your mnemonic seed securely.
Enter an account name and a passphrase to unlock your wallet. You will be asked for the mnemonic again. Enter the 24 words in order. This is to make sure you remember the mnemonic.
Finally, click on Next to create your account
Regardless of whether you already have an account or if you created it just now you may now click on the extension to view your address or visit https://wallet.keplr.app/#/akashnet/stake to see the full dashboard.
If you don't already have REGEN in your account fund it with some tokens. You may use an exchange to transfer the REGEN tokens to your address or get it from someone who already holds those.
To stake click on the Regen network in the left panel and click on Stake
You will be shown a list of validators with whom to stake on the right side. Scroll to Chorus One and click on Manage.
A modal with Chorus One's description will pop up. Click once on Delegate to enter the amount of tokens you want to stake.
Clicking on Delegate again will take you to Keplr wallet for approval. Approve the transaction and you will be able to see your stake.
There is a 21-day unbonding process for staked REGENs during which delegator REGENs do not earn rewards and cannot be transferred, exchanged, or spent. REGENs can, however, be slashed during the unbonding period.
After some time you will see rewards getting accumulated in your account. You can simply go to the Keplr extension to claim them.
The Cosmos vision is one of many application-specific blockchains interoperating with each other. It is the belief that creating domain-specific, sovereign ecosystems will often prove more suitable than building on a shared, general purpose blockchain substrate like Ethereum. But how does value accrual work in such a system? What domains could provide enough value to justify the cost of needing to operate their own blockchain?
Regen Network is building a network focused on ecological regeneration. The goal is to provide tools to actors in the climate finance industry and turn them into stakeholders of the Regen ecosystem.
Regen is a Proof-of-Stake blockchain built on the Cosmos SDK with a staking token $REGEN that recently (on April 15, 2021) launched its mainnet supported by 50 independent validators. This token could accrue value from levying fees on ecological assets originated and secured on-chain, and from transaction fees paid by users paying for services on the network. Data from the recent explosion of decentralized finance protocols and associated governance tokens allow us to get insight into how the market is valuing such tokens.
But first, one might wonder what kind of assets would be secured on the Regen Network and what kind of transactions may take place. This post will take a look at the initial use case of a registry for carbon credits and then discuss two hypothetical valuation methods: one based on discounted cash flows from transaction fees and one based on comparable DeFi protocols, and their respective market capitalization in relation to the assets locked in their smart contracts (TVL).
The Regen Ledger ultimately is designed to become a platform focused on use cases around the topic of ecological finance, but for this analysis we will focus on the first application built by the Regen team, which is a registry for carbon credits.
Carbon credit markets are opaque and private; there are lots of problems that a shared, public market could solve. If you are interested in learning about the how and why, the Regen whitepaper goes into these problems in-depth in section 4.2.1.
Even though there is a lack of transparency and many scattered markets, it is clear that carbon markets, in their totality, are huge. Corporations, governments, NGOs, and public blockchains are all adapting to a new standard of carbon sensitivity. Analysts looking into the topic provide wide ranges of estimates, which can be used as a basis for valuation attempts. In particular, one can assume global trading of carbon credits to amount to $278bn in 2021, an amount that is based on data and growth rates observed in recent Refinitiv studies that also aligns with earlier research conducted by the Regen team. The carbon market has experienced high growth in recent years due to a heightened awareness of climate change and the increasing importance of needing to find a solution.
To understand how capturing this market might translate to value appreciation in REGEN tokens, one needs to first understand the dynamics in a Proof-of-Stake network. While initially, most Proof-of-Stake networks bootstrap their security through token issuance (mostly referred to as inflation), the long-term assumption is often that transaction fees levied within the network should compensate stakers for putting their capital to work. Following this, the price of a staking token could be derived using discounted cash flow valuation. Many analysts in the crypto space have attempted these kinds of valuations, an example from 2018 by John Torado on the REN token can be found here. Using this approach, the Regen Network could accrue significant value depending on the market share of the $278bn carbon credit market that it can capture and its ability to levy a fee on originations and trading of those credits.
As mentioned in the introduction, a plethora of DeFi protocols and associated tokens allow us to get a sense of how the market values governance tokens based on the total value locked within the associated protocol. CoinGecko e.g. is tracking the Market Cap to TVL Ratio for different protocol tokens. Using this comparable approach, one might also consider valuing the REGEN token based on the total value locked in tokenized carbon credits and other natural capital assets that are originated and locked in smart contracts on the Regen Network.
So far, we’ve only talked about the single use case of a public registry for carbon credits. We assumed that the Regen Network will become a place in which ecosystem players originate, buy, and sell such credits. Once such agreements are digitized and exist on Regen Network as NFTs, which is how this will technically work, there are many ways in which these tokenized agreements could become used in the digital economy. As an example, tokenized agreements could serve as collateral in decentralized financial applications giving them additional utility, and increasing the potential market and value capture for Regen as the originating chain. An example would be using natural capital assets as lower volatility collateral to borrow stablecoins against. The DeFi ecosystem will benefit in using real-world collateral since they may bring stability to a space that is currently dominated by highly correlated crypto-assets — a topic that another one of our supported networks, Centrifuge, is also working on by bridging trade and decentralized finance.
The Regen Network and its ecosystem is equipped to have a huge impact on climate finance and defi — bridging worlds. We believe a public carbon credit registry that can ensure credits are actually serving their desired cause is a great start to foster permissionless innovation and will lay the foundation for many more use cases in the future. Regen Network mainnet is there and an liquidity and price discovery for REGEN tokens is coming soon! Make sure to follow the channels linked below to stay in the loop.
The time to coordinate to solve climate change, come join us and the Regen community in this endeavor!
About Regen Network
Regen Network aligns economics with ecology to drive regenerative land management.
Website: https://www.regen.network/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/regen_network
Telegram: https://t.me/regennetworkpublic
About Chorus One
Chorus One is offering staking services and building tools and protocols to advance the Proof-of-Stake ecosystem.
Website: https://chorus.one
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chorusone
Telegram: https://t.me/chorusone
Humanity’s strive for economic growth fueled by carbon-based energy sources has led to the warmest 5-year period on record according to a recent report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Our planet’s atmosphere is reaching record high greenhouse gas concentrations and there are no signs of these trends slowing down. It’s becoming clear that major actions are required to avoid an impending crisis.
There are many theories regarding the best way to deliver peaceful social and political change. Most can be grouped into one of the following categories:
Change can and does come from each of these strategies (to different degrees, of course!). They are all useful in their own way. But in this time of climate catastrophe, where urgent action is required, the real challenge is to ensure that the efforts of all these strategies can be channelled so that they can mutually reinforce each other. In this post, we argue that the Regen Network can act as the coordination mechanism to align all of these efforts.
It’s worth noting that the Regen Network didn’t spontaneously arise. It builds on an existing global movement whose origins can be traced back to crypto-anarchism of the late-eighties and early nineties. More recently the thinking behind crypto-anarchism was reborn in communities that formed around the Bitcoin project, particularly with the ideas that led to Ethereum in late 2013. Regen Network is built using technologies from the Cosmos and Tendermint ecosystem, which are grounded in the vision brought forth by Ethereum. There are now tens of thousands (maybe even hundreds of thousands) of developers across the globe working to build out a new internet that is sometimes called Web3 or the decentralized web.
The Web3 philosophy is based on the sovereignty of the individual as a route to political and economic freedom. Projects like Ethereum and Cosmos are also built around ideas of community, where sovereign individuals can achieve their goals by working together with others. This results in new forms of economic interactions mediated by smart contracts, new financial mechanisms (“DeFi”), new social structures (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations or DAOs), new models of democracy and governance, new forms of property rights, etc.
The Regen Network vision starts with the question: what if we could reliably measure the health of every inch of the planet? If we could, then we would notice when things got better or worse in any locality. We could know when soil health improves, when wildlife is reintroduced, when land use is diversified, when water quality improves, when forests are expanded etc. Once we know these things, we can use this information to create incentives rewarding anyone who can make a positive change. This is where capital comes in. Governments, corporations, citizens and communities all have a vested interest in helping to solve this problem. So Regen looks to attract investment capital from those who desperately need to see the problem solved (all of us!) and channel it to the projects that can have the most impact. Various sensors, satellite imagery, drones, data analytics and AI, etc. are used to verify the ecological data. Blockchains provide an open, transparent record of this data and how funds are being spent. The Regen Network is a shared commons: it is owned and operated by the Regen community.
The Regen Network gives us the one thing we are missing right now: trust. We can trust that change is happening as the data is verified at source and recorded on the blockchain. We can trust that the people that are making it happen are getting rewarded appropriately, as smart contracts set the rules regarding how and when people get paid. We can trust that the network cannot be taken over by vested interests, as the governance rules of the system are clear and transparent.
Let’s look at the how Regen fits into the categories of change introduced at the start of this post:
Petitioners are fearless warriors but they face two big challenges: complexity and an aversion to markets. Petitioners typically rely on governments to effect change. But this time governments don’t know how to fix the problem without the wheels coming off the global economy. The solutions required are too complex for any one government to solve and the global systems to manage this (G20, IMF, World Bank, UN) are not equipped to take on the challenge. A failed top-down attempt to reconfigure the global economy could easily slide into global conflict.
So what tools do we have to manage complexity? It turns out we already have a coordination mechanism that has been proven to work on a global scale. It takes inputs from every actor in the system and aggregates that raw data into usable information that is used to make informed decision making. It has enabled sustained growth in human well-being over centuries. This mechanism is called a market.
Unfortunately, petitioners don’t trust markets as they tend to get co-opted by vested interests. Luckily, we now have a solution to this: blockchain technology. The Regen Network uses blockchain technology to build market-mechanisms that are resistant to co-option. These networks are owned and governed by the community. They are carefully designed to avoid attacks by powerful players.
The Regen Network also provides a way for governments to play their part to enable a robust solution to the problem. Governments can’t solve the problem alone, but they can certainly provide funding, supporting infrastructure, regulatory assistance, and rally their citizens behind these efforts.
Localists are the doers. They work hard to get things done. They find solutions that work on a local level. They share these ideas across the Internet with others. Their model has also proved to be effective.
But it’s too slow for what we need right now. And because they haven’t been able to get access to capital, they haven’t been able to scale their ideas.
The decentralized nature of the Regen Network aligns well with the localist approach. With Regen you don’t need to get permission to act. You just need to prove that what you are doing is effective. This aligns well with localists, who are naturally results-focused.
Regen can add value by routing capital to the most effective localists and by providing a mechanism to quickly spread proven models across the globe.
Self-helpers need purpose. They need a mission. They want to build a better life for themselves and those around them. Yes, that includes a safe planet to live in. But they also want a comfortable life for them and their families. A purpose with no income is a life sentence of poverty. So they need purpose that also gives them opportunities to create wealth.
To date all we’ve heard about climate change is that it will cost us. We have to travel less, eat less meat, buy less goods, spend time recycling… It’s all cost and no rewards.
Regen is looking to change that. People should get paid for the value they create. And saving the planet is valuable for all of us. The people who are provably contributing to ecological well-being should be generously rewarded.
The paradigm shift model was proposed by Thomas Kuhn to explain changes in scientific interpretations in the world. The basic idea is that science resists new ideas, until at some point the old interpretation becomes untenable and a sudden and fundamental change occurs. The classic example is the shift from the geo-centric model of the solar system to the heliocentric model of Copernicus.
It is possible that a similar phenomenon is happening with public blockchains, where a new alternative economic and political model is evolving in parallel to our existing social structures. For some people, the old system cannot be reformed. It is destined to lead us to dire ecological consequences. They argue that the only way forward is to build a parallel economic model that can step in to take over from the existing system before it’s too late. In this view, the world will shift over to Web3 once the technology is ready.
Regen Network is one of the most promising projects that delivers on this Web3 vision. For those who believe the current system is doomed, Regen gives them hope and a viable way to contribute to solving climate change.
But you don’t have to be a paradigm-shifter to believe in the Regen vision. For those who think the solution is a pragmatic mix of the existing system with some ideas from Web3, then Regen can also fulfil their needs.
A solution that can align these groups needs to have the following:
The Regen Network has all of the above. They have a viable, credible and pragmatic vision. Regen Network (once it’s fully operational) will show us all a very clear path to contribute in whatever way we can (time, effort, money, education, etc.) Saving the planet gives us all a sense of purpose. Regen channels this purpose into ecological improvement.
You can think of Regen Network as an ecological commitments network. Just like the electricity grid moves electrical power to where it’s needed, their ecological commitments network acts like a grid to route money and effort to where it can have the maximum ecological impact. People plug into the grid. They commit to doing some work that contributes to our ecological well-being. The grid matches them with people who are willing to pay for that task. A binding contract is agreed. Other entities commit to act as auditors. They confirm that commitments were delivered upon by providing proof (e.g. satellite imagery, sensor data). When commitments are verified, the people performing the work are paid.
The solution is powered by blockchain technology, which provides three key enablers that we didn’t have before:
The biggest challenge for the Regen Network to overcome is prejudice within the activist community against market-based approaches to solving the climate crisis.
For a long time, capital has been a dirty word in social activism. For some, money is the fuel of the corruption that protestors have spent decades fighting against. Some contend that the desire to financialize everything has destroyed communities, cultures and the planet. But it’s time to let go of that notion. Capital is not the enemy. Markets are not the enemy. Capital and markets are the solution.
The problem with markets to date is that they were often co-opted to serve the needs of corporations. The rules were crafted to ensure favourable outcomes to those who controlled them. Blockchain networks have changed that. Now anyone can design a market. Anyone can invent their own incentives mechanism and build it in a few lines of code. People can opt into the market mechanism that they believe are the most effective at enabling the change they want to see in the world. This is a profound transformation in the global power structure that the activist community should embrace.
Regen’s vision is to use these new capabilities to build markets based on provable ecological outputs. Avoiding climate catastrophe is a multi-trillion dollar problem. We need a big ambitious vision that can scale. We need a model that can align all stakeholders.
It must channel the energies of the petitioners who can build awareness and spread the word. They can march, lobby, strike to get governments to provide financing for Regen-based projects. Self-helpers will find their life’s purpose and a meaningful way to build wealth for them and their families. These will be the entrepreneurs and individual contributors, the farmers, the data scientists, the IoT experts, the people building AI for analyzing satellite imagery. Localists can plug into the grid and get paid for the work they are doing. They can share this knowledge with other communities across the globe. For sure, some people will only focus on their ability to make money. That could be a global corporation or a poor farmer in sub-Saharan Africa. The Regen Network doesn’t filter people out based on their motivations. The incentives structure and blockchain-enforced rules will ensure that only legitimate activities improving ecological health will be rewarded. People, tools and technology will work together to prevent fraud, scams and collusion.
This is a crisis. It needs urgency. It needs everyone to work together. Regen Network is building the grid that aligns all these efforts at effecting change, and channels them into effective ecological action.
Check out https://regen.network for more information on how you can help.
Regen are currently raising additional funding. If you are a VC, crypto investor or accredited investor, then please visit this page or contact gregory@regen.network for more information.
Chorus One is currently running a validator on Regen’s testnet and will offer staking services on the upcoming Regen Network mainnet. We have partnered with the team building the Regen Network to help fulfill their vision and will own and stake XRN tokens.
Images taken from Wikipedia, a Regen Network slide deck, and Daniel Clay, Markus Spiske, Biegun Wschodni from Unsplash.
Originally published at https://blog.chorus.one on November 5, 2019.
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