Community Interview with Gregory Landua of Regen, April 16th
Hey everyone, we did a community interview (aka AMA) with Gregory Landua of Regen Network just a little bit ago and he had some really engaging questions asked to him, and responded with such insight and vision, so I wanted to transcribe this up for those of you that missed it.
This AMA was the day after the mainnet launch which was April 15th, Gregory seemed elated after the launch and you can feel his excitement in his responses, “Pretty inspired from our launch event yesterday with over 500 participants to witness a flawless decentralized network launch. In under 10 seconds the validators brought Regen Ledger to life! The worlds first public ecological ledger. You can catch the video of the livestream event here if you missed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYLTCZQXdIg”
🌱 Regen Network
💌 Contacts
Q: What plans does Regen have to work with and contact smaller land owners? How are they bridging the gap between the tech aware crypto-ers and small farmers etc?
A: We are super committed to supporting small holder farmers. There are some big hurdles to doing so…including monitoring cost. The most effective way for small holders to engage with Regen Network and really the world as a whole (markets etc) is to organize into a cooperative. If we can aggregate farms in a region, we can lower monitoring and verification cost and qualify farmers for ecosystem service payments much more effectively. Also our open source tools can be used to build contract and credit types on a local scale and avoid costly third party monitoring all together if there is a peer to peer web of trust to build a community verification system for claims and credits. That’s my personal hope. Honestly Regen Token holders are more incentivized to support these grassroots approach than large mega corporate and governmental credit systems so I hope our community dives in to innovate along those lines.
Q: The Regen Network launched to mainnet yesterday, very exciting! How did the validators perform, was there anything that stuck out the most on the technical side of things?
A: The network was up and running in less than 10 seconds. it was INCREDIBLE. That is, I believe, a record for a decentralized launch. The reason for this incredible performance is all the hard work in testnets leading up to our launch, and the level of professionalism of the validator community.
Q: What made Regen network choose Cosmos as their blockchain out of all the other options out there? What stood out the most about Cosmos for you?
A: There were really several things that stood out about Cosmos:
Community: There are over 200 chains building with cosmos sdk now, and over 100billion dollars secured with the technology. The community is friendly, helpful and not tribalistic. The Cosmos version of maximalism is centered around sovereignty, cooperation, and an agnostic approach :use what works!)
Docs: When we got doing, cosmos had by far the best docs of any projects out there. As a community we’ve innovated the tech so fast we have to catch back up with that standard, but at the beginning that was a factor.
Ethics: Cosmos community is dedicated to empowering communities to express their own rules via tendermint consensus to run a state machine.
Performance: For security, availability, and scalability there is really nothing to compete with the cosmos sdk. With the new Stargate upgrade and IBC online, I really dont think there is any blockchain app development framework that is even close. Of course it’s not always been this way, but the openness of the community to contribution is part of what’s grown the tech to be where it is at.
Humility: For all the community, performance and assets staked, the cosmos community continues to be under the radar, humble and grassroots. We think this is healthy and awesome.
I did a write up about our process a while back: you can read it here: https://medium.com/regen-network/how-to-choose-a-blockchain-55a343fd7ec4
And our CTO Aaron and I wrote this piece about the future of the cosmos SDK (and our role as the lead maintainer of this awesome software) https://blog.cosmos.network/stargate-architecting-v-0-40-of-the-cosmos-sdk-dd8cb3de8360
Q: I’m curious about the relationship between the validator community and application development. What are some of your hopes with respect to the validator community regarding supporting and testing new application development on Regen Ledger?
A: Our hope is that the validator community will be engaged with developing and supporting value adding applications on regen ledger and participating strongly in governance to have a healthy and vibrant community. Engagement with governance, building new apps to engage users, and generally having a strong community spirit are all attributes we are excited to foster among the already fantastic and professional validator community.
Q: You mentioned that it can be pretty intensive to engage in the CarbonPlus credit class, what kind of tooling do you see being created in the near future to make the process easier?
Will smaller farmers be able to participate in this if there was some kind of cooperative built to engage with them?
I know it’s just getting started, but what is your vision for Regen for the next couple of years?
A: We are working on a suite of digital monitoring, reporting and verification tools and digital signature infrastructure to make it easy to assemble claims, verify them and mint credits and other assets. For now there is a lot of work to do things the right was and get the supporting data on-chain, but as we built the infrastructure out this will be more and more seamless.
Q: What about ecological NFTs? Is Regen Network planning on enabling the creation of NFTs?
A: 100% excited about green NFTs.
There are three parts of this:
making it easy to mint NFTs in cosmos to leverage PoS instead of PoW.
making it easy to offset NFTs and other assets minted on PoW chains, and migrate them over IBC to cosmos
creating a curated NFT gallery for Regen Network itself. Our credit module is already a fractional NFT system, and we are excited to combine that with an NFT module for art, bear instruments and all the amazing possibility of non fungible tokens to express creative agreements, conjure scarcity and power a regen meme revolution.
Q: Do you see interest from farmers from all over the world or in specific areas/countries?
A: The entire world! We are focused right now on North and South America because there are some community members who have target ecosystems they’d like to focus on: the Amazon, and the Great Plains of North America. We are excited to add those bioregions to Western Australia and the work we’ve done in California. But really things get exciting when the community starts engaging to bring eco-credits from around the world!
Q: Looking ahead a few years, where and how do you see the Regenerative movement landing within the exploding blockchain industry? How might DeFi be made regenerative? Do you see a role for DAOs and the DAO to DAO networks in the context of the tokenization of nature?
A: I think ensuring that landscapes themselves, indigenous peoples, small holder farmers and scientists are all included in DAO based governance of the ReFI and DeFI infrastructure being born right now is essential to this not just being a giant natural capital bubble. Either we will transform the economy now in a very radical way to value living systems and health, or we wont…and the biosphere may collapse. So it’s important we learn the lessons of the past and make the financial systems that are engaged with tokenizing and valuing nature are rooted firmly in participation, and we design the token economy to value the intrinsic, to fund and value public goods, and to empower agency and community.
Those are all lofty statements I am aware: but they are really foundational to our success. The natural capital market is going to be on a 50 year bull run (already started). The question is not if natural will become valuable. it is HOW the system will work, and if we will manage to maintain the qualitative with the quantitative, maintain commons and community integrity with market forces, and in fact bring those two seemingly “opposing” forces together into a new synergy that is Regenerative.
Q: Gregory, I’m curious how you see a Blockchain Native Carbon Verification system upgrading current carbon markets?
A: There are a couple of key ways:
The first is reducing the price of auditing a claim. Current carbon markets are very expensive to audit. It takes millions of dollars to get verification done and credit issues, and a lot of capital to run an audit. This means that there is lots of shady shit happening with double counting, false claims etc.
Using a native blockchain approach means you can always see: who is saying what about where, when, using what methodology.
This sets up the whole system from the start to be transparent and have much lower cost associated with auditing and verification for an asset or a claim.
Over time, our goal is to reduce the cost of auditing a claim to as close to zero as possible. This will create competitive dynamics around real claim rigor and especially ensure price reflect the quality of the credit itself.
Q: First, I want to say that I really love the Regen Project. I have a permaculture dream myself, inspired by Masanobu Fukuoka, and I will be on Regen Network as soon as I have some land. Also, I wanted to congratulate you and the team on the sale of the CarbonPlus Grasslands Credits to Microsoft. That is truly awesome.
I saw on the website that you plan for the world’s farmers to use Regen Network, which is fantastic. That being said, in my mind Regen Network has a niche market because it uses emerging technologies in a space where people are traditionally set in their ways. I know this is beginning to change more and more with increased awareness of permaculture, soil health, pesticides, fertilizers, etc.
My question has multiple parts (or maybe it is just multiple questions, either way):
I know that over 200 farmers have already signed up, how did they find out about the project?
a) was it resource intensive to find and educate them about Regen Network?
b) How did they react initially when you told them about the project?
c) What is their feedback?
d) I have this same series of questions involving selling _CarbonPlus_ Credits to governments, institutions and organizations. I imagine that the farmers can easily imagine their incentive for making the land better, but what about selling the credits to buyers? Is that an uphill battle?
2. What can the community around Regen Network and the community within the larger cosmos ecosystem do to help contribute to the project? I know that the common answer to this question is to build awareness online, etc. but I’m wondering if there are any other ways the Regen Network plans on building a passionate, dedicated, and committed community?
Thank you for your time. Love the project!
A: Lot’s of great questions here. I will try to take them one by one.
Farmers signing up:
At this stage we actually have well over 600 farmers signed up as interested. We are working with them to understand if they qualify for the CarbonPlus program. Farmers have come to us pretty organically because much of our team comes from an agriculture and permaculture background. After the Microsoft sale we had a flood of interest. We’ve spent exactly 0 dollars marketing to land stewards so far.
It is fairly intensive to engage with land stewards for the CarbonPlus credit class due to the high bar of data collection and our rigorous methodology. Most farmers are not yet familiar with the ins and outs of carbon markets from the data collection or contract side of things, and it takes a little time to work folks through. Luckily the financial upside is so high that it is well worth everyone’s time. We have a Land Steward coordinator who works directly with land stewards to answer questions, and ensure we are building tools that meet their needs.
Most land stewards are pretty stoked about getting paid for ecological outcomes like carbon sequestration.
At this stage our early land steward adopters are pretty sophisticated and engaged, supporting us to build out tools for farmers and land stewards who may be more new to regenerative agriculture. We are pretty closely engaged so there is a lot of back and forth to make sure things are working for them.
Most farmers have zero resistance to selling credits. It is an extra product for them.
Re: contribution. We are absolutely dedicated to building a passionate, dedicated and committed community. Stay tuned for opportunities for engagement! Meme competitions, governance proposals, docs and contributions for application development. Soon we hope to be able to launch a regeNFT art gallery, and enable community eco-agreements and eco-credits so that folks can engage with climate positive action, and community building at home. Bring your ideas to discord and co-create! It’s an open source community driven projects so your passion is the fuel for regeneration! https://discord.gg/qE7xUMd
Q: I understand Regen and Chorus One have worked together to reduce their validator carbon footprint. What can validators do today that can help them offset their carbon emissions? Are there any other validators in Cosmos Hub or other networks that have done similar work involving Regen?
Is there any way Regen Network can help to reduce the Bitcoin emissions?
I’ve recently learned about another project building with Cosmos called BitCanna, they are targeting the cannabis industry. That had me thinking about the possibility of Regen verifying marijuana plantations. What are your thoughts on that idea?
Are there any involvements with forestry projects? What is the capacity of Regens involvement?
Aside from Regen Network developments what other projects in Cosmos are you most excited about?
Do you have any book recommendations?
I know time might be a factor but what about a mishap in the woods story? Any crazy wildlife encounters or close calls?
A: Awesome questions!
- Regen Network can help Offset bitcoin emissions with natural climate solutions like our CarbonPlus credits. We can also support a registry and emissions tracking system and help move mining to greener energy and are working on some industry working groups.
-Chorus really took the lead on offsetting their emissions, and so far several validators have expressed interest, but Chorus remains the 1 and only!)
-Ultimately we’d LOVE to see the whole cosmos HUB and other protocols offset at a protocol level. It will be more efficient and effective: although for the time being: support validators who are taking leadership to offset and reduce emissions
-BitCanna is awesome and yes we’d be happy to see Regen Ledger and our tools used to build an App monitoring and verifying marijuana plantations for regenerative outcomes and GhG sequestration or Emissions.
-We are working on forestry based CarbonPlus methodology development as well as finalizing a curated list of forestry credits produced by other systems that we feel are of the quality we demand for a credit to be listed on the Regen Registry. Expect Regen Carbon Plus Forestry credits for amazonian forest conservation, reforestation and agroforestry coming soon (by the end of the year or sooner).
-The Cosmos Ecosystem is so full of fantastic projects. We are very excited to see the Hub continue to upgrade itself to play it’s role as an epicenter empowering the ecosystem with Gravity Dex and Bridge. We are stocked about Althea, a fantastic project bringing internet the last mile and empowering community owned ISPs. We are stoked about IXO a sister sustainability platform, we are excited to see the Osmosis vision for governable liquidity pools, we are looking forward to LazyLedger’s approach to rollups and there are so many other things happening as well. We are 100% bullish on the cosmos ecosystem and all the fantastic things happening. Kudos to Akash, Kava, Sentinel, Terra and others for their fantastic work leading the way for zones beyond the Hub to provide value.
-Book recommendations: The Ministry for The Future by Kim Stanley Robinson.
-I have plenty of great mishap in the woods stories! recently in the lead up to main net I have been practically tied to by chair in front of the computer. LOL. Last year I was out for a walk and walked between a bear mama and her cubs and ended up climbing a tree. That was pretty exciting. :)
Q: Thoughts on energy intensity of blockchain vs holochain?
A: It’s a bit of a false dichotomy. We talking PoW blockchain? PoS blockchain? How many nodes are we hoping to maintain in consensus about time and data integrity? Using a DHT like holo is complimentary with blockchain, not really either or. In the case of an energy comparison between PoW and PoS consensus algos in blockchain, PoS is about 14000X more efficient. A PoS blockchain’s yearly GhG emissions are a rounding error on a large PoW network.
Q: What other projects in the ecosystem are you working with? Any new partnerships or projects we should know about?
A: We are stoked to have partnerships with ixo, althea and celo! Details will be forthcoming. We’ve also been working with some folks on validator and protocol level carbon accounting and offsetting, offsetting NFTs and offsetting bitcoin. It should be a busy quarter for announcements!
