Recently, I have been enjoying watching the developments in the “Regenerative Finance” space. Many people are working on new and creative ways to apply Web3 technology to solving important sustainability challenges. A great example is the Moss.Earth NFT  sale offering buyers the ability to purchase a slice of rainforest

I believe that this is an excellent idea and was interested to observe the user feedback on Twitter. Here are the main themes:

  • How do we know we “own” this slice of land?
  • Can we visit our slice of rainforest?
  • Which sub-section of the 50 hectares do I own?
  • Can I go and visit my section?
  • Can I go camping on my section?
  • Do I actually, legally, own it?
  • How do we know someone won’t come chop my rainforest down? 
  • How can we be sure our rainforest is really protected?
  • etc

Moss.Earth published a Medium article to answer questions which demonstrated the legal structure backing this “ownership. 

I wanted to think about some strategies to make this even more appealing for buyers, to encourage more people to purchase such properties. I think we can go much further by adding some metaverse, IoT and analytics elements to the equation.

Digital Twins of Rainforests

Helium

I believe the future of these NFT projects will involve adding more metaverse, IoT and community elements. In particular, I believe taking inspiration from Helium would be valuable (left). 

From past experience in the game industry, I think it is safe to say the following tends to be true:

  • People want to be able to visualize their location and property
  • People want to see who their neighbors are
  • People want to be able to quantify their impact 
  • People want to feel a sense of ownership

I would love to see Moss.Earth or other project create a visualization where I can see who my neighbor is. Another idea would be to register each NFT as an ENS domain with a specific index. The exact coordinates, and location of my NFT of Rainforest could then be encoded precisely and in an addressable manner on the blockchain.  

Ultimately, I should be able to post the link to my “Rainforest Holdings” as a kind of status symbol in my Twitter or other social media. 

Analytics and Impact

green

Another concept would be to add IoT sensors, cameras to any property which are solar powered and accessible. Imagine if you could “check in” on your slice of rainforest to see how it is doing? Even a few sensors here and there would be useful. If it’s mine, I would love to be able to “see how my rainforest is doing.” 

This is where the world of Regenerative Finance and IoT really begin to overlap, in a good way. In fact, the LoRa network being established by Helium might be the ideal way to add any missing connectivity to provide this monitoring. 

I would also like to be able to exactly (or rough estimate) quantify my impact as a carbon offset. If there is any way to deploy sensor hubs to check the rain, other weather conditions and try to “guess” how much carbon my slice of rainforest is devouring on a daily basis and display metrics about that. FileCoin, by Protocol Labs, have a nice project called “FileCoin Green” which allows this sort of analytics.

I am imagining a world where people will be able to tout their “carbon score” as a side product of the amount of rainforest they own as a method of encouraging more sales of such property. 

Neighbors

farmville

Another dynamic which was common in the era of Facebook games such as Farmville is the ability to “visit” your neighbors.

I believe Moss.Earth could unleash powerful network and community effects by enabling people to invite their friends to buy rainforest next door to theirs, and visualize who their next-door neighbor is.

ENS would make all of this possible. 

Tags:

Comments are closed

Posts About …