Thanks for sharing this retrospective and plan for the next steps.
I’m really impressed by the progress that the Climate Collective has made in just one year - and the level of collaboration that everyone brings to the table!
I’m personally excited about how the Climate Collective can help bridge the gap between ReFi and traditional organizations/markets. It’s especially valuable for those members who have already built a solution that’s ready to scale & bring to the market to have an impact.
Thanks for all the amazing work you’re doing, and keep it up!
Provide pioneering and settlement support to the pioneers—is harder than it reads. That’s why we at Senken are full of love and gratitude that we were able to be there in the early days of the collective. The Climate Collective has been a partner in spirit, a helping hand, and the hub of many seed-laying interactions that now gradually bore fruit. We look forward to many more ReFi summers. The only way forward is together
Well done! It has been great working with the Climate Collective and we are looking forward to another successful year!
As far as your questions go, I think it would be nice to do a combination of specific themes and open proposals, just to avoid the potential of an important project being left out because it didn’t fit in with the theme
There is a definite need for stablecoin liquidity pools with deep liquidity for transactions of over $1 Million
CC is on the right track. Just keep up the great work!
I wanted to express my admiration for the Climate Collective Initiative you’ve started – you truly are a guiding light in our community. I’m more than happy to help in any way I can; please feel free to reach out to me whenever you need assistance.
Regarding the questions you asked, here are my thoughts:
I believe it would be beneficial to focus on a specific theme, such as integrating established carbon markets on-chain and positioning Celo as THE platform for institutional trading of carbon.
The question of whether to create new liquidity pools or use existing ones is quite nuanced. Some players, like Toucan and Solid World, base their core business on creating their own liquidity pools. There isn’t a single right answer here; it depends on each project’s specific use case, and we could tap into the community’s knowledge to assess the validity of individual pools and needs. One aspect I’d encourage you to consider is ensuring that there’s an option to provide liquidity into pools with a stablecoin trading pair. If it must be backed by Celo, one approach is to use Celo as collateral in a lending system and borrow stablecoins for the pools, thus avoiding selling pressure on Celo.
Institutional adoption is crucial. The Climate Collective can also help improve the user experience on Celo, as it’s currently challenging to conduct fiat on- and off-ramp transactions on Celo without slippage. Institutions may have concerns about executing $1M+ transactions with 1-2% slippage. The Climate Collective could help attract protocols and exchanges to Celo that would eliminate these slippage issues on stablecoins. Bringing Circle on Celo natively would be a significant step as well.
I hope my suggestions are helpful, and I’m looking forward to contributing to the success of the Climate Collective Initiative. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or need further assistance.
Climate Collective plays an important role in the web3 community by convening those who are working on climate and nature offsets. I have been impressed by their reach and under Anna’s guidance the focus on their efforts on convening with an interoperable climate ecosystem in mind. This is critical for addressing the urgent and complex challenges of climate change. If I, someone that typically works with legacy organizations, has a question about what is happening in the web3 space, I go to Climate Collective.
By bringing together various stakeholders and promoting the adoption of web3, Climate Collective is facilitating the consensus building and knowledge-sharing that can lead to innovative solutions and new pathways for action. It’s a very important niche that Climate Collective advancing climate action relevant to the web3 space.
One-year, great job! As a complement I would have never guessed. To me CC has always come across as long-established thought leaders in the space. So much so, that if I were to contemplate your evolution, I would recommend increasing looking outward. Keep fostering new and exciting climate solutions with grants, etc. but work the Thought Leadership Deliverable to the outside as much as possible. Be the leadership voice in areas new to ReFi, web3 x climate sector, etc.
Many of us in the space generate Blockchain 101 type material, I like that you are adding this into your Strategic Deliverables. A suggestion: lean into the community, we might have the building blocks already in place for an education series.
Climate Collective is a crucial enabler for ReFi. One of Web3’s core value propositions is its interoperability — Climate Collective is critical to coordinating ecosystem-wide coordination. On top of that, they are taking a proactive, informed role in advocating for ReFi tools and products in the circles whose support we need most. Anna’s leadership here, based on her experience, is already tangibly moving our industry forward, and they’re only getting started. Now is the time to put more fuel on the fire.
At Toucan we strongly support the expansion of the grant program — CC grants were instrumental in bringing our project to life, and we believe they can continue to foster growth and depth in the industry. I’d recommend focusing most grant funding on specific themes — @tim and I discussed the idea of mapping out an open climate stack with all of the different components needed for a complete ReFi ecosystem, supporting projects filling existing niches, and soliciting new projects to fill gaps we find. Climate Collective is the right group to steward this work. That’s not to say we should cut off resources put towards an open call — innovation often comes from unexpected places — but we have clarity on quite a lot of work, and should use our resources wisely.
I won’t comment on liquidity pool structures, though we’re excited to explore how some innovative pool designs might serve lower liquidity assets like carbon tokens — Bancor’s new(ish) asymmetric liquidity pools come to mind. I also wonder if anyone is working on an automated regression market maker for the EVM … Climate Collective might be the right team to support that work.
To Toucan, Climate Collective has brought immense value through their advocacy and convening work, especially with policymakers, NGOs and large corporates. Broadly, these audiences see a lot of value in blockchain use cases for sustainability applications, but as a community we often fail to communicate cogently. Climate Collective has already shown a knack for leveraging their neutrality to get in the room with key decisionmakers. We’re excited to see the RMI and WEF reports come to life, and trust Anna to make sure those resources have maximum impact. I agree with the calls for more research and engagement with academia — things that will continue to build ReFi’s reputation with more mainstream audiences.
We’d also love to see CC hold us accountable and burst our bubble, in a good way. We have a habit of falling into chambers echoing with unvalidated assumptions, but for ReFi to succeed we need to listen to what people need, and respond by combining our knowledge with that insight to produce valuable tools and products.
What a great, detailed update; thank you for sharing! We have been fortunate enough to work with first Anna and now multiple members of The Climate Collective team as we navigate the world of building at the intersection of Web3 and social impact. The knowledge and breadth of experience of the team is unparalleled in this space; these are the kinds of people we want and NEED to be communicating on our behalf outside of the Web3 community, where people tend to be more skeptical and there are often bureaucracies and formalities to deal with. I agree, the call to action is urgent, and getting everyone onboard is critical. The Climate Collective has been and will continue to be essential in making that happen because of their unique positioning and ability to communicate across the technical and nontechnical worlds.
Overall, I see Climate Collective as a powerful voice for Celo and the ReFi community overall, and I’m excited to see that continue to evolve. Congrats on 1 year!
What an incredible year - congratulations guys. Evolution is critical and CC are facilitating this. The CC team have an incredible knack of identifying and convening the right people at the right time and have enabled many great conversations, partnerships, learnings and have been fundamental pushing the carbon markets further. Here’s to many more years collaborating!
Love and support the strategy. I’m particularly excited about potential CC events, but would add that they’ll be of most value if we focus on the legacy markets rather than just getting the gang together. Is it something that could be run with RMI for example?
Another piece I think we’re still not making clear as an industry are the ‘end-states’ and would love to see more work on that.
Disclosure: Untangled was a grantee and is working on the area mentioned in this post.
Having worked with @nirvaan and CC team over the last year, we appreciate the team’s help getting projects like ours off the ground including connecting with relevant contributors and other ecosystem partners. Here are our thoughts on the questions you asked:
Considering the market conditions and competition, perhaps CC should consider initiatives that could produce tangible results in short order, i.e. to create a catalyst for future scaling. Criteria include being climate-positive whilst contributing to prosperity, especially in emerging markets. These projects should have the ability to scale beyond the first pilot where Celo’s temporary liquidity provision could be use as a catalyst funding.
CC could manage an allocation of the returned Celo to the Community Fund towards these projects. One area is “Energy as a service” e.g. funding home solar electricity systems to rural households in Africa to stimulate economic activities, improve standards of living, and reduce the use of kerosene. Similarly, liquidity provision to a battery-as-a-service network in India that charges batteries on a pay-as-you-go basis for individuals or fleets whose income depends on their ability to move around the city, thereby improving air quality and encouraging the shift to renewable energy sources.
CC could support projects/initiatives across the capital stack, from the idea phase to more commercial options, such as debt financing, thereby leveraging capital and code to act as a catalyst liquidity for institutional investors.
Rez from Solid World here. I love the Climate Collective’s mission and really appreciate the work you folks are putting into legitimizing the space. Its clear public blockchain-based protocols have a lot to offer in the sustainability space, but the fight for legitimacy is something we need to tackle together.
Themes are great, though it’s important to remain opportunistic to at least some degree. I think we are making significant progress on the VCM front, and I think this should be leveraged as a spearhead. Web3 is ultimately all about exploration, composability, and incentive alignment. If CC can provide value opportunistically to promising experiments outside of the VCM - it should do so.
This isn’t an easy-to-answer question since liquidity looks different for different projects. Providing “Day 0” liquidity is a definite area of interest for I think everyone in the ecosystem, though this is very specific to the project in terms of what that needs to look like. Broader stablecoin liquidity would be great, though I’ll cover this topic a bit more in the next tab. Best stablecoin slippage protection is optimized arbitrage/MEV with high certainty of execution.
Here are some general areas, some of which CC is already engaged in -
Bringing more of the broader web3 space on Celo. There is a bunch of interesting technology out there, which I think many builders would benefit from in the long run. Bringing existing protocols into Celo will always boost the visibility of the blockchain. Increasing DeFi TVL is a signal of strength.
Getting native Circle USDC ramps into Celo / working with Mento to set up some stronger Circle Accounts ramps. It should be possible to both on-ramp and off-ramp large amounts of fiat with 0 slippage, fantastic UX, and minimal fees. The long-term goal here is to integrate strong fiat ramps directly into dApps, since the more web2 it feels - the lower the friction will be to onboard more users.
Sponsoring cross-chain tech and integrations. It increases accessibility/lowers onboarding friction from other chains, which leads to downstream benefits for the ecosystem.
Marketing and relationship building with institutions, family offices, impact investors, etc. Sponsoring the events that such organizations congregate. Making introductions inside the CC network.
Seeking out ways to connect the CC network with traditional stakeholders and brokering pilot projects
The Climate Collective’s progress over the past year is impressive and inspiring, and serves as a reminder that collective action is key to addressing the urgent issue of climate change.
It’s amazing to see how crypto plays such an essential role in the battle against climate change. As technology evolves, we are getting closer to a snowball effect that can move the market in the right direction. Yet, the current demand for offsets on-chain remains low. We think this issue comes from the sides of the equation (supply and demand). I read many comments regarding carbon credits on this thread. Yet, traditional voluntary certificates rule the show, even when it has been proven that lots of times they don’t have all the positive impact that they claim. This is a matter of trust, which can easily be built on top of transparency. As web3 is community-based, we believe that if we train and show communities, and local stewards, that blockchain technology can become their ally, helping to remove the middle man and therefore getting their fair share out of any deal, this can boost the demand for more innovative solutions such as Measure-to-Earn, which we piloted in the Philippines with the help of @Angelo.Kalaw and @nirvaan earlier this year.
On the other hand, allowing the buyers of such credits actually to track their impact and where their money goes (not just the transaction on chain but who are the local stewards that actually do all the work with boots on the ground and get rewarded for this), could help change the narrative to focus on not only climate mitigation but also other SDGs like the ones regarding decent jobs and economic growth or ending poverty and reducing inequalities (as much as the current conservation efforts are drive by donations).
Maybe, providing liquidity for initial pilots who want to tokenize such impact through oracles that validate it and then trigger the smart contracts could help boost the demand for such credits. If this happens, policymakers will be more intrigued about the space and be willing to look at it more benevolently as they learn that crypto is not just DeFi and can provide other positive use cases.
Having said that, I agree, as others stated, that new grants should be theme-based and help new ventures and scale current solutions. Still, I’d recommend leaving some space for innovation. I am sure there are innovators around us who can have great solutions to problems we are not even seeing now. These problems will make sense to us as more people connect to the internet and adopt web3 in the Global South.
Thanks to Climate Collective and Celo, we’ve all made it this far in ReFi, and regens have a place to call home. Congrats on all your achievements in just one year!
The Climate Collective with folks like @AnnaClimateCollect, @nirvaan, @mezz, and @AlisonFiller offer a case study on how entities in the Celo ecosystem with funds from the community can operate with high impact and transparently. The group is absolutely top tier with deep expertise and operational acumen. Perhaps most importantly, all of this is directed towards a meaningful ReFi vision to move the needle and address climate change through blockchain technology.
One thing worth exploring given the Climate Collective’s vantage point, is a publicly shared roadmapping of how to jumpstart the flywheel that accelerates the ecosystem. One challenge is disparate groups who are facing similar challenges (e.g. liquidity, demand, supply etc.). A grants program with a methodical view of the flywheel could advance our shared vision across the Celo ecosystem and wider ReFi space.
Thanks @nraghuveera - couldn’t agree more. Are you raising your hand to help create that roadmapping of the flywheel that accelerates the ecosystem? I presented a highlevel framework for the Celo board and cLabs in December - going beyond that we would need a more technical person holding the pen
Thank you for your feedback @facundo - I love ethe ‘measure-to-earn’ concept and think it could be really impactful to expand on these pilots, including connecting with existing institutions. For example, green impact investments could be contingent on continues improvement and the way that is proven could be using citizen participation on chain. Lots of excitement around this as it gets to the heart of climate justice.
Thanks @Rez very excited to have you in the Climate Collective! Great ideas, some of them we’ve integrated in our revised proposal and some we need to noodle on more. With you in the future I hope
