The Climate Collective Treasury

We’d like to announce the Climate Collective Treasury proposal as a CGP for the Celo community.

Github link

The key objective of this proposal is to rapidly position Celo at the forefront of the Regenerative Finance (”ReFi”) movement. To this end the Climate Collective Treasury will galvanize activity around development of climate-related web3 initiatives, as well as through local communities and special projects utilizing these products and protocols.

The purpose of the Climate Collective Treasury is to support projects utilizing web3 to combat climate change through grant funding for project development, integration, and adoption. The proposed areas of focus broadly map to initiatives from the Collective’s founding members, with the overarching goal of positioning Celo as the go-to climate-positive blockchain and ecosystem.

This proposal will ask for 7 Million CELO from the on-chain governance in order to target a number of projects of varying scale. We believe with this Treasury proposal we can durably increase developer and user activity on Celo through the lens of climate action, and make Celo the primary chain for regenerative activity.

The multisig for this proposal is composed of the following:

  • Nirvaan Ranganathan - Climate Collective
  • Craig Wilson - Climate Collective
  • Ottavio Siani - Climate Collective
  • Renc Korzay - Curve Labs
  • Luuk Weber - Kolektivo
  • Slobodan Sudaric - cLabs
  • Nikhil Raghuveera - Celo Foundation

We welcome feedback on the CGP here. Read the proposal below and on Github.


CGP 52: Funds for Climate Collective Treasury

cgp: 52
title: Funds for Climate Collective Treasury
date-created: 2022-03-22
author: Nirvaan Ranganathan, Craig Wilson, Patrick Rawson, Slobodan Sudaric
status: DRAFT
discussions-to: https://forum.celo.org/t/the-climate-collective-treasury/3157
governance-proposal-id: 
date-executed:

Table of Contents:

  • Overview
    • Objective
    • Proposal Overview
  • Areas of Focus
    • Natural Capital Tokens
    • Regenerative NFTs
    • Digital Cash Operations
    • ReFi Products
  • Structure
    • Climate Collective Members
    • Multisig
    • Budget
    • Verification
  • Context
    • Marketing Challenges
    • Known Constraints
    • Proposal Risks
  • Appendix

Overview

Objective

The key objective of this proposal is to rapidly position Celo at the forefront of the Regenerative Finance (”ReFi”) movement. To this end the Climate Collective Treasury will galvanize activity around development of climate-related web3 initiatives, as well as through local communities and special projects utilizing these products and protocols.

Proposal Overview

The purpose of the Climate Collective Treasury is to support projects utilizing web3 to combat climate change through grant funding for project development, integration, and adoption. The proposed areas of focus broadly map to initiatives from the Collective’s founding members (outlined in Structure section), with the overarching goal of positioning Celo as the go-to climate-positive blockchain and ecosystem.

Areas of Focus

There are four key areas this effort will focus on (see Appendix for more information on current targets and strategic partners).

Natural Capital Tokens (natcap)

Definition: Semi-fungible ERC20 tokens that represent either:

(1) An outputs-based financing of an ecosystem service such as a carbon offset
(2) Ownership of territory or other ecosystem assets
(3) Stewardship of an ecosystem producing valuable ecosystem services (e.g. token payments for ecosystem services such as biodiversity).

Mission: To systematically increase the liquidity of existing natcap tokens on Celo, and support the development of new climate-positive tokenized assets
Context: Through CGP30 Celo successfully onboarded a 0.5% target allocation for MCO2 tokens to the Reserve in late July ‘21, and founded the Climate Collective in early October ‘21 to achieve the target of 40% nature-backed assets in 4 years. After the launch of Toucan Protocol and KlimaDAO in mid October ‘21, the majority of on-chain natural capital has gravitated to the Polygon network (including MCO2 since KIP7 in mid January ‘22), with a healthy distribution between the Klima reserves and DEX liquidity pools.
In order to codify standards for natural capital in the Celo reserve, Celo must increase the liquidity and diversity of natcaps on its own chain by either bridging or natively supporting projects who produce natcaps. The following table is a snapshot of the Climate Collective’s Green Token Dashboard prototype as of 3/7/22 — an early attempt to articulate a methodology for natcap “certification” that adheres to strict, pre-defined standards about what does or does not qualify as a natcap:

Name Symbol / Chains Supply / Market Cap Liquidity Reserves
Toucan Base Carbon Tonne BCT / Polygon Supply 18,260,576 / $52,225,249 Sushiswap holds 6M in USDC pool + 1.37M in KLIMA pool + others = 7.37M BCT ~ 33% Klima holds 9,154,847 BCT = $34,650,680 = 51%
Toucan: Nature Carbon Tonne NCT / Polygon Supply 1,191,322 / $7,660,200 Sushiswap USDC pool 924,100 = 77.5% N/A
Moss.Earth: Carbon Credit MCO2 / Ethereum, Polygon, Celo 3,185,540 / $32,239,317 Ethereum: 2,845,084 (92%); Polygon: 251,870 (5%); Celo : 88,586 (3%) Uniswap ETH + USDC = 1,737 (0.06% onchain); Quickswap USDC = 50,364 (33% onchain); Ubeswap mcUSD + others = 2,093 (3% onchain) No ETH reserve; Klima holds 165,654 MCO2 = 65% onchain supply; Celo holds 83,333.67 MCO2 = $1,186,475 = 94% onchain supply

Target Outcomes

By 6 months from now:

  • Collaboratively define quantitative standards for reserve assets including legal due diligence, financial measures (liquidity sources, transaction volume, historical prices, available trading pairs, etc.), ESG criteria, and availability on Celo
  • Complete Balancer v2 contract migration in partnership with Symmetric and port the Gnosis Safe and key Safe applications to Celo, opening up the possibility for a Carbon or ReFi index on Celo, ReFi DAOs on Celo, and supporting composable DAO tooling (e.g. Zodiac, a Safe app that enables cross-chain DAO formation).
  • Develop cohesive strategy around existing and imminent natural capital assets including Moss (MCO2), Toucan (BCT, NCT), and Flowcarbon (GNT)
  • Launch & publicize Toucan Carbon Reference Pools on Celo at the beginning of Q2
  • Onboard upcoming Nature-Based Carbon Tonne (NBT) Toucan Carbon Reference Pool token
  • Provide up to $10M initially to support liquidity for green asset pools by purchasing and holding natural capital backed assets such as tokenized carbon credits
  • Establish Carbon SubDAO and LP-Index to curate natural capital asset holdings, for future use in the Celo Reserve through separate governance proposal

By 9 months from now:

  • Support new use cases including forward financing, land ownership, GWP conversion, biodiversity, seagrass
  • Setup ‘carbon-denominated’ grants program focused on carbon assets for which there is no existing tokenization pathway or solution (see Budget & Appendix)
  • Help prototype risk dashboard simulator for Celo Reserve
  • Partner with liquidity services that support Protocol-Owned- and/or Rented- liquidity
  • Submit proposal to Celo Governance to onboard a Carbon SubDAO-governed LP-index of natcap tokens
  • Support development of climate-specific DEX and liquidity pools

Regenerative NFTs

Definition: Artistic or data-driven non-fungible tokens that have a causal or programmatic link to climate action
Mission: To build abstractions for common fundraising patterns and support new use cases with NFTs

Target Outcomes

By 6 months from now:

  • Support creation and drive adoption of self-service NFT storefronts for art-based fundraisers that donate proceeds to climate projects
  • Support initiatives linked to regulation and compliance that have an ”off-chain floor value”
  • Support development of Regenerative NFT Toolkit including forkable marketplace implementations, and fractionalization to turn non-fungible assets into semi-fungible tokens for broader use cases

By 9 months from now:

  • Support projects in implementing geospatial web3 primitives, such as Astral Protocol’s upcoming GeoNFT, for the purposes of tokenizing land ownership, data-production, stewardship, or augmented space.
  • Support gaming and metaverse initiatives that attract wide participation
  • Experiment with Internet of Things (IoT) sensor integrations and other environmental monitoring applications.

Digital Cash Operations

Definition: Financial services technology and support primarily in emerging markets
Mission: To leverage Celo’s mobile-first blockchain and regional infrastructure to address pain points in traditional climate finance

Target Outcomes

By 9 months from now:

  • Experiment with new token issuance models that are related to climate or ecological data, such as an airdrop that can be claimed by persons experiencing serious heat stress, drawing attention to the record temperatures of the present as well as demonstrating the massive potential for cryptocurrency in relation to relief efforts or payments for ecosystem services.
  • Facilitate at least 1 integration between an on-the-ground initiative and Umoja
  • Experiment with new industries such as micro-mobility

ReFi Products

Mission: To use constructs from Decentralized Finance to help frame the regenerative economy

Target Outcomes

By 4 months from now:

  • Develop and maintain “Green Token Dashboard” with financial measures and ESG indicators, similar to DeFi Pulse
  • Facilitate certification of Celo blockchain as carbon-negative from accredited institution
  • Develop and maintain Celo Energy Consumption Report to help projects explain Celo adoption to their users and/or community
  • Provide resources to combat marketing challenges associated with Bitcoin and crypto
  • Support social tokens linked to regenerative activities and communities through ecosystem fund with Socialstack

By 8 months from now:

  • Establish ReFiDAO platform and associated initiatives with ecosystem partners
  • Join other natural capital related DAOs and participate in governance
  • Issue a quadratic funding round on Celo for ReFi projects across web3, using a quadratic funding primitive such as Clr.Fund
  • By 12 months from now:
  • Support development of gamified saving pool exclusive to natcap/green tokens
  • Launch Index product with green/natcap tokens to increase liquidity and awareness
  • Coordinate with MakerDAO to onboard regenerative collateral assets from Celo
  • Design a metastable utility token to address fragmented liquidity issues (RAI/Balancer omnidirectional ”mycorrhizal pool”)

Structure

Climate Collective Members

The Collective’s 13 founding members have demonstrated commitment to our mission and successfully delivered relevant work on Celo. Grant recipients from the Treasury would be admitted to the Collective after meeting these membership conditions through a publicized induction ceremony. All members are expected to join a lazy committee to support governance processes such as curation of CLR Quadratic Funding rounds, elections of Carbon SubDAO, participation in virtual events, and involvement in future products, events, and initiatives.
Table: Climate Collective founding members in alphabetical order

Name Representative
Allegory Ed Walters
Astral Protocol Holly Grimm
Byterocket Marvin Kruse
Celo Xochitl Cazador
cLabs Slobodan Sudaric
Curve Labs Patrick Rawson
Flori Maria Alegre
Kolektivo Labs Luuk Weber
Loam Birju Shah
Moss Luis Adaime
Regen Network Gregory Landua
Toucan Protocol Raphael Haupt
Wren Landon Brand

Multisig

The Multisig contract address is 0x1E82710b7E1DA35cf6df443F0EBAb865B49163BB and found here.

Name Affiliation Address
Nirvaan Ranganathan Climate Collective 0xD808Ef141CC6D4cE8A3cA63f457D2a4d831fbE79
Craig Wilson Climate Collective 0x52b485860cB58d1f283D23985002fE1B9CC8311E
Ottavio Siani Climate Collective 0x6c3FFEf67e82D745449d7048C7C6Df10a322C0eC
Renc Korzay Curve Labs 0x23d817fA0F3C9F77e45880dBE99eDDfafB59142c
Luuk Weber Kolektivo 0x0261842bdDB13418fAe2B7567fc340bAa585b950
Slobodan Sudaric cLabs 0x7cC9F1f0404eAeC03f6B29fDCf61F46001F98928
Nikhil Raghuveera Celo Foundation 0x51bB2EDfbE14EA58B7b0BA94A641cFE41AB4e9b2

Budget

This CGP is requesting 7 Million CELO from the on-chain governance Community Fund, which will be distributed as indicated below. Based on grantee requests, some of the CELO tokens may be collateralized in the Celo Reserve to mint and disburse cUSD. “Carbon-Grants” refers to off-chain assets that will be disbursed as carbon-denominated grants to appropriate tokenization solutions.

Area Allocation (MM CELO)
Engineering 2
Community Building 1
Operations 0.2
Marketing 1
Carbon-Grants 0.3
Liquidity Launches 2.5

The proposal will also have 3 checkpoints after each 33% percentage of the Treasury is used.

Verification

[
  {
    "contract": "GoldToken",
    "function": "approve",
    "args": [
      "0x1E82710b7E1DA35cf6df443F0EBAb865B49163BB",
      "7000000000000000000000000"
    ],
    "value": "0"
  }
]

Context

Marketing Challenges

To many followers of both industries, “crypto & climate” seems like an oxymoron or contradiction primarily due to the negative coverage around Bitcoin and Proof-of-Work. Changing this impression is crucial to community development and adoption of Web3-based ReFi products. The Celo community briefly experienced such social media backlash following the announcement of the Kickstarter integration.
The Climate Collective will provide resources that help projects explain their decisions to leverage web3 tools towards climate action, with a focus on highlighting Celo’s carbon-negative status, mobile-first sustainable architecture, and other unique features.

Known Constraints

Based on conversations with prospective Climate Collective grant recipients and Celo ecosystem members, we have identified several “primitives” and integrations currently absent on Celo but not directly linked to climate.

  • OpenSea Compatibility or alternative NFT marketplace
  • Treasury Management using Gnosis manager applications
  • Token Gating integrations for Discord servers
  • Cross-chain DEX integrations beyond SushiSwap
  • Programmable cash flows for real-time finance such as SuperFluid
  • Analytics platforms such as Dune Analytics for live blockchain statistics

Proposal Risks

We have identified the following risks:

  • Technical risk based on missing primitives: as outlined above, there are currently several “functional primitives” or technical building blocks missing from Celo that may deter certain projects or founders from building on Celo
  • Competitive risk: certain other blockchain foundations are offering higher value grants
  • Performance risk based on where the Treasury is allocating capital: this is mitigated by three checkpoints to gain feedback from community members
  • Legal risk: tokenizing land or other ecosystem assets requires substantial buy-in from current institutions and legal systems.
  • Conflict of Interest Risks: In the case of a conflict of interest with one of the multisig signer, the COI will be disclosed and the multisig signer will not participate in voting on that specific proposal. Members have been deliberately chosen to minimize potential conflicts of interests with cross-functional members of the ecosystem.

Appendix

Natural Capital Tokens

  • Current Targets: FlowCarbon, BitGreen, EdenDAO, Thallo, Likvidi, SolidWorld, Kolor
  • Strategic Partners: Moss, Toucan, Kolektivo, Curve Labs, cLabs, ImmortalDAO, Tokemak

Regenerative NFTs

  • Current Targets: Wildchain, Invert, Plastiks, GamesForest.Club, Project Ark, Return Protocol, GreenverseWorld, Bloomeria, Yardstick
  • Strategic Partners: Celo NFT, Wren, Byterocket, Astral

Digital Cash Operations

  • Current Targets: Earthshot, AIRS, Traditional Dream Factory, BasinDAO, Fabricating Future Forests, HERE Mobility Protocol
  • Strategic Partners: Valora, Umoja, Astral, Regen, Shamba, Chainlink

ReFi Products

  • Current Targets: Index Coop, VoizDAO, ClimateDAO, MoonJelly, MakerDAO, AkornDAO, Trees as Infrastructure
  • Strategic Partners: cLabs, Toucan, CLR.Fund, Ubeswap, PrimeDAO, PoolTogether, GoodGhosting, Socialstack

Carbon-Grants

  • Current Targets: CarbonBuilt, CarbonTitle, DroneSeed, Bariflo Labs, SouthPole, Raiz Vertical Farms, Graviky
8 Likes

Very excited for this!

Generally ive seen proposals for funding are more successful when they

A) give some guidelines as to timelines and what success looks like

B) Explain why the amount requested is the right amount for the goal

C) Have more details

Very happy to see CC moving ahead. :deciduous_tree::deciduous_tree:

3 Likes

@aaronmgdr updated post with Github link and included the proposal text below. Looking forward to your feedback!

1 Like

Two notes:

  • Calling it a Treasury feels like a way to confuse people when there’s already a team called the Treasury. I recommend using another name.
  • Secondly: Requesting 7 Million CELO from the community fund when the fund is currently at 9.7 Million CELO means you are requesting to drain 72% of the community fund. I’d recommend a lower amount otherwise you will strain the other teams who already have access to the community fund.

Furthermore, the multisig doesn’t feel very decentralized given everyone on it in some way works on the same collective.

2 Likes

Thanks for the feedback, @YazKhouryTest!

  • We avoided using ‘ecosystem’, ‘community fund’, or ‘reserve’ for the same reason. I’m not sure what we could replace treasury with here.
  • We are cognizant of this and have tried to indicate how we plan to use the funds. Liquidity launches for upcoming natcap tokens on Celo would require this order of magnitude, and we want to remain competitive with other emerging ReFi ecosystems who are doling out grants.
  • We indeed chose multi-sig members from within the Celo ecosystem who have supported and advanced the Collective since its launch in October. Given the objective of this GCP is to “rapidly position Celo at the forefront of the Regenerative Finance (”ReFi”) movement” we selected known figures at this intersection, but are certainly open to suggestions from the broader community.
1 Like

Hi folks, really nice proposal!

I don’t have the energy to dive deep into this, but I think it’s a great use of community funds for what to me is the core part of Celo’s mission and long-term stability: natural backed assets.

I have to unveil a bummer though: There probably are no free 7 million CELO in the on-chain community fund!

Here is a list of already allocated funds, which amount to ~4 million CELO. The way allocations work is a MultiSig being approved to spend a certain amount of CELO, they remain in the governance contract though until they are actually transferred by an approved MultiSig. So it’s a bit opaque to see how much CELO is actually available.

I’m not sure how much exactly has been withdrawn and used already, but my feeling is something around 1 million. So there would probably be something like 9.7 million - 4 million + 1 million ~ 6.7 million unallocated.

This might not be a big deal as the community fund keeps growing at ~5.5 million CELO per year and I think technically it’s possible to approve MultiSigs for more CELO than what is actually at the address (altough this shouldn’t be like that imo). But I don’t think we should start to allocate future community funds that are not even rewarded yet.

I would feel more comfortable if you guys would ask for a lower amount in order to leave some funds or other community initiatives.

Tobi

5 Likes

Thanks for the clarifications, @Tobi! We will circle back on reducing the proposed amount by finding additional sources of liquidity in the ecosystem, and will update the proposal accordingly.

2 Likes

Hi folks! Super excited about this proposal. We’re one of the natural capital assets that are mentioned in the first section. In order to introduce ourselves to the Celo community, we’ve put up a post here. We’d love your feedback!

3 Likes

Regarding the Word “Treasury”

I don’t think its’ an issue because treasury is a generic and descriptive word for what this is. The name is Climate Collective Treasury. If you were naming it Celo Treasury I could see that being confusing.

When we were funding the Original Celo Treasury aka Ocelet, I never got the impression that would mean other initiatives could not have Treasury in their title.

3 Likes

It just feels like a rip-off of our proposal and name is all.

Using community fund for liquidity incentives is an awful use of community money IMO. DeFi for The People exists for liquidity incentives.

You guys need to be more decentralized, feels like everyone involved in the multisig has a direct connection to the Celo Foundation.

I haven’t had time for a deep dive but my initial impressions are as follows:

1. Need for natural capital tokens in the Celo reserve
We still only have MCO2 in the reserve. So it would seem that getting other tokens available that are suitable for the reserve is an obviously aligned priority for this initiative.

Worth considering maybe just focusing on “Natural Capital Tokens” rather than spreading bets across many things?

Why is it that there aren’t other high quality tokens for the reserve to consider? Can someone expand on this point here on the forum because that seems important to understand.

2. Regenerative NFTs
This sounds indirect and speculative as a way to have an impact. I’d prefer to spend funds on Natural Capital Tokens.

3. Digital Cash Operations
This does not seem aligned with a climate focus. Further, making people in emerging markets aware that some average temperature is rising - that seems to be a view of the situation from a position of luxury and distance. I imagine the people on the ground would much prefer to directly receive cash than to be “educated” on highly uncertain and hard to model local climate patterns. I think UBI/cash and emerging market initiatives are aligned with Celo’s mission but not the best fit for Climate Collective work. I also think spending funds on local infrastructure and resilience is valuable for emerging markets (for human caused and non-human caused climate change), but I don’t think that is an area where Celo can get the most leverage on impact.

4. ReFi Products
This seems tangible and aligned with Celo and climate goals, but I see this as secondary to making sure there are high quality Natural Capital tokens that the Celo reserve can use.

5. Carbon Grants
I can’t find this in the Github.

I don’t think we should be using Celo community funds for carbon grants. We don’t have enough scale to have an impact on that. The high leverage impact I see that we can make is by providing a) an infrastructure for ReFi and natural capital tokens, and b) a natural buyer (the Celo reserve) for natural capital tokens. The Celo reserve and our spending is tiny relative to overall spending on climate, so we need to be really focused on high leverage impact.

  1. I think “Climate Collective Treasury” is a fine name.

  2. I agree it would be good to diversify the Multi-sig some more. It’s not easy to find those people but it’s time well spent for the community as a whole to achieve the right balance.

  3. I don’t think using community funds (e.g. CELO) for liquidity incentives is an effective or community-aligned use of CELO. The dApps/platforms should use their own native tokens to incentivise liquidity (like Ubeswap gives out Ube on Ubeswap).

3 Likes

Hi All! I have two general comments here:

  • Its much necessary to explore financing mechanisms to REFI projects. Community fund IMHO, however, its one of various opportunities available.

  • The idea of allocating such a large portion of the community fund to this initiative seems counter-intuitive if we understand how the mechanics of Celo work: the more stables in circulation, the higher the need to have REFI projects composing Celo reserve. Thus, it seems to me that making sure stables get traction and adoption seems like an effort that deserves attention (and funds) from the community to prosper, and enable short/medium/long term goals of Climate Collective.

Thus, seems relevant to find the right balance between grants to incentivize stable circulation/adoption and REFI projects.

3 Likes

Is there a vision or plan for this making this project self sustaining/economically viable in perpetuity?

2 Likes

Thanks @Pinotio.com, @MilaRioja, and @markbarendt for the valuable feedback! We are wapping up a revised “v2” of this proposal taking into account the feedback from this discussion and will share by end of week once we finalize the multisig. We’ve pared down the scope and ask to focus on Celo’s immediate priorities around ReFi with insights from Celo Connect.

@markbarendt great question - we are working on standing up a Climate Collective validator group to cement our place in the ecosystem and use rewards to further fund our grant pipeline. We are also brokering token sales to large investors, developing a “ReFi Pulse” dashboard, and gradually moving towards a DAO structure where our stakeholders help govern and fund new initiatives.

Stay tuned for v2!

3 Likes

I want to be clear here, what I’m trying to understand is: if, how, and when; this project might get past the need for continued investment.

To me setting up the validator group sounds like the bootstrapping of a ‘charitable foundation’, essentially investors donating/lending Celo to y’all to be staked and the staking rewards are then used to cover the expenses of asking for more grants from investors.

The token sales again are to be from investors.

The DAO being there to “govern and fund”, again this sounds like ongoing charitable foundation building.

Different ways to think about my question might be:
Is the project going to create revenue from a customer base? How will the investors profit from participating?

Hi folks, just for adding further urgency here. Some background on MakerDAO/DAI.

MakerDAO are getting into natural backed capital: https://thedefiant.io/makerdao-maple-real-assets/
Hat tip @Nadiem for the link.

For background on MakerDAO:
The Terra vs DAI wars are an important background to this: Do or DAI - by Recovering TradFi Chad

Terra has basically cut DAI out of the 3POOL (which is DAI, USDT, USDC) on Curve. Terra does this by bribing CRV (Curve governance token holders) to vote Curve rewards to the 4POOL (UST, FRAX, USDC, USDT) instead of the 3POOL, undercutting liquidity for DAI.

MakerDAOs response has been not to engage in this war (they have liquidity on Uniswap v3). Instead climate seems to be one focus of MakerDAO. So I expect we see a lot from Maker on climate. And CELO will have to move much more quickly if Celo is to be a leader.

Of course, having more protocols in ReFi is probably positive for all protocols (and certainly the world). A reminder too that we need to move at pace.

4 Likes

Hi folks, Im sure you’re familiar with some Real World Asset protocols, but you may find this blogger helpful on the topic: Real-World Asset Protocols: Centrifuge & Goldfinch

3 Likes

Thanks all for the extremely useful feedback on this proposal. We have published a revised V2 here based on this discussion and welcome your thoughts!

Thanks for bringing this up @Pinotio.com we are meeting with Goldfinch next week looking for ways to collaborate. Maker is doing great work here after “The Case for Clean Money” that as you said is probably positive for all protocols and the planet, but we will certainly pick up the pace here as best we can.

To your point @markbarendt - our token sales/custody arm will be a profit center, and we are exploring other options to make this a self-sustaining initiative. If you have additional thoughts I’d be happy to discuss this with you on a call, either way will update you as we develop this model!

2 Likes