• Foundation Financial Health
• Foundation Investments Analysis
• Cohort 1: non web3 people and orgs (2022-2023)
• Cohort 2: doing regenerative work (2024)
• Other investments (than csDAOs)
• Next steps
• Define the needs of the csDAOs
• $REGEN retribution model
• Improving the metrics for further analysis

In our previous article, we delved into future scenarios for our network, discussing emerging trends, possible trajectories for the Regen network, and the cultural and institutional strategies needed to reach the successful "Ministry for the Future" state. This mindset is best exemplified by the $REGEN foundation and its csDAOs program, which emphasize the decentralization of power to communities. This approach ensures that the regenerative revolution, the open-source technology protocol, and ecological and web3 policies are all community owned and governed.

So in this piece, we’ll focus on the investment activities of the Foundation around “open source technological development aimed at ecological applications in blockchain, remote sensing, IoT, machine learning, and fintech”. And focus on 2 other aspects “rewarding regenerative ecological outcomes” and “Incentivising accurate ecological data to be produced and shared” for the next articles.

Foundation Financial Health

The foundation was designed as a main investor in the network development holding: 35% of the initial issuance → ~25% at the moment of writing of the total $REGEN token supply. It was intended to select and onboard local ecological communities & methodologies developers, putting regenerative income and governance rights in their hands.

The initial fundraising campaign organised by the RND happened in 2019 and collected $10.5M from ~200-400 individuals (source). The token price on the all-time high was ~$6, and about $0.06 now after a long bear market.

The Foundation is constantly fundraising for its administrative budget for its team of 4 people. Now it has a runway till Q1 of 2025 (monthly burnrate of $22k feels tight), not accounting for the $REGEN tokens. The Foundation also stakes its tokens and has now even more tokens than at the start (35M → 47M). Additional funding was also provided by Biome Trust and Ripple.

Foundation Investments Analysis

With ~10% staking rewards now current holdings can yield 4.7M $regen by the end of the year. Each cohorts receives 2.5M $REGEN (5 x 500k). 2 cohorts are launched and 2 are planned to be launched till the end of the year.

Cohort 1: non web3 people and orgs (2022-2023)

Of the first cohort, 2 are actively building credit methodologies, all compiled the COC / Community Agreement. They still meet with that cohort monthly or on an as-needed basis. The yield from staking in the current prices is estimated at around $250/mo. per csDAO and the total collected rewards are ~$50-100k for all participants since 2022. UBI behaviour shows constant activity over the account, while some HODL for longer time.

Cohort 2: doing regenerative work (2024)

like biochar methodology, social communication app builders, etc

Other investments (than csDAOs)

Before 2024

• Kado (investment in the infrastructure) – saved 60% of tokens ($7k)
• Cerulean (kinda internal VC) – constant activity, ~4M program related investment ($300k), ~7M total ($528k)
• Wasn’t used for investment due to low liquidity (now just staked)
• Would like to invest in liquid assets (e.g. USDC) but no one can't convert $REGEN, cause the liquidity pool will be out very fast and the price will drop significantly
• Tokenomics WG $10k (our group)
• CosmWasm Upgrade ~$25k (in $REGEN)

Next steps

Define the needs of the csDAOs

Recurring income is a nice start, though probably the current level (~$300/month) might not be enough to push the impact locally. Also probably some specific liquidity pool for csDAOs and extra matching-funding (with the coop bank proposal, grants, philanthropic orgs, chains etc) could be of a great value.

$REGEN retribution model

As csDAOs draft own charters with their ideas we could add some ideas connected with the ecosystem funding or token integration. For example a part of eco-credits revenues could be shared back to the community pool for further projects funding. As well if you hold $REGEN in treasury or lend to the pools.

Improving the metrics for further analysis

Quantity of tokens, staking history or gov participation are perhaps the standard terms to define how beneficial an actor has been in relation to the token health. Given that Regen is an app chain, with a clear purpose statement around eco-social regeneration, we could do some amendments to the metric.

If an organization creates an ecocredit for sale, how can this affect the health of the token? For instance, Sharamentsa in Ecuador appears to be positively influencing the token price, even though they don't hold any tokens. Their project's integrity seems to be driving the token price up. Potential metrics could include: