The Regen Atlas is an open-source platform designed to facilitate displaying, funding, and incubating of natural capital projects through a user-friendly, interactive map interface.
The voluntary carbon market (VCM), currently estimated at $1-2 billion, is projected to surpass $500 billion by 2050. Innovations on Celo, with projects such as FlowCarbon, Moss.earth, Toucan Protocol, and Silvi Protocol, are leading the way in the rapid expansion of natural capital assets. This move towards digitalization aims to rectify the inefficiencies and outdated methodologies plaguing traditional environmental asset systems, thus enhancing liquidity and fostering innovation. However, the burgeoning growth of green crypto assets has led to a new challenge: their discoverability and the fragmented nature of the market. Additionally, the regenerative finance sector's overwhelming focus on carbon offsets risks sidelining other essential environmental assets, creating a funding imbalance that needs addressing to ensure a holistic approach to environmental sustainability.
The Regen Atlas is set to transform this landscape by providing a global, open-source platform for individuals and organizations to support or invest in environmental projects, equipped with detailed ratings for various green assets. This initiative not only diversifies the focus beyond carbon offsets to include other green assets like biodiversity and water purification but also introduces innovative financial instruments such as green bonds and nature-backed currencies.
The Regen Atlas is a location-based aggregation layer enabling the discovery, trade, and creation of tokenized environmental assets throughout the globe. With the Regen Atlas, we propose an alternative to the current state of the decentralized environmental asset market, where:
- Projects tokenizing natural capital are in need of a clear and intuitive platform to display the location of their assets.
- Organizations, governments and individuals willing to buy tokenized natural capital are in need of a unified interface enabling asset discovery beyond carbon.
- Environmental projects aiming to tokenize natural capital are in need of a platform to show where they are operating and advertise their project.
The Atlas’ key features include:
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Support for Diverse Green Assets: The Regen Atlas accommodates a wide array of green crypto-assets, covering various environmental categories that go beyond carbon. Users can explore and engage with projects related to carbon assets, but also non-carbon ecosystem services (e.g. biodiversity, regenerative agriculture, water purification), green and blue bonds, forwards contracts, and more. The interface will have a filtering feature, enabling hassle-free browsing and funding.
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Aggregated Ratings Agencies: To provide users with valuable insights, the Regen Atlas aggregates scores from ratings agencies specializing in natural capital. This consolidated resource offers a bird's eye view of the highest quality initiatives, helping potential funders make informed decisions while building their green portfolio.
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Top-down Territorial Incentives (longer term, outside the scope of this round): The Regen Atlas lets users create incentives in relation to extant territories, helping stimulate natural capital projects in areas where they can have the most significant impact. Users eager to incentivize the production of natural capital assets will be able to pin a location on the map and enter specific tender information—such as the incentive offered, e.g. a carbon credit—before publishing their request for proposals.
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Support for Existing Green Assets (longer term, outside the scope of this round): Many green assets already exist, but lack the global accessibility afforded by public blockchains. The interface will allow users to request these assets as tokens on Celo, partnering with well-regulated, designated custodians who tokenize already existing green assets.