How we created a Regen Punk army in 2 days

Problem

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing our planet today, and it requires a concerted effort from all of us to tackle it.

Around the world, there are a bunch of committed people doing a lot to protect the environment and reverse the damage that has been done to it. These people have the passion, the knowledge and the tools to make a real difference in their local communities and beyond. However, they are not being recognized or rewarded for their amazing work and, several times, the funds that would allow them to increase the impact they have in their communities are not enough.

A lot of money for climate initiatives and carbon offsetting is available but not always or not easily to small communities and organisations.

So, how did we try to solve this?

Solution

We developed a proof of concept for a decentralised regen basic income that incentivises and rewards climate-positive activity around the world!

Our solution provides a decentralised, transparent, merit-based mechanism that will ensure accountability, fairness and a democratic-based funding model.

We started by creating a new community called - Regen Punk Army. In case you are curious, Regen Punk, also known as, “Regenerative Punk”, “is a movement that combines regenerative agriculture practices with punk values of community, self-reliance, and resistance to mainstream culture”.

In order to join this community, people just need to contribute by leading or participating in initiatives that reduce carbon emissions and have positive externalities to the world. When they start contributing, an initial group of trustworthy Regen Punks, will verify and validate their initiatives and in case they are worthwhile they will be able to upvote them. When a new member gets two upvotes, he will receive a regen punk badge and a basic regen allowance, as a reward for their contribution.

To ensure we keep the army motivated and because climate change is an ongoing battle, every day, the nature gods award Regen Punks with more funds in BCT (Base Carbon Tonne) based on their reputation.

Tech implementation

As we are doing this proof of concept during ETH Porto, we tried to use several tools available by the sponsors and partners of the hackathon. So, in another scenario, we might have made different decisions regarding implementation but this is what we did.

Our blockchain implementation includes two smart contracts: OnchainVerifier and DailyDrip. The OnchainVerifier is the main database that stores the members of the Regen Punk army, where existing members can suggest new members (registerAddress) and vote on existing members. When members have 2 upvotes they become approved members, if they get 2 downvotes they become rejected members and cannot be approved again.

We developed a Sismo Data Provider that fetches the approved members from the OnchainVerifier and adds them to the Regen Punks group on Sismo. This means any approved member of the Regen Punks can go to Sismo and mint a badge. In order to add new members or vote the OnchainVerifier contract checks if you have this badge.

The DailyDrip is in charge of distributing the carbon credits (Toucan BCT) to all approved members. Using Chainlink Upkeeps we ensure that the drip function is run at least once a day. When it is called, this function gets the approved members from OnchainVerifier and transfers 0.25% of the total balance distributed to members according to how many upvotes they have.

The frontend of our platform (set metamask to Polygon Mumbai) communicates with both OnchainVerifier and DailyDrip. It fetches pending and approved members from OnchainVerifier, and provides an interface to call registerAddress and vote. At the bottom of the page we display the current balance of BCT in the DailyDrip and how much will be distributed in the next drip per vote.

Future iterations

Time was not enough to do all the things we wanted but we believe it is worth sharing a couple of ideas we have for further iterations: Instead of distributing the funds once a day at a specific time, we would like to make the distribution happen when a dysfunctional climate event happens, for example: the temperature differential from day to day is too high; Establish a system to raise funds to to be used as an endowment of carbon credits; Improve rewarding and funding system by using quadratic voting & funding; Create NFTs that evolve based on the type of activities and their impact.

We used the hackathon to explore two of our great passions: Regeneration and Blockchain and it was quite fun. Being part of these events is a core part of our ethos as Blocksmith, it helps us build expertise and team cohesion. And with some luck, we might actually change the world.