Did you ever wonder if the magical Blockchain technology can do something green, sustainable, and regenerative for our planet?
Way, way, way too much attention goes out to the price of Bitcoin, while in 30 years, the Amazon is a wasteland when we don't act now. What's the fun when coral reefs are gone in 10 years, together with 90% of all insects? And Oeps… We, humans, will be gone then soon. We need insects to survive. We don't need a next DogeCoin all-time high. No offense.
Awareness or purpose-driven tokens will do a better job in bringing real value on this earth out of balance. Why not spend 10% of your portfolio on projects that make the world a better place? I’m gonna convince you that you should. In a mild way. These purpose-driven tokens pave the way for further mass adoption of the crypto space as a whole. Actually, now we are talking about it, they should be on the top of your list since they kind of save the world we're living in.
What are purpose-driven tokens?
Purpose-driven tokens incentivize individual behavior to contribute to a collective goal. This collective goal might be a public good or the reduction of negative externalities to a common good - Shermin Voshmgir
The main function of purpose tokens is to raise awareness. And they do good too. They save oceans and forests. They motivate people to contribute to collaborating in the maintenance of public goods or common goods.
When you think deeper about this, I would like to argue that any Blockchain project that really starts to cut out middlemen is bringing value back to the commons. Since it's not sucked out by those intermediaries.
Tokens can and will incentivize a huge collective value creation when innovation through technology cuts our energy cost and becomes circular. From the people to the people, peer to peer. Lets examine first the most logical collective value creation : saving our lungs of the world, the Amazon rainforest.
Sustainability-related tokens - buy your tree on a blockchain
There are many good working "buy a tree in the amazon" projects. You sponsor a tree or plant it yourself. The prize for the best name goes to Tree Coin.
This project combines Swiss impeccability with cool Blockchain transparency. They chose the fast-growing trees, Eucalyptus, to be planted in Paraguay. 90% of the profits of the sale of this tree goes to the investor. But a 10% reinvestment in planting trees seems to keep up with the speed of cutting them.
We need more trees on the planet, not another smart investing plan where ROI is still king. In their values, the ROI is mentioned as #1. But hey, they do a great job already. We still do need toilet paper, especially during pandemics.
In other projects, a Blockchain is used to make sponsorship transparent, to track where the money really lands. Well, that's a great step for humanity too!
Rainforest Foundation US is using blockchain and related technology to track, verify, and link direct financing to communities for protecting and regenerating forests. Here is where it gets really smart!
They use real-time satellite data to detect deforestation and forest cover, smartphone apps to track community-level actions. Token payments flow into communities that prove to protect or regenerate their forests.
“Regen Network has created a blockchain-based direct payments system where local communities can interface with investors and donors. This immutable system ensures that donor payments get where they need to go, and anyone can track how much went where and when.”- ecolightenment.com
This is a great development. I call it turning around the pyramid. Endangered tribes in the amazon can unite via Indigenous organizations and have direct interface contact thru apps with sponsors and investors saving the trees, cutting out the shady intermediaries.
Bikes on Blockchain: Earn your tokens by pedalling
There are many more purpose & awareness-driven tokens in the field of sustainability. EcoCoin for example. The project main intent is to reward ecologically responsible behaviour like riding your bike to work or stop eating meat. The company Lóreal rewarded their workers with tokens when they left the car at home and biked to work. EcoCoin states that its application promotes, verifies, and rewards sustainable actions.
They are still working on tracking devices that scan your fridge for meat, and bikes on a blockchain that sends your driven kilometers via satellite. By the way, these bikes change users through the BikesonBlockchain app, the newest decentralized bike-sharing project in Amsterdam. BoB: The Neutral Uber for cycling… Really? No, I just made that one up. To show the potential of innovation possible with Blockchain tech, green action, human energy, and tokenization of value-driven purpose. When you decide to make a successful startup out of this idea, please buy me a coffee. Or sent me some BOB coin.
Let's dive into plastic as a final example of how tracking collecting and recycling plastic on a blockchain looks like.
Plastic on the Blockchain?
Plastic collection and recycling on a blockchain would be amazing, i.e. collect plastic with a bunch of enthusiast friends, let the amounts of kilos be verified digitally and put on a blockchain, and receive your tokens on a wallet. This would require recycling machines on beaches and in forests where you can deliver your collected plastic. The plastic gets weighed and you are paid Bitcoin in return on your wallet. The Machines needs to be sponsored, obviously. I haven't found projects who actually do this, but it's technically possible.
The tokens mined would use the proof of plastic protocol. Your human energy, used for collecting the plastic, will be rewarded in tokens. The extra advantage would be that this specific data potentially can be used for scientific research on plastic reduction.
A real project that recycles plastic and uses a blockchain is Plasticbank.com. You donate, and with this money the organization funds recycling. The process of funds coming in connected to recycled plastic has been put on a Blockchain to make things transparent. Just like with TreeCoin.
We are getting there. And you can help
After the 2017/18 initial hype and the flood of whitepapers, the initial ideas that really work beyond the proof of concept phase are popping up. Still today, we are far from going mainstream. They depend heavily on sponsoring, grass root community building, and you. And more of yous. We need enough people supporting these kinds of projects for the so-called network effect to emerge organically.
And growing awareness itself.
"A growing number of consumers will buy products with an audited supply chain that shows the ecologically friendly harvesting of natural resources by workers in safe environments, purchasing and importing of goods done via fair trade agreements, and the low energy cost transportation of the product to the consumer .” - James Wallace, Co-Founder, Exponential University
Blockchain tech can create a distributed, secure, public, global record for almost anything. A secondary value of Blockchain technology is what we store, track, and make transparent. We simply get more aware of. In this way, Blockchain becomes a layer of honesty in currently non-transparent markets. Products or waste can not simply disappear when we track it digitally and make that data transparent.
Even better, there will be a bigger incentive than ever before to re-use, to circulate. Purpose-driven tokens prove that we even can start making tokens by collecting and delivering waste.
Blockchain could power the vacuum cleaner to our polluted economy
It can clean away expensive and inefficient middlemen in the dark corners of corruption. It opens the curtains and brings in the green light with its transparency. Blockchain can give value to things that really matter to help save the planet.
It's up to you, your community, us, how long this journey will take. But you can start today by picking the awareness token that resonates with your values, and start talking about it with friends. Pick your green coin and be part of the change.
- Lucien Lecarme
This story was also published behind a paywall here.