About

Regen Network is a platform that allows corporations to buy, trade, and retire high-integrity carbon and biodiversity credits from ecological regeneration projects. The platform mobilizes capital to support on-the-ground ecological regeneration projects and offers a marketplace for corporations to meet their climate commitments. The company focuses on incentivizing ecosystem regeneration to address climate change and the degradation of land and ecosystems. They offer a registry to develop methodologies and verify ecological credits, as well as a marketplace for project developers to sell their credits.

History

Regen Network, founded in 2018, is an integrated marketplace for the securitizing and transacting of ecological credits which may be used to offset the environmental harms of polluting companies. At the core of Regen’s mission is a dual-focus, firstly the democratization of land stewardship schemes, and secondly promoting more transparent environmental credit markets. Existing marketplaces for the registration and trading of environmental securities are localized, fragmented, and often rigid in their unwillingness to recognize foreign-issued projects. This market is poised to expand significantly in the 2020s and onwards, largely driven by a renewed corporate focus on environmental/social/governance performance, and secondarily by international commitments for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (among other environmental harms). The latter has precipitated the expansion of emissions-trading markets with a basic principle that harming the environment (and therefore the human population) must cost something to those who choose to do so. Regen builds on this, with a principle of rewarding individual network participants who contribute positively to local ecology and the environment, with protocols designed to offer the creation of individual net-positive climate securities on a granular basis.

Regen Network is a network of entities which collectively manage and promote the Regen Ledger and Registry elements. Regen Ledger is a purpose-built blockchain where ecological credits (e.g., carbon-emission offsets) are minted, bought and sold. The Ledger is a dedicated blockchain and Regen Registry is where individual projects contributing to the environment are listed, maintained, and marketed to buyers. Regen Network is commercially developed by Regen Network Development, Inc. A mission-built organization, Regen Foundation, was self-established by the founders to oversee the stewardship and conservatorial aspects of the project. The separation of concerns by Regen Network Development, Inc and Regen Foundation is wise, given the wide solution-zone the latter is working within. While Regen Network Development, Inc is engaged in the commercial development of Regen Ledger within the Cosmos ecosystem, Regen Foundation is tasked with the stewardship of the project’s governance and remains charter-bound to ecological promotion. This lends a higher degree of credibility to the non-profit arm as it works to engage with scientists, individual users, and the constituents it helps to serve (e.g., landowners).

Technologically, Regen maintains a dedicated blockchain developed using the Cosmos software development kit (“SDK”). The consensus mechanism implemented is Tendermint with byzantine-fault tolerance. Users are largely familiar with such a project as it is one of many within that ecosystem. Initial liquidity for the general public may be found on the Osmosis decentralized exchange where it may be exchanged for ATOM tokens, among others.

Regen Network is not the only project working to solve a particularly pressing global challenge, in their case through a fairly unique securitization of ecological assets. The concept of applying such listings to the blockchain, where individual projects may be infinitely subdivided and transacted is an exciting prospect. Further, through the rigor of Regen Foundation and Regen Network Development, Inc’s developed protocols for measuring ecological benefits in trusted, auditable, and predictable instruments raises the possibility of internationally-recognized carbon offset projects of any scale (including, most importantly, individuals and small landowners where securitization of credits would have been cost-ineffective). Lastly, the project will be succesful in its objectives if it drives discussion (or not to mention profits) for individuals contributing positively to our planet.