There are a number of #DAOs recently created or that require funding that support the circular economy and environmental stewardship practices in general. In this post, we take a helicopter view of three different DAOs in different stages of their evolution and their respective visions for self-autonomy and collective governance.
REGEN Network
At Regen Network, the community’s goal is to build foundational fintech infrastructure for ecological claims and data. This means serving as the ‘Layer 0’ upon which other projects and protocols may build upon and harness to execute their own climate-focused business models. Using a distributed ledger and modern remote sensing technology, the team is creating new tools for how humanity relates to its environment. Therefore, a community dedicated to maintaining a decentralised open ledger of ecological health information to serve as the basis for conditional agreements between parties is an essential building block for a new phase of the global economy that accounts for ecological health and invests in ecological regeneration as the cornerstone of healthy business and governance. Currently, ecological health is not held on the balance sheet of any entity, private or governmental. This means that financial decisions are blind to their ecological impacts.
Regen Network will be a public Proof-of-Stake network. This means that the primary governance mechanism is via token validators and delegators proposing and voting upon proposals. Five innovations will be implemented to the Cosmos‘ governance design, two of which are off-chain:
1. Community Stake Token Allocation
2. In-Protocol Governance DAOs for constituencies
3. Variable token sale discount
4. Legal responsibility of an organization (Regen Foundation) to steward the
culture of healthy governance
5. Democratic governance of Regen Foundation
KLIMA DAO
Klima DAO gives Web3 builders and users the opportunity to participate in the carbon market through the KLIMA token. KLIMA tokens are:
Fungible: per the ERC20 token standard
Backed: by at least 1 tonne of tokenised verified carbon offsets locked in the KlimaDAO treasury
Useful: holders of KLIMA will have the ability to vote on Klima DAO policy
Therefore, the DAO serves the role of "de-central" bank, governing the monetary policy of this new carbon-backed currency, just as a central bank governs the monetary policy of a fiat currency. Over time, an economy is built around KLIMA by driving adoption and unlocking growth of the crypto-carbon economy. By developing KlimaDAO on transparent and open-source infrastructure, participation from Web3 developers, carbon projects, and climate experts will be welcomed, to both build this new economy and be rewarded for their contributions.
The DAO formally opened up in December 2021 and began accepting outside applications for contributions across all departments. There are now more than 100 contributors, with more being onboarded regularly. It has expanded the KIP process to further emphasize community input by adding a Request for Comment period on the KlimaDAO forum where everyone can question, criticise, or recommend proposals that are less time-sensitive. As any new protocol with ambitions of decentralisation gets off the ground, the community must take on more responsibility. Gradually the vision of the founding team and the shared mental model of the protocol are internalised by the community, which diminishes the risk of uninformed token votes or a poorly worded proposal throwing the protocol off the rails.
Climate DAO
ClimateDAO is empowering everyday investors to be activists. Voting on shareholder proposals is a complicated and tedious process. ClimateDAO makes it easy for investors to have their voices heard at the companies they own. Whether you own stock through a brokerage, a pension or a 401k, you should have a say. Climate DAO aims to be the missing link between shareholders who care about complex issues and the fund managers voting on their behalf. The data that will be aggregated will allow fund managers to make more informed decisions based on their investor’s sentiments. Climate DAO recognises that there is a long list of companies failing to recognise the urgency of climate action, prioritising short-term financial gain over collective long-term welfare. Their aim is to remind those companies who their owners are. Part of the beauty of DAOs is that the managers and the owners are the same people. Incentives are aligned and a more direct democracy can prevail.
It is clear that DAOs may introduce a new era in organisational economics, transforming the global corporate landscape from hierarchical organisations to democratic and distributed organisations powered by organisational entrepreneurship and innovation. With a growing number of DAOs being established with environmental stewardship at its core, identifying the types of decisions for which community-based voting mechanisms are most efficient will become increasingly important. This would enable a better appraisal of the significance of the DAO phenomenon in the green economy.