The world of NFT’s and Web3 projects have erupted over the last few years, but I often find myself searching for value in most projects. Obviously, certain artists are making tons of money and maintaining ownership for their work, which at a foundational level, is a tremendous positive.

This is a huge win for Web3 and the future of creation around the world, but what we do with this new wealth and creation is what we need to look at next.

When an artist or a project makes hundreds of thousands or millions in a very brief time, what happens next?

Does that wealth go towards traditional items, like buying a mansion, a new sports car, boats, luxury fashion items, and other items within the materialistic rabbit hole?

All these things are fun, no doubt, but what if the next generation of wealth brings a new way to think about how to use wealth?

Lord knows we have all blown money on things we regret and wish we could have back, those lessons are necessary for progress.

What if, instead of these traditional things we do with money and wealth, we shift our minds a bit on how we spend, or even better, how we invest this new wealth.

What happens when Venture Capital turns into Natural Capital?

Does our mindset shift on how we spend the returns?

What if instead of buying material items, we purchase land that creates a natural hub for carbon capture, or a small town decaying from industrialism and turn it into a climate capital or a net zero town?

Instead of one person or a group of wealthy individuals owning land with natural resources – what if hundreds of people own that land through newly formed DAO’s that protect the land from abusive farming practices, depletion of the resources, and/or poor housing developments?

There is no doubt many people will become wealthy from Climate Change, my hope is that the ones who make the most from it are not the same individuals who made money from destroying the earth in the first place.

That is my real worry, is those who became wealthy off depleting our resources are the same who make even more money restoring those same resources.

The even larger worry from this is that those individuals perhaps have the same mentality on how to spend their additional wealth.

More houses, more cars, more boats, more watches, more islands for more houses.

How can we change the mentality on what is perceived to be cool to own?

This is the real challenge.

Below are some important projects happening right now around climate and crypto.

We are still early in this journey, but there are some incredible people working on innovative solutions that not only sustain and regenerate our planet, but hopefully instill a new generation of wealth that has less to do with the accumulation of things and more about the scale of distributed ownership amongst regenerative and sustainable assets.

Web3 Projects That Enhance Climate Action

Regen Network

Regen Network’s infrastructure originates digital carbon assets in the Interchain economy, unlocking web3 regenerative finance. The network creates tools to help reverse climate change with digital carbon and regenerate ecosystems.

Regen Network’s blockchain-based marketplace creates a new contracting platform for farmers to monetize their ecological data while getting rewarded for sustainable practices.

By improving understanding of the state of our land, oceans, and watersheds and enabling rewards for verified positive changes, Regen Network catalyzes the regeneration of our ecosystems.

Listen the podcast we did with the co-founder of Regen Network.

Aera Force

Aera Force is a DAO made up of climate investors, founders, scientists and civic leaders investing in accelerating us towards a regenerative world through web3.

They’re raising a 2000ETH fund and community to engage the world on the mission to back iconic ideas and teams building a brighter future.

Aera Force is a learning experiment co-founded by Gotham Labs, New York-based creator of the DreamDAO and Auckland-born global climate venture fund Aera VC.

Aera Force is investing in new web3 frameworks, protocols and concepts they believe accelerate a regenerative future. Aera Force has, for now, identified the following thematics as some with huge, immediate potential:

• Marketplaces
• Provenance Tools
• On/Off Chain Interoperability
• Externality Pricing Tools
• Biodiversity Levers

The Corals

The Corals is an Australian digital art project featuring unique coral reef NFTs. These colourful and life-like corals will be your window on to the Great Barrier Reef, but they will also do so much more.

The first aim is to increase awareness of the danger facing the Great Barrier Reef, and to raise funds to support the preservation and conservation of the reef. The project wants to raise one million dollars to go to organisations that are actively researching, restoring and protecting the reef.

The goal is also to build an active community of people who care about the reef, other environmental issues and taking meaningful action on climate change. It will be fun, informative, and pro-active.

Importantly the project wants owners to see the real difference they are making to the reef, and provide value back to those who hold on to their Corals in unique and exciting ways.

Klima DAO

A carbon-backed digital currency and algorithmic climate protocol. Drive climate action and earn rewards with a carbon-backed, algorithmic digital currency.

KlimaDAO’s goal is to accelerate the price appreciation of carbon assets. A high price for carbon forces companies and economies to adapt more quickly to the realities of climate change, and makes low-carbon technologies and carbon-removal projects more profitable.

Through the KLIMA token, we will maximize value creation for our community and create a virtuous cycle of growth. Eventually, the KLIMA token (each backed by real, verified carbon assets) will function as a truly sustainable asset and medium-of-exchange, with real planetary value.

Rewilder

Rewilder is a crypto-native non-profit that coordinates the global purchase of land for wildlife conservation.

Track your donation with a unique NFT.

Once the land is purchased by the recently established foundation, the organization will virtually divide the property according to the share of the total money contributed. Each NFT will be updated after the land purchase to contain information on a specific parcel inside the purchased land and an update feed.

ReFi Jobs

ReFiJobs is the jobs board for the regenerative finance industry. ReFi DAO and Causeartist have partnered to bring ReFiJobs.com to life.

We believe regenerative finance is just getting started and will become a multi-trillion dollar industry by 2050.

Toucan Protocol

The Toucan protocol is a suite of modular tools and products that make it easy for others to integrate climate finance into web3 products.

Bridge – Bring your legacy carbon credits on-chain making them composable with almost every DeFi protocol.

Pool – Deposit tokenized carbon offsets into index pools: deeper liquidity, better price discovery, more composability.

Offset – Buy tokenized carbon offsets to make your on- chain activity verifiably planet positive.

Patch

Patch makes carbon removal as simple as writing a few lines of code. Build sustainable products with ease and put your climate goals on autopilot.

The API-based solution enables you to embed carbon footprint estimation and removal directly into your digital products and experiences. You can also make bulk offset purchases through our easy-to-use dashboard.

The result is seamlessly neutralized business and end-user emissions via our vast partner network. The latter includes a wide range of project types, from traditional nature-based projects一such as forestry, soil, and kelp一to frontier human-engineered carbon removal technologies—such as biochar, bio-oil, and mineralization. All it takes is a few easy steps.

Crypto Climate Accord

Surging demand for cryptocurrencies and accelerating adoption of blockchain-based solutions have highlighted an important issue: the technology’s growing energy consumption and its impact on our climate.

CCA is working collaboratively with the crypto and blockchain industry to accelerate the development of digital #ProofOfGreen solutions and set a new standard for other industries to follow. Inspired by the Paris Climate Agreement, the CCA is a private sector-led initiative for the entire crypto community focused on decarbonizing the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry in record time.

Nature+

Nature+ is an innovative platform that merges science-based soil regeneration with cutting edge Web 3.0 technology to produce tangible and scaled impact investment results.

The goal is to empower people and organizations by providing transparent data, rewarding incentives, and a successful stakeholder experience – all on one powerful platform!

The company has created a dual-yield business model that rewards environmental impact alongside financial gains: by investing in NUSD stablecoin, backed by natural capital and DEFI & liquidity protocols, investors are able to earn both revenue streams from this sustainable ecosystem – with part of their profit being put back into buying more green assets and minting additional tokens for yield generation!

Veritree

Built using blockchain technology, veritree is the world’s first, fully integrated platform designed to transform the restoration space through technology. Veritree provides a comprehensive toolkit to restoration partners allowing them to collect and manage ground-level data and deliver it directly to all stakeholders.

Veritree makes it simple to incorporate Nature-Based Solutions into any business model.

Veritree provides the tools and technology to offer access to verified and transparent restoration projects.

On-the-ground data collect, aggregate, and management securely tracks and helps efficiently manage Nature-Based Solutions projects. Data is stored using blockchain technology and offline encryption making veritree one of the most secure data storage platforms.

Veritree’s system gives partners, their customers, and project funders the transparency needed to have confidence in their impact and, through interactive portals, bring this impact to life.

Ecosapiens

The Ecosapiens are NFTs created to sequester carbon forever. Ownership of an Ecosapien helps save our world and opens the door into theirs – the ecoverse.

Ecosapiens capture a dramatic amount of carbon while increasing the NFT’s fundamental value. Carbon reduction is intentionally designed as one of the rarity features of the NFT.

Each Ecosapien NFT is backed by 20 metric tons of tokenized CO2, equivalent to offsetting a year’s worth of the average American’s carbon output. In this unique way, ownership of an Ecosapien is more than just a symbol and a call for climate progress—it’s an actual vehicle for carbon reduction.

To enhance the carbon capture potential of each Ecosapien, the smart contract contains a first-ever “payback-to-offset” feature that auto-triggers the purchase of additional carbon tonnage at the prevailing market rate and adds the carbon back to the NFT through our carbon-to-NFT bridge.

This immediate purchase of offsets is paid for by a fixed percentage of the royalty baked into each NFT and is triggered with each trade. So with each resale or net-new purchase of an Ecosapien after mint, the NFT continues to stack carbon onto the NFT (like lego blocks).

As a result, the impact of an Ecosapien lasts beyond the initial mint—it sequesters carbon in perpetuity and increases the fundamental value of the NFT itself.

basinDAO

basin is global DAO reducing/removing carbon, restoring/protecting nature and improving human health/wealth.

Also known as the “project developer” DAO, basin works at the real property level building and executing climate, nature and carbon projects with an emphasis on “core benefits” such as biodiversity, ecosystem services and climate justice.

The real asset projects create restoration, regeneration & conservation at scale, basin to basin.

basin is heavily involved in the ReFi movement (Regenerative Finance) and is working closely with other DAO’s in the emerging ReFi DAO to DAO ecosystem.

basin is also building the open source basin.protocol to put real property rights (in the basin case for Regenerative Finance) on chain.

They see a world where incentives and value exchanges that create a more healthy, abundant, balanced and peaceful world are quickly and easily shared between composable EVM’s and multiple chains. basin wants to contribute as much as possible and play an integral part in building the money lego’s for ReFi and the money of the future.

Farm VC

Farm is a climate investment platform. They make it easy to invest in land restoration, starting in the Great Plains.

Leveraging the team’s 15+ years of technology & data analytics experience, they’re building a community-powered tool for investing in undervalued land assets.

Their big bet is restoring this land to viable productivity and significantly reducing carbon emissions.

The work exists at the intersection of environment and people. Farm believe’s that collaborative efforts go further working together, because motivated communities make meaningful impact.

Earth Fund

A low-fee giving platform, for big ideas that could save the planet, built on the blockchain, governed by our DAO and powered by the 1Earth token.

Politicians are flying private jets to kick the can down the road and billionaires racing to space while the world beneath them burns.

That’s why Earth Fund is using 15% of its equity (plus contributions and LP rewards) to build a planet-saving treasury, controlled by you.

All you need to do is buy a 1Earth token, join the DAO and you’ll be able to voting on how to use that money to make a real difference, right away.

Sovereign Nature Initiative

The initiative strives to reconfigure the intersection between ecology, economy, and emerging technologies in order to open our minds to radical approaches toward sustainability.

Sovereign Nature is designed to be a platform which enables the development of technologies that allow natural resources to become self-governing and self-sustaining.

They want to open pathways that reconsider and reinvent the intersection between economy, ecology and technology toward a sustainable future.

Citizen DAO

The world’s first “Decentralized Autonomous Organization” for coordinating ideas, people, & crypto to solve humanity’s biggest problems.

Citizen DAO connects ideas, people, & money together in new ways to work on moonshot projects. Contribute your unique skills & knowledge to earn cryptocurrencies.

Project Ark

Project Ark is an innovative new blockchain-powered conservation platform built in partnership between Carbonbase and the leading international organization World Wildlife Fund Panda Labs.

They have created an online marketplace for rare digital collectibles or NFTs, which directly fund animal and environmental conservation efforts around the world.

Project Ark hopes to revolutionize the traditional fundraising model for conservation efforts around the world.

The organization will apply Ostrom’s theory of preserving the commons by creating the world’s first Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) to create endowment funds that protect large scale conservation efforts of the world’s most important natural resources.

The Sustainable Bitcoin Standard

The Sustainable Bitcoin Standard aims to create a market mechanism that will propel the Bitcoin network to reach carbon neutrality by 2025, without disrupting the fungibility of bitcoin.

The Sustainable Bitcoin Standard (SBS) is organized as an open global organization, leveraging the blockchain for public participation in governance.

We are designing a multi stakeholder ecosystem composed of miners, institutional asset managers, NGOs, climate scientists, and other stakeholders in the digital asset ecosystem.

SEEDS

SEEDS offers tools to help you, your business and your movement regenerate our planet and encourage collaboration, cooperation and community building.

SEEDS is owned by no-one and designed for everyone. For it to be a truly decentralised financial and political system, the organisation behind it needs to be decentralised. For this reason SEEDS is co-created by Hypha together with the Seeds Community.

Hypha DHO is a global, transparent, open-organisation that is owned by all who contribute and open to all! Anyone, yes that includes you, can contribute to this and get paid for doing so.

MOSS

Moss’s long term vision is to digitalize the whole global environmental system, and put it on blockchain: so that it becomes decentralized, efficient, fast, exponential.

MOSS.Earth is a leading global solution provider for climate action, that combines tailored consulting services with a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for company and product carbon footprints.

Moss also helps clients select the best conservation projects to offset carbon emissions. They use best-in-class technology and blockchain to maintain and track the integrity of environmental actions.

The world’s largest companies are offsetting with Moss: join the green revolution along with GOL Linhas Aéreas Cia. Hering Celo One River Asset Management SkyBridge Capital Arezzo&Co Clube de Regatas do Flamengo AMARO C6 Bank Mercado Bitcoin.

Open Forest Protocol

The Open Forest Protocol (OFP) is changing how forestation (reforestation, afforestation and conservation) projects are monitored, verified and funded with blockchain technology.

Protect our climate. Scale forestation with digital transparency and trust.

Climate Impact X (CIX)

Climate Impact X (CIX) was created to help drive environmental impact at scale. Their platforms provide the high quality carbon credits, and the liquidity, to support companies in the voluntary market.

CIX is initially focused on natural climate solutions (NCS), which involve the protection and restoration of natural ecosystems like forests and mangroves. They place a strong emphasis on quality, working with partners and harnessing technology to evaluate and monitor these projects.

This provides reassurance to the community of buyers and supports the trusted suppliers in earning fair value for their projects.