“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” — Haldir

As we near the conclusion of this series, we shift focus from building the regenerative stack to capital formation – in other words, how this stack can capture real financial value to fuel its mission. In our last article, we explored how Green Goods lets communities record and tokenize their impact (creating on-chain “ecocerts”). Now we’ll see how those impact tokens, and the stack as a whole, plug into larger funding streams. While the stack inherently generates some capital (for example, Squad Staking provides a steady stream of yield), scaling our impact means tapping into far bigger pools of capital. If squad staking is a pond, the broader funding landscape is an ocean. Thankfully, there’s plenty of capital out there – an estimated $4 trillion per year is needed for climate action and the SDGs, which is only about 1% of global financial assets. The challenge (and opportunity) is channeling that capital into regenerative projects.

By using our Green Goods to produce verifiable impact data and tokenized assets, the regenerative stack can “plug in” to external funding sources and turn public-good efforts into investable, finance-supported initiatives. We'll kick things off at home with Greenpill our community of Chapter and Guilds that actively coordinate and collaborate to form capital.

We should begin with the capital close at hand – our own community. The Greenpill Network is fortunate to have a vibrant network of chapters and guilds who can utilize the Dev Guild’s services. As the Network funds various projects (e.g. via grants), it can rely on the Dev Guild to execute those where our tooling applies. This creates a virtuous loop: as the Greenpill Network grows and takes on more initiatives, the Dev Guild naturally benefits by gaining more work, and vice versa – the Guild’s success feeds back into the Network’s capacity.

One example is GreenWill (our reputation tracking tool). The Network can support GreenWill’s development in its initial Greenpill-focused phase, helping build a strong tool for governance. In the future, if GreenWill’s methodology or software can be offered to other communities, the Network could fund that expansion and earn a return as new clients adopt GreenWill. In short, by serving our home ecosystem first and proving value, we strengthen our base and create case studies to attract outside capital later.

Regen Coordination is a collaborative effort among the Greenpill Network, ReFi DAO, Celo PG, and numerous partner organizations, focused on effectively growing Ethereum adoption within local regenerative communities. Over the past year, Regen Coordination has allocated over $150,000 to regenerative projects through multiple Gitcoin community grant rounds. As an active council member, we are currently coordinating for Gitcoin Grant Round 24, bringing tools and methodologies that regenerative communities like Greenpill can use to capture impact and secure sustainable financing.

Finally, community-driven platforms like Gitcoin and Giveth remain foundational in Ethereum’s funding landscape. Gitcoin’s quadratic funding rounds have, to date, distributed over $50 million to early-stage public goods projects – providing that crucial seed capital for teams to validate their ideas. Giveth, similarly, continues to foster a culture of giving in Web3. These platforms are often the first stop for regen projects to gain funding and credibility before they pursue larger grants or investment.

The broader Ethereum community, even in a bear market, offers a plethora of opportunities for funding public goods. Take Optimism for example: its Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RetroPGF) program has pioneered rewarding past impact. The Optimism Collective has allocated 850 million OP tokens to retro funding and recent RetroPGF rounds have distributed tens of millions of dollars to builders across the “Superchain.” This shows a deep well of ecosystem capital for those who can demonstrate real impact. Similarly, Celo has a strong public-good focus – through initiatives like the Celo Public Goods and regional DAOs experiments, Celo is providing numerous grant opportunities for regenerative projects. The Ethereum Foundation (EF) remains a pillar as well, consistently funding open-source infrastructure and novel public-good experiments (many EF grantees have gone on to great success).

Emerging platforms are also stepping up to the challenge. For example, Octant is building a network-level public goods funding pool. With its upcoming Octant v2, the project aims to unify fragmented funding mechanisms across ecosystems by generating yield from idle treasuries and providing infrastructure for ecosystems to run community funding rounds using that yield. Recent discussions have explored how the Greenpill Dev Guild could deploy a vault where well-capitalized ecosystems can deposit their treasury funds, enabling us to run funding rounds powered by the yield. In essence, if a larger community aligns with your mission and tools, they can support both your work and their own by entrusting funds to our vault.

By leveraging such ecosystem opportunities – from RetroPGF on Optimism to Celo’s grants, EF support and Octant’s epochs – the Dev Guild can significantly amplify its capital inflows.

As discussed in our Green Goods article, Hedera is a well-capitalized network (backed by large enterprises) that has made environmental assets a core focus. It offers native tooling like the Hedera Guardian, an open-source platform for tokenizing and auditing carbon credits and similar assets. Green Goods is highly applicable here, and a future integration could see us tokenizing garden impact on Hedera. Hedera’s emphasis on trusted attestations could make it an ideal chain to formally recognize the validation of regenerative work. Notably, in May 2025 Verra – the world’s leading carbon credit standard body – announced a partnership to integrate with Hedera’s Guardian. This is a major signal that traditional players are embracing on-chain impact. With Verra in the fold, there’s an on-ramp for institutional climate funds to flow into Hedera’s carbon tokens.

Another chain leaning into public goods is VeChain, which last year launched the VeBetter DAO initiative focused on funding sustainability projects. VeBetter uses an innovative “X-to-Earn” model: it rewards everyday positive actions (like recycling, using transit, etc.) with crypto tokens, turning personal sustainability efforts into something like a game. Projects in the VeBetter ecosystem can receive streams of the reward token (called $B3TR) to support their growth, and the community votes on which apps get more support using a governance token ($VOT3). What makes VeBetter unique is its vibrant user base and heavy incentive design – participants actively compete in weekly challenges, and the VeChain Foundation boosts the system with grants and token buybacks to encourage engagement. For the Dev Guild, integrating Green Goods with VeChain would mean issuing an impact token that complies with VeChain’s standards and it could tap into a very engaged community that is literally paid to do good. It’s an intriguing option for our Green Goods beta, as VeChain could offer both funding (through its grant programs) and a ready pool of users.

The Solana ecosystem is early but eager in regenerative finance and public goods. The Solana Foundation and related funds support climate-tech and social impact through grants and hackathons. Solana’s low fees and high throughput suit micro-transactions to track eco-actions on-chain. A key player is ReFiHub, a dedicated regenerative finance hub building community and infrastructure on Solana. Integrating Green Goods with Solana-native tools — like SPL tokens for ecocerts or NFTs for impact badges — and tapping into ReFiHub’s network could unlock new funding and users. Though Solana lacks a large public-good DAO like Optimism or Celo, its venture ecosystem and growing developer base present valuable opportunities.

In short, as we grow outward, multi-chain integration is on the table: by tailoring Green Goods to chains like Hedera, VeChain, or Solana, we not only access their technical capabilities but also unlock new pools of funding and users dedicated to those networks.

Not all capital comes from crypto. A huge opportunity lies in bridging Web3 with traditional funding sources – from nonprofits to governments.

In the regenerative space, web3 natives sometimes see traditional NGOs as archaic or even as competition. That mindset needs to shift. Established nonprofits and NGOs have decades of knowledge, relationships, and credibility in coordinating impactful programs. By partnering with them instead of bypassing them, we can learn from their experience and also access funding streams that Web3 projects normally couldn’t. For example, many local and international grants are available to NGOs working on climate, conservation, social justice, etc. If we collaborate (e.g. an NGO handles on-the-ground execution while the Dev Guild provides blockchain tools and transparency), we create a very strong joint value proposition. In fact, during a recent Regen Coordination call, there was discussion of a $500k grant opportunity where a Web3 team and local organizations teamed up to apply together – a fantastic model of cross-pollination.

Another avenue is working with forward-thinking cities and regional governments. Around the world, there are a handful of locales pioneering Web3 adoption in public services – places like Barichara (Colombia), Koh Phangan (Thailand), Nairobi (Kenay) Colorado (US), Oakland (US), and more. These are often driven by local officials or civic tech groups who see blockchain as a tool for things like transparent budgeting, digital IDs, or community currencies. Through the Greenpill Network’s broad social web, we actually have connections to many such places (for instance, Greenpill chapters have members who are working on local climate projects, community gardens, etc.).By deploying pilot programs of our stack in a couple of these receptive communities, we can make inroads that position us for government funding down the line.

Our upcoming Green Goods Q3 pilot is a perfect example: we plan to work with 5–10 community gardens (some of which are in these pioneering locales) to test the app. This not only gives us user feedback, it also builds local government familiarity. Imagine by 2026 we can approach a city council with data from a pilot in their own backyard, and propose scaling it city-wide with public budget support. That’s a realistic path to government contracts or grants.

We should also keep tabs on other Web3-for-public initiatives happening in cities. For example, Graven the founder of Flow State and Greenpill NYC’s Steward Luciano are experimenting with streaming quadratic funding in a community context in Kesennuma – essentially letting residents allocate part of a public budget with a quadratic funding mechanism to fund local solutions. Learning from such experiments will help us craft our pitch to municipalities: we can highlight how Web3 improves on traditional models (more transparency, broader participation, etc.) while still satisfying the public sector’s requirements for accountability.

Why Web3? How blockchain can enhance traditional funding mechanisms:

• Expanded Reach & Participation - Beneficiaries extend beyond a single city or country, allowing anyone to contribute and participate in decisions like quadratic voting, broadening community voices.

• Lower Infrastructure Costs - Lower costs come from blockchain automation—smart contracts handle record-keeping, disbursements, and verification—reducing overhead and maximizing mission funds.

• Speed vs. Stability - Web3 offers speed without sacrificing stability, streaming funds in real time with transparent, auditable trails that build trust.

• Transparency & Trust - Transparency is heightened as all transactions and impact data are on-chain, ensuring funds release only upon verified conditions, minimizing misuse.

• Cost & Efficiency - Blockchain’s composability lets governments combine identity, funding, and impact tokens seamlessly, enabling efficient micro-payments and incentive programs that increase impact per dollar.

Now let’s dive into some of the native Web3 tools that enable novel capital formation. We’ve mentioned a few already, but here we’ll outline how they work and how we intend to use them.

One exciting primitive in Regen Web3 are Hypercerts – a way to tokenize impact itself. In simple terms, a hypercert is like a digital certificate representing a claim on some positive outcome (e.g. a certificate for “100 tons of CO2 captured by X project”). Funders can buy hypercerts to retroactively reward impact or to speculate on future impact. With Green Goods, this is a natural fit: gardeners’ actions, assessments, and reports can be bundled into hypercerts. For example, a season’s worth of data from a community garden (plots tended, biodiversity improved, produce grown) could be packaged as a hypercert that a city government or an impact investor purchases to support the garden’s work.

The marketplace for hypercerts is still nascent but it’s growing. The key is establishing trust: having evaluators and standards so buyers know the impact is real. The Dev Guild has been closely following Hypercerts (we ran a workshop on it in late 2024). As the hypercert ecosystem matures, we’re optimistic that Green Goods can feed into it – our on-chain impact records can serve as reliable inputs for hypercert issuance, and selling hypercerts shares could become a revenue stream for gardeners and communities. In essence, hypercerts turn social and environmental outcomes into tradeable assets, unlocking capital from ESG investors or philanthropists looking for measurable returns.

Juicebox is a powerful on-chain fundraising protocol that lets projects launch customizable smart contracts to raise funds transparently. Contributors receive “receipt tokens” representing their share of the treasury, with built-in accountability. Legendary examples include ConstitutionDAO, which raised $47 million in under a week, and MoonDAO, which funded a community member’s suborbital space flight.

Building on Juicebox, Revnets (Revenue Networks) automate revenue-sharing with fixed, immutable rules coded on-chain. Contributors receive tokens representing a fixed share of future revenues — ideal for projects like community-run solar farms or platforms like Green Goods. For Green Goods, Revnets could enable steady funding by distributing revenue from impact token sales or services automatically, reducing overhead and governance risk. This “trust the code” model offers predictable, automated returns, making it an ideal fit for sustaining regenerative finance projects.

All these new Web3 mechanisms are exciting, but we’d be remiss not to consider the tried-and-tested revenue approaches that exist in any industry. Just because we’re building public goods doesn’t mean we can’t borrow from traditional business models where appropriate. Here are a few such approaches and how we might implement them (often with a Web3 twist).

Offering memberships or premium access to certain Dev Guild resources could generate steady support. For example, we could have a members-only portal with advanced tooling, exclusive workshops, or priority support. This would be akin to a SaaS subscription or Patreon model. In practice, since our ethos is public-good-oriented, we’d keep most content public and free – so a membership would focus on value-add perks (like one-on-one consultation hours, early feature access, or co-creation opportunities). Blockchain can enhance memberships by making them tokenized: we could issue NFT membership badges that unlock content or governance rights.

If a dApp like Green Goods becomes an integral daily/weekly tool for users, a modest subscription model could be introduced for advanced usage. For instance, gardeners might always be able to use the basic features for free (to ensure inclusivity), but power users like large community farms or NGOs might pay a monthly fee for premium features (exporting detailed reports, integrating with other systems, etc.). In Web3, subscriptions can be handled via smart contracts (e.g. a streaming payment that users can cancel anytime, like Superfluid streams). This reduces friction compared to web2’s credit card billing. A recent example in our space: Charmverse, a popular DAO workspace platform we use, introduced a subscription model in 2025. They actually tied it to their new token (DEV) – essentially requiring projects to spend DEV tokens for certain premium features.

Related to subscriptions, we can offer specific premium add-ons for a fee. In Green Goods, this could be things like an AI-powered plant identification feature, or advanced GIS mapping of garden plots, or perhaps integration with external sensors (IoT devices measuring soil health). These features might be costly for us to run (e.g. AI API calls, data storage) so it’s fair to charge for them. Rather than blanket charge all users, we let those who want the fancy extras pay a bit. One way to implement this in Web3 is via a token gating mechanism: e.g., holding a certain amount of a Green Goods token might unlock the AI feature. That way heavy users/supporters subsidize the costs, and the token could be earned or bought, introducing an ecosystem dynamic.

Last but not least, the good old services model. This has been the bread-and-butter of the Dev Guild’s revenue to date. We’re essentially a consultancy/agency for regenerative crypto. We’ve done everything from facilitating workshops, to offering pair programming and graphic design for partner projects, to running grant round operations. These services not only bring in funds, they also grow our credibility, spread our reputation and foster partnerships.

We intend to continue packaging our expertise as services, especially for new communities that want to get into regen Web3. For instance, a local environmental group might hire us to implement a basic DAO toolset (multisig, voting contracts, GreenWill methodology) for them. Or a blockchain protocol launching a public goods program could bring us on as advisors or operators. The beautiful thing about services is that they are immediately monetizable (no need to wait for product-market fit of an app) and can be done in parallel with product development. Of course, services don’t scale infinitely – they rely on human time. But we can increase their value (and price) by focusing on niche expertise that few others have.

In summary, we’re exploring all avenues of capital formation to sustain and grow our regenerative stack. From leveraging our home network and Ethereum’s rich public goods ecosystem, to expanding into other chains, partnering with legacy institutions, and using cutting-edge on-chain funding mechanisms, it’s clear that impact can attract capital if packaged the right way. The regenerative stack gives us that packaging: it turns local action into measurable, investable units (data, tokens, reputation) that speak the language of funders.

In the final article of this series, we’ll outline our roadmap to validate these ideas – essentially, how we plan to pilot and iterate on these capital pathways in the coming months. The blueprint is set and the potential is enormous; now it’s time to execute and prove that regeneration can finance itself. We invite everyone who’s inspired by this vision to join us on the journey – whether you’re a builder, a gardener, an investor, or just a curious soul, there’s a role for you in growing this regenerative future.

(Stay tuned for our final installment: Validating the Regenerative Stack.)