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climate & nature hyperstructure

This is our Gitcoin Climate Alpha Round entry text but is worth posting here as it gives a solid overview of what we are up to.

"What you seek is seeking you." - Rumi

The systems and institutions that got us into this mess will not get us out. The climate and biodiversity crises will be solved from the bottom up: by People like you, Place by Place by Place, on Purpose.

TLDR

.basin is perpetual place-based climate and nature finance.

.basin scales land, ecosystem, and carbon sink restoration and conservation to solve the climate, nature, and carbon crises.

"RISK"

The crises we face are interconnected and not isolated from one another.

Land-use change caused by development pressure has resulted in a decline of 69% in species populations since 1970. One million species, or 1 in 7, are now threatened with extinction, with another 40% in decline. Simultaneously, if we fail to limit temperature increases, climate change will exacerbate biodiversity loss.

The climate and biodiversity crises have two main things in common: risk and land use. Whether it be wildfires, flooding, heat, drought, habitat loss, income inequality, carbon sequestration, pollination, desertification, deforestation, etc, etc all pose serious risks to individuals, businesses, investors, and governments AND all interact with land in one way or another.

Historically, risk is not directly investable. But land, and real estate, are.

INVESTABLE

.basin makes climate risk and nature loss risk investable through the use of tried and true real estate investment fundamentals to attract agnostic and indifferent capital into climate solutions, climate resilience, and climate adaptation.

The .basin model combines law, technology, and finance to make climate and nature investable not only for institutional and private capital but also philanthropy.

CLIMATE & NATURE PROJECT DEVELOPMENT

Climate will be solved not only place by place by place but project by project by project. The .basin protocol scales individual climate, carbon, and nature projects through shared upside and reduced risk.

The .basin model of course works for forest projects but we take it several steps further to make projects that have enormous ecosystem service benefits (in addition to carbon) like wetlands, floodplains, peatlands, urban heat islands, estuaries, algae, biocrust, etc investable. The .basin model also works for embodied carbon in buildings, the plugging of methane/gas leaks, and keeping oil and gas permanently in the ground.

RESTORATION & CONSERVATION

While the .basin model works for any property, regardless of size or location, the focus is on carbon sink and ecosystem restoration and conservation for maximum climate impact.

INDIVIDUAL & COLLECTIVE

The .basin model is designed to allow individuals to prosper while the collective flourishes. The flow of $STREAMS through $BASINS is a circular value exchange whereby collective success is only possible if individuals are successful and vice versa. All .basin's can be solely, jointly, or collectively managed.

SPEED & SCALE

The organizational and operational model of .basin is deployable, repeatable, and scalable for any place on earth and any type of ecosystem. As a series of interrelated but independent entities .basin is built for both the challenges of today and the promise of tomorrow. Our main entities are trust.basin, foundation.basin, dao.basin and a series of llc.basin's.

PLACE, PURPOSE & PEOPLE

Climate and nature can be (over)simplified to Place, Purpose, and People. Each .basin represents a place, purpose, or person/people but each is deeply connected to the others.

PLACE: as indicated by the name, .basin is primarily organized by watershed or basin. This is similar to how humans have organized for thousands of years before we labeled nations and states. But .basin's can also be an ecosystem, your town, a place you visited, a place you care about. We have even minted .basin's for individual trees. Any point on the globe can be a .basin. Examples: hudson.basin, indus.basin, flintriver.basin, congo.basin.

PURPOSE: Just as we share common-place, we share common interests and common purpose. This could be a cause you care about, a movement, a hobby or even a sport. Most purpose .basin's are climate, nature and biodiversity focused. Examples: baldeagle.basin, beaver.basin, greensalamander.basin, wetlands.basin, carbon.basin, nature.basin.

PEOPLE: people are the connection points to place and purpose. People are individuals, groups, organizations, companies, and even governments. Examples: tmo.basin, joebrewer.basin, will.basin, finley.basin, mckenna.basin

UNDER THE HOOD

All .basins are ERC-721 NFT’s energized with Charged Particles (@defiNFT). All .basin's can store and hold any number and combination of ERC-20’s or NFT’s inside. Many ERC-20's are yield bearing via Aave inside each .basin and can have time locks.

.basin's are a store of and fund what is truly valuable. As perpetual purpose trusts and permanent endowments for natural capital and ecological assets .basin's hold financial value but also clean air, clean water, biodiversity, pollination, human health, and safety or any tokenized impact certificate. The more value a .basin holds the more $STREAMS it receives.

CONTRACTS

https://opensea.io/collection/basin

$BASIN: https://polygonscan.com/token/0x4bf5a99ea2f8de061f7d77ba9edd749503d945da

Charged Particles: https://polygonscan.com/address/0x0288280df6221e7e9f23c1bb398c820ae0aa6c10

$CRK (CREEKS): https://polygonscan.com/token/0xf122a63f9fd807fa28a3495ad822ad84c934793d

$STREAMS

$STREAMS are the flows of value through the .basin ecosystem. Technically they will be either a fungible ERC-20 or a semi-fungible ERC-1155. $STREAMS are designed to incentivize positive outcomes and eliminate negative externalities. $STREAMS are governance, access, and utility but also a flow of absolute value from trust.basin distributions.

PREVIOUS GRANT ROUNDS

Gitcoin has moved our work forward over the last 14 months. We have used the funds for:

  • Beta dApp: https://beta.basin.global

  • Gitbook: https://docs.basin.global/v1

  • Main website: https://www.basin.global

  • Formed our non-profit arm: https://www.basin.foundation

  • Formed https://basin.realestate which trust.basin owns 10% of.

  • Launched the .basin contract and minted 500+ $BASIN tokens (with more in the works).

  • Allowlisted the .basin contract with Charged Particles (@DeFiNFT).

  • Set up 25 Safes for regional .basins and prototyped financial flows between them ($STREAMS) (more Safe’s coming)

  • Legal work for the DAO, Foundation, Trust, and LLC.

  • Pilot project with Aspen Valley Land Trust on the 141 acre Coffman Ranch which has a combination of riparian forests, shrublands, grasslands, and wetlands that provide a richness of wildlife habitat and activity.

  • Collaboration with TaterDAO, CougarDAO, and RWA Consortium for on-chain real estate purchases and open RWA standards.

  • Continued work on the basinStack a holistic assessment tool and methodology for real estate based natural capital credits, carbon credits, and impact certificates.

  • Minted $CRK (CREEKS) our internal test ERC-20 token.

  • Set up and tested 0xSplits for climate and nature project as .basin entity payments.

  • Evaluated SuperFluid for $STREAMS flows between Safes and .basins to mimic the water cycle.

ON DECK / UP NEXT

  • Working on running our own Gitcoin Protocol Quadratic Funding round with corporate and philanthropic partners with select .basins as grantees.

  • Formal build out of the .basin dApp with GIS and climate project development tools.

  • Minting .basin's for as many threatened and endangered species and places as possible.

  • Pilot projects to run the basinStack on and structure the climate.lease deals.

  • Corporate and civic partner pilot projects for surplus real estate and ESG goals.

  • Launching a ERC-1155 contract for individual .basin shares, $STREAMS ($STREAMS fill $BASIN's) and custom NFT projects.

  • Continue legal engineering work and tooling with KaliDAO, LexDAO, TaterDAO, and CougarDAO.

USE OF FUNDS & 0xSPLITTING

The funds will be used a) generally for our mandate of stewarding ecosystem services and the benefits nature provides to and for all living creatures present and b) specifically for the initiatives mentioned throughout this proposal.

We have set up 0xSplits to share the funds with dao.basin, trust.basin, foundation.basin, llc.basin as well as select Gitcoin bundles and projects (TBD):

https://app.0xsplits.xyz/accounts/0xD2584c1CF7E3fF11957195732d380DC886F5f05b/

MUCH THANKS

A special thank you to all of our supporters, the Ethereum community, and the Gitcoin team! We could not do it without you!