Standardizing sustainability ratings to measure true climate impact is a monumental task. These methodologies are complex and must constantly change as climate science makes new discoveries or as climate legislation advances. However, the institutions that maintain these ratings are often slow to react to changes in the landscape, leading to a lag between sustainability ratings and in the introduction of new methodologies. Additionally, the diversity of projects in the climate impact ecosystem necessitates the introduction of new ways to capture and measure impact that might not always be as cut and dry.

Anchored by more than a decade's worth of experience at the Rocky Mountain Institute, founder Ned Harvey was well aware of the problems with current sustainability scoring mechanisms. He, along with a talent team of machine learning experts, created a solution that leverages the power of distributed ledger technology and machine learning to quickly gather information and update sustainability ratings.

We believe that the ability to quickly update sustainability scores using aggregated data sets will be incredibly useful for the future of the ReFi ecosystem, and broad sustainability space. Through future partnerships with carbon marketplaces and providing scores to help upstart projects acquire initial financing, Digital Gaia will bring more transparency to the industry and facilitate more efficient capital allocation to carbon reduction efforts worldwide.

As a DAO…

Digital Gaia is a project that crept up on us. We hadn’t thought it was possible for there to be a true, dynamic sustainability score as so many have tried. After running the solution by members of the DAO and external experts in our network, we believe that leveraging AI models to account for rapidly changing methodologies is a viable solution to prevalant MRV issues.

Additionally, the team represents the experience and know-how to manage business development and build a quality product that can integrate outside of web3 ecosystems.

In short: Digital Gaia will help to shine a light on greenwashing and empower those doing true impact work, and we are proud to back them.

Existing MRV processes are tedious, lack standardization, and can be operationally taxing to conduct. This has historically prevented many projects from qualifying for carbon offsets, as only the largest programs received sufficient visibility and resources to dedicate to proper establishment and maintenance.

Now, utilizing OFP’s decentralized web3 toolkit, project operators can leverage a variety of utilities to streamline the MRV process for reforestation projects, all while providing an immutable record of project progress. By providing project operators the resources via applications, dashboards, and a decentralized validator network to publish project progress to the blockchain, OFP is unlocking the growth and potential of critical small-to-medium reforestation projects all over the world.

Further, by employing blockchain technology, transactions can seamlessly cross borders in an international market, unique incentive structures are enabled via tokenization of assets and rewards, bespoke governance structures can be crafted and implemented, and barriers to accessing marginalized global communities are all but eliminated.

Aera Force is thrilled to back OFP for not only the work they are doing in advancing efforts toward a net-zero future, but for the driving forces behind the output that align with our investment thesis and overall mission. Aera Force backs outstanding founders with the ability to execute and deliver, and trusts in the deep experience – across both environmental/reforestation and blockchain protocol development – of the OFP team. Aera Force further seeks to support sustainable business models built for long-term adoption and growth, and focuses on a cross-section of projects that leverage the power of web3 to address today’s most pressing problems with meaningful, scalable solutions. We see the rise of individually manageable, independently monitored, non-commercial reforestation projects as among the most crucial elements in reducing the current trajectory of global warming, not to mention one with the most potential growth velocity.

In short: we couldn’t be more excited to be an official partner along OFP’s pathway into the future.

• Creation of public records of immutable data 

• Ease of transacting across a global platform in a global market

• Enablement of unique incentive structures via tokenization

• Ability to curate bespoke forms of governance enabling improved coordination

• Lowering friction for reaching marginalized global communities organized around shared interests

From blockchain protocols designed to programmatically enable reforestation projects to validate and track their carbon sequestration efforts, to the ability to better engage the retail consumer to offset their footprint through artistic and cultural mechanisms like NFTs, we are exploring all avenues as a community. 

When we launched Aera Force in late February 2022, we started on a journey to not only to prove out a new, community-based model of venture capital, but to direct much-needed resources into seeding the climate solutions of tomorrow, powered by the mechanisms of web3. 

To date, it’s been an inspiring experience.

An Ever-Expanding Industry Landscape

The early applications of blockchain and crypto were focused on the original Bitcoin use case, the ability to instantaneously transact in a digital currency and power a distributed ledger. With the tracking and full history of every token and every transaction, it provided a basic level of insight we have never been able to efficiently do with fiat monies. 

This has lent itself to the most cited use case of blockchain for climate, the tokenization of carbon credits. This is indeed a powerful use case, with the ability to upend many issues with the current system. 

However, the application of these new technologies stretches far beyond this initial use case, and if you look closely, you’ll start to see the underpinning of a massive, interconnected global ecosystem of symbiotic partners working together to maximize impact on the environment. Fundamentally, the mechanisms of web3 allow for us to build solutions that were never possible. Here are some examples of what we have seen so far:

• Vertically integrated protocols enabling ecosystem participants to document and monetize their contributions to carbon reduction or sequestration at all layers, not just the project development and financing levels.

• Decentralized data platforms enabling individuals to share and own their environmental data in exchange for payment when leveraged by outside parties 

• NFT projects focused around creating communities of like-minded, environmentally conscious people rallying around the cause of drawing down carbon

• Crowdfunding platforms dedicated to climate focused projects with the ability to reach less developed and endangered communities at speed and scale with a lower burden of cost

There are countless other models and solutions being created that have varying levels of focus. With some projects hyper focusing on certain topics in the space to others providing a catch all umbrella as a key piece of industry infrastructure, the decentralized nature of Web3 will allow for cross collaboration and network effects hereto unseen in traditional centralized infrastructures.

Hypothesis for the Ecosystem

We believe the promise of the Web3 climate ecosystem, and its future legacy will be one of interconnected solutions. Each solution that emerges will find ways to interact and partner with others in the industry, stacking on top of one another like building blocks. We envision a world where environmental data protocols built to collect globally standardized data will feed into solutions validating and enabling high quality and carbon token generation that is additional to the problem of climate change, which in turn can partner with NFTs and other projects looking to generate interest and demand for the purchase of tokenized carbon from retail and institutional buyers. 

This type of streamlined coordination and processing with full traceability, ease of transacting, and multiple points of validation will start small and disconnected, but increased coordination and network effects will allow for the rapid growth of these solutions. 

At its core, there will be three broad categories of solutions that will emerge:

• Origination and validation of high-quality tokenized environmental assets linked to positive, quantifiable environmental impact

• Solutions driving new and unique demand for these environmental assets 

• Developed infrastructure (data, marketplaces, wallets etc.) to enable the creation, financing and interaction of the supply and demand for these value-add solutions

None of these three can unlock their true value as a standalone entity. A carbon token-generating protocol fails without ample demand; a demand platform has trouble keeping momentum and an active user-base if there is no way to validate or get access to environmental assets; and an environmental data protocol has no economic sustainability if there are no end users to leverage the information being curated on-chain (which is acquired for a fee). We keep this top of mind in order to both avoid siloing and leverage the network effect of cross-functional solutions. 

Our Guiding Principles:

All said, at Aera Force, we are diligent in our research, learning alongside the community and looking to support the founders dedicated to creating actionable solutions with the highest level of verifiable impact for the problems we are facing. 

Most importantly, we are seeking to find the projects and solutions that truly address pain points in existing web2 climate efforts, instead of replicating them in a new technology ecosystem. This includes, but is not limited to, issues like greenwashing, additionality, and the misclassification of at-risk ecosystems. At this initial stage of our journey, we have thus far developed an early framework for what we look for in every investment.

Currently the following are our guiding tenets:

• Backing outstanding, dedicated, and forward-thinking founders with the ability to execute and deliver

• Supporting solutions with sustainable business models that have a strong value proposition in both the physical and web3 world, and therefore are built for long term adoption and growth

• Laser focusing in on projects that deliver high quality impact to the climate that meaningfully fix the problems of today, and most importantly

• Innovations that are fundamentally leveraging the power of web3 at the heart of why and how they will be unique and successful in solving the problem in the marketplace and achieving massive scale

We have already been so impressed by the ideas that have been generated in this space and are looking to assist in the build of this ever-growing ecosystem through enablement of the best solutions for continued growth and flourishing. Aera Force seeks to be a hub to bring projects, communities, and creators together to continue to assemble the building blocks to a sustainable climate future.

Join Us

If you are looking to…

• Invest, check out our website and get in touch. 

• Join the community and get ETH to explore with us, hop in our Discord.

• Do your own diligence (we love that for you), read our green paper.

• Connect with the team, drop us a note.

A variety of projects are emerging in web3 to underpin or accelerate climate innovation in the real world. Hundreds of web3 projects will emerge as climate data, credits, offsets, supply-chain provenance and footprint, and countless other problems require novel solutions. The space is still nascent, but one thing is certain: We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create, and scale, technology that will help us save our planet.

Today, we’re launching Aera Force to do just that. Using Aera VC as a bridge to traditional capital, we’re shepherding “web2 finance” forward into an ecosystem that includes web3 investors, climate pioneers, and industry specialists, to allow everyone in the emerging regen space to leverage the network effect and exponentially increase collective impact. Over the coming months, we will build an investing movement that will begin to infuse  capital into regenerative projects, people, and ideas underpinned by web3.

Aera Force was born out of Aera VC, an Auckland based global climate venture fund, and Gotham Labs, a New York based blockchain launchpad and co-creators of the Dream DAO.

For over five years Aera VC has been investing in high growth, early stage businesses around the world tackling systemic sustainability issues while having the potential to deliver material financial returns. The Aera community is already full of scientists, founders, and investors dedicated to pushing the boundaries of climate innovation.

Over at Gotham Labs, our community has launched Civics Unplugged and the Dream DAO – which was recently featured by Coinbase as one of the DAOs “Rewiring the World”. The Gotham team has been investing in blockchain technology since 2014, and launched Onward Labs in 2017 to not only dream about using this technology for impact - but actualizing it - and have been pushing it out to the world ever since.

Okay, now that we’re done setting up why we should be launching this thing, let’s talk about why we need to infuse massive amounts of capital into regen projects.

Investing in our Collective Future

Currently, there is no real incentive for climate markets to have transparency, interoperability, and global buy-in. Early experiments such as Toucan and Regen Network have proven regenerative-finance (“ReFi”) technology’s ability to fill these gaps, while also making it profitable to take part in the system. Unfortunately, outside of the billions of dollars created within the web3 ecosystem, there has yet to be a massive investment in ReFi use cases that address our climate’s greatest challenges.

As 4156 of Nouns DAO called out recently:

"Crypto-natives increasingly have the power and capital to have a positive impact in the real world, but to date, most of the real world ‘signals’ people have seen from us are not so compelling. Crypto-outsiders may not understand the machinations of the cryptoverse, but they do understand the real-world fallout. If crypto imparts us with capital-aggregating superpowers, and we only use these superpowers to buy Rolex watches and lavish trips to Dubai, the outside world will reject [the crypto community and its visions for the future] (and rightly so)."

Projects like Powerledger, Toucan Protocol, RefiDAO, and Regen Network are beginning to break through, but have yet to make traditional headlines and craft beautiful narratives about web3 that we all know are possible. These projects are also just the beginning. Regens are building as we’re flying, but here are some of the broad categories that regen crypto is working in:

• Better marketplaces: solutions to enable seamless transactions for carbon or ecosystem-related offsets or credits (including novel verification methodologies)

• Minimizing, and ultimately or reversing, blockchain’s impact on climate

• Solutions aiming to track, measure and price the carbon footprint (or ecological externalities) of materials, products, commodities across the supply chain

• Scalable new ways to fund or organize climate initiatives with DAOs’ community-ownership

• Assigning prices to environmental costs or natural ecosystems to tax the polluters (circumventing regulation) or protect ecosystems like fisheries

• On-chain records, ledgers, data, or insights which more efficiently underpin physical decarbonization

• Unlocking offsets for new types of business transactions

We know this all needs to exist, but there has yet to be a focused investment effort in the Refi Space – Until Now.

A New Way Forward

Aera Force will begin with DAO armed with a venture fund that involves investors, founders, and community members at every point in the process— making them more excited and engaged with technology that benefits our planet. As we’ve seen with our Dream DAO launch, the most successful DAOs start with an existing community of evangelists ready to formalize their involvement through incentive structures in the DAO ecosystem. Aera Force is following the same model, bringing our Aera VC community of innovators, scientists, radical founders, and investors into the fold and inviting many more to participate. In this way, we are also bridging the worlds of crypto natives and more traditional investors.

As Aera Force begins to deploy capital, the DAO will expand, forming spin-off groups to fund research, incubate startups, and build a home for those that want to lend their superpowers to our mission. Community members can organize into teams, and earn rewards for sourcing deals, running diligence, launching hackathons, and so much more. When combined with a governance token which gives token holders the right to actively participate, the DAO will self-fund these different sections, sparking upward spirals and growth for years to come. Combined with a community treasury of tokens and strong underlying foundations (voting rights, rules, and a unified north star), Aera Force has the power to supercharge our efforts in ultimately saving the planet.

We’re just getting this off the ground, but here are some ways YOU can help:

1. Read the Aera Force Greenpaper

2. Invest in Aera Force

   1. To invest, qualifying accredited investors can mint “Investment Tickets” on the Aera Force website. Each ticket represents a 10 ETH investment. Once minted, a smart contract will hold funds in escrow until the KYC process has been completed. We know this is a barrier – and we hate it too – but we are complying with legal regulations that will allow us to raise this fund quickly and deploy it even quicker. Investment Ticket NFTs gives holders voting rights in the DAO and unlocks a share of the fund’s proceeds proportional to ETH invested.

3. Contribute to Aera Force

   1. We are building a foundation for community members to spin up new projects, funds, and initiatives from. Outside of investing, community members can join the discord, participate in DAO teams and earn rewards for contributing to the community.

So…What’s Next?

We all know there have been a lot of missteps and false promises in the blockchain ecosystem. However, believers who know how to wield this technology to achieve its promise need to rise up to usher in a new era. If we are going to create a global paradigm shift and save the world, we must create a community that funnels capital into problem solvers, ideators, and builders.

We are going all-in, but we need your help to make Aera Force the engine of change it can become. If you’re interested in contributing to the community, launching something to scale climate investment, pitching Aera Force for investment, or anything else, hit us up in the discord.

For the Future,

The Aera Force Core Team