Firstly, what is a Regen? Well it's a bit of a nebulous term, but in this specific context, I'm referring to the concept of 'Regen' in web3 parlance; using decentralized tech to regenerate communities, ecosystems and economies. This could be public goods, open source software, educational initiatives, growing communities, banking the unbanked, supporting environmentally mindful initiatives and more.

So why is Farcaster the place for these regens to convene and coordinate? Well, Farcaster has proven itself as the leading (sufficiently) decentralized social network, especially for web3 leaning builders, artists and more recently degens. People often term it to be a 'web3 Twitter' but in reality it is much more than that, as explained in this 'Farcaster 101' video.

Farcaster is in reality an open protocol that anyone can build on and with. Most people access it through its main client Warpcast, although anyone can create another client. This aspect of being an open protocol vs. the closed, permissioned social networks we are used to is pretty important, especially when combined with the makeup of the initial community onboarded to Farcaster.

Back in the day, Facebook strategically onboarded students to create a trusted community based on real-world connections, leveraging the existing social structures of universities to foster rapid network growth.

In a similar way, Farcaster grew organically by initially onboarding mostly web3 aligned builders, particularly within the Ethereum community, leveraging existing online and onchain structures. This had the effect of propagating an engaged, ideologically aligned community, with incentives to enhance the protocol and overall experience for everyone else.

While initially Farcaster was more or less twitter with some cool web3 aspects like an NFT feed, more recently a few key new features have been game changers: 

• Frames (which are like interactive online billboards) allow web2 and web3 interactivity e.g. display and mint an NFT in a social feed, all the way through to complex games with onchain payments.

• Channels allow specific focus areas to flourish, a bit like dedicated community spaces or subreddits.

• Tips, both off-chain and onchain via tokens like $degen, allow anyone on the network to reward others for their contribution or engagement.

This last feature has been very transformative across social, technical and economic aspects of Farcaster, particularly with the rise of the Degen project. Degen was the first project to effectively faciliate tipping, which can be performed by any user who holds 10k $degen in a verified walled on Farcaster via a simple text comment e.g. 420 $degen.

The mechanics of tipping gamifies engagement and attention, allowing these core components of social media to be directly incentivised and monetised. This is not an original idea of course; simply the first time it has been applied effectively at scale.

Initially $degen tips provided actual utility for the degen memecoin – something which is pretty unusual in web3. The token itself initially had little value, but was intelligently distributed via airdrops and most importantly had incredibly strong memetic energy. Within 3 months, the token reached >$1b FDV. So what enabled this to occur? 

It was the unique combination of Farcaster's open, decentralized social graph, builder friendly tools such as Neynar and Airstack, timely new features like Frames, a community of engaged, incentivised builders and farmers, web3 integration (especially the rise of Base) plus the incentive mechanics inherent to $degen itself.

The architecture of Farcaster, combined with the makeup of its community allowed a virtuous cycle of tech, culture, and financial value to grow. People began developing around this new economic system and as a result, the community attributed increasing financial and social value to the token.

Tipping became a new meta. Memes, tools, art, games, and communities all emerged, culminating in the deployment of Degen Chain.

Meanwhile centralised, closed platforms like X have become increasingly challenging for genuine discourse. My algorithm on X has been a mess for a while now; my feed is mostly noise, ads, spam and scams, even with verified status. As a result I barely use the platform any more.

Farcaster for a long time felt like an (ad-free) village. While now its more like a slightly noisier town, it retains a very high ratio of signal to noise. This means that beyond the tech and financial speculation, it's also a space where one can develop meaningful connections fairly rapidly, which was the main draw for me (honestly).

It's all of these ingredients that I feel makes Farcaster fertile soil for Regens to coordinate and prosper:

• Open, decentralized architecture and ethos

• Channels to effectively coordinate around key topics 

• Frames to enhance distribution and interactivity 

• Tips to incentivise / reward intended behaviours

• Village/Town feel for more meaningful conversations

• web3 native community

The goal is now to test this hypothesis out, focusing energy initially within the /regen channel on Warpcast. A new project will soon be launching, emerging from this channel, and you're more than welcome to join us to participate in growing something that can enrich the overall regen movement. A good first step is to join the channel and mint a Regen OG NFT which is available until the next full moon...

Collect NFT

Having seen the growth of Farcaster and /degen first hand, I'm excited by the prospect of channeling (literally) that same energy into regen action! Inspiring a new meme and movement where degensregens as people like @nicnode have proposed (collect the manifesto if you can!).

Hope you're onboard Regen.

🍄

Imagine if you could store your memories in a format that would live forever. Imagine if you could take a walk in a musical garden, where each of the flowers contain a different song. Imagine if you could share a file with someone by sharing seeds. Imagine if you could grow NFTs that were alive. 

This is the vision of Non-Fungible Plants; blending regenerative thinking, artistic creativity, web3 technology and synthetic biology to develop a symbol for what might be, if we allow our imaginations and emerging technologies to combine in unexpected ways.

Through Non-Fungible Plants, my goal is to cultivate a community of optimistic 'gardeners' passionate about realising this vision. This project envisions a future where digital and biological data systems collaborate to establish a truly regenerative model for data.

What are Non-Fungible Plants? 

Non-Fungible Plants (NFPs) are living plants with digital data encoded in their DNA. They are a biological equivalent of an NFT. Like many NFTs, an NFP can be seen as simultaneously an artwork and an asset. Depending on the file size, an NFP could host an artwork, or simply act as a certificate of ownership / authenticity. 

While NFTs live on-chain, NFPs are in-plant. Since plants have life-cycles, NFPs are distributed via seeds and synthetic DNA. This represents an early experiment with the possibility of using biological computing as a low-carbon complement to data storage, data archival and blockchains. An evolution from the digital to physical, bytes to bases, carbon emitting to carbon absorbing.

How do you grow an NFP?

To create an NFP, we start with a digital file (like a JPEG) and convert the binary code (0s and 1s) of digital data into the language of DNA (A, T, C, G). Next, strands of DNA are created through a process known as DNA synthesis, ultimately transforming digital data into biological matter.

This synthetic DNA can then be incorporated into the genome of an organism such as a plant through targeted genetic engineering techniques. Thereby seamlessly integrating digital data into a living breathing organism.  

Using a small amount of digital data (in this case an NFT) does not affect the plant’s characteristics or interfere with the plant’s living processes. The data is furthermore stored in the non-coding regions, sometimes known as ‘junk DNA’, to avoid any disruption to the plant.

To retrieve the data, samples from the plant can be taken and sequenced using DNA sequencing technologies. The sequencer reads the order of the DNA bases (A, T, C and G) and can be fed to decoding software that can convert the sequence back to binary.

This process has been demonstrated in works such as The Data Garden by Grow Your Own Cloud (a research organization I co-founded), which exemplifies how digital files can be stored and retrieved from the DNA of plants.

Through the DNA data storage technology that powers NFPs, we could one day archive enormous amounts of data, with very little energy, for extremely long periods of time, all within a fraction of the space of a conventional data centre. At the moment the amount of data that can be stored in this way is relatively small, particularly in organisms such as plants. However, the science is rapidly advancing.

How can I be part of this?

The goal is to bring Non-Fungible Plants to life with a community of aligned individuals (Join Us). I see web3 as an enabler for this type of community led growth, especially for projects like NFP which offer people the chance to be early, to be part of history and to be part of growing the future.

Cyrus Clarke

@cyrusclarke

Introducing 𝑁𝑜𝑛-𝐹𝑢𝑛𝑔𝑖𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑃𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑠 (𝑁𝐹𝑃𝑠)

Living plants with 𝑁𝐹𝑇𝑠 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝐷𝑁𝐴
A carbon absorbing culture shift 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑤𝑒𝑏3 𝑡𝑜 𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑒
Be part of history (𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑢𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒)

Collect 𝑃𝑟𝑒-𝑆𝑒𝑒𝑑 𝑁𝐹𝑇:…

55

16:33 • 23 Jan 2024

1. Pre-Seed Round (Open until Jan 29th)

First up is the Pre-Seed Round (live now) where people can collect a beautiful digital artwork, fittingly a digital flower. This artwork symbolises the flowers we need to spread their pollen, and grow future seeds.

It is distributed as an open-edition NFT via the platform Artizen, with all funds matched by sponsors who seek to enable public goods and regenerative ideas.

This is your chance to get in early, collect beautiful art and receive the ‘Early Gardener’ role. Each flower is priced at 0.01 ETH – you can collect as many as you like. Collect more than 10 and you will receive a guaranteed spot on the Whitelist to the Seed Round. The pre-seed round will be open until January 29th (9am PST). 

*You can also support the project via Credit Card by following these instructions.

2. Seed Round (It’s literally a Seed Round)

Next, is a very literal Seed Round. Collectors will have the chance to grow digital seeds. But these are no ordinary digital seeds.

Each seed will be unique and generated based on the collector’s wallet address or ENS. This wallet address will be stored and used for the next round - the IPO or Initial Plant Offering.

3. Initial Plant Offering (IPO)

For the Initial Plant Offering, every wallet address from the Seed Round will be used to create a collective digital file. This in turn will be stored in the DNA of an actual, living plant. 

This means you and every other participant will be part of the first ever Non-Fungible Plant. This NFP will contain and be in itself a collective artwork; a symbol for the regenerative vision of this project.

Non-Fungible Plants will grow on a digital garden platform - NFP.garden. A beautiful, garden themed website that features a low-carbon mode.

To help the project grow we’ve had support from across the web3 and biotech space including from the incredible people at Seed Club, Polygon Labs, Ginkgo Bioworks, Artizen and Valley DAO. 

Since launch 48h ago, we’ve already had 100+ mints of our Pre-Seed NFT, and we can’t wait to welcome even more of you into the Garden community.

Where might this lead?

NFP is an early-stage research project with multifaceted deliverables. It pushes the boundaries of synthetic biology and Web3, contributes to pioneering research in DNA data storage, and offers a visionary perspective on how we can address the challenges of climate change

Following the Initial Plant Offering (IPO) the goal is to start growing NFPs regularly with creators, companies and causes. These will initially be only available to collectors of our Pre-Seed and Seed NFTs. 

There is already significant demand from companies and consumers to leverage this idea of plant-as-a-platform, and in the medium term the goal is to improve the efficiency of the processes involved, such that this might be a viable commercial platform for growing data infused plants.

Vision

For me personally, Non-Fungible Plants is about sharing a new vision for technology that reconnects us with nature, while offering a hopeful vision for the future, where our data can actually help to regenerate the planet. 

My aspiration is to enable everyone to grow their own NFPs, allowing them to encode cherished memories to share across generations while fostering a unique connection between ourselves and other species.

The project aims to grow a community of ‘gardeners’ who are interested in seeing this vision come to life. Most importantly, I hope to be part of inspiring a future where digital and biological data systems work together to create a more regenerative model for data infrastructure.

Learn more: NFP.garden

Join Us: Community

Be an Early Gardener: Mint Pre-Seed NFT

Follow me: @cyrus (Farcaster) and @cyrusclarke (Twitter)

How can we redefine our cities by reshaping our relationship with intangible digital data?

The idea of combining digital infrastructure and nature does not immediately spring to mind as the answer to this question. Yet, through my work and research as a founder of Grow Your Own Cloud, exploring how digital data might be stored within the DNA of organisms, we start to see how breakthroughs in synthetic biology might lead us to regenerative ideas that could inspire our futures in unexpected ways.

Urban Data Forest is a project and proposal to reimagine the city as a site of data storage in plants and trees. Situated in The Hague, Netherlands, the Urban Data Forest symbolises a regenerative and multispecies space to archive data. It explores the possibility of using DNA data storage technology to transform urban areas, bringing nature and data back to the city. 

In modern cities, humans and machines produce petabytes of data everyday, placing an enormous strain on scarce energy resources and in turn emitting yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The data infrastructure system is symptomatic of a broader economic model that is fundamentally broken; while externalities remain ignored, incentives to produce yet more data greatly outweigh any potential negative social or environmental consequences. 

But what if we could transition from an extractive data system, which inflicts further harm upon our planet, to a system that brings us into greater symbiosis with the regenerative, living systems of the natural world?

The concept for Urban Data Forest is based on a model I developed in 2018, imagining a system where a biological cloud emerges to support the current digital cloud. Data necessary for real-time or regular usage flows through energy intensive and highly efficient silicon data centres. In parallel, through a bifurcation, DNA based data infrastructure addresses what I call the ‘phantom data’ issue, by archiving the approximately 60-80% of unused data stored in the cloud. Storing this data in DNA results in low-energy, long-lasting data archives that are compatible with organisms.

To extend this further an Urban Data Forest imagines that these biological data storage facilities might be, at least in part, plant-rich spaces filled with data encoded plant, shrub and tree varieties. This new model creates a virtuous cycle where storing more data enhances the environmental condition, while providing a rationale for the proliferation of nature in urban spaces.

Living Archives and Breathing Museums

In the final concept, two types of Urban Data Forest are proposed: ‘The Breathing Museum’ which serves to archive public and cultural data, and ‘Living Archives’ which are forests primarily dedicated to citizens as facilities in which they can store their personal data. Two future scenarios from these concepts are presented in the film ‘Bathing and Breathing / Data Harvester’ which is presented below.

Breathing Museum

The Breathing Museum is an organic archive and contemporary cultural institute powered by DNA data storage technology in plants. It offers a calm, meditative space, where the public are invited to explore digital archives and cultural works through their contact with living organisms such as trees and shrubs. With species like field elm and sea buckthorn, data storage is low density. However, repurposing an existing natural habitat allows for a large area for this typology of data forest.

As a contemporary cultural institute, the Breathing Museum utilises a biological cloud to inspire new forms of interaction between culture and nature. Artistic collections play a large role here, with collections planted in collaboration with artists to be stored for future generations. As an organic archive, the Breathing Museum preserves significant local data, including scans of old maps, rare books and historical photos. Snapshots of modern life are also regularly added such as viral videos and social media announcements related to The Hague. 

Living Archives 

Living Archives are community centric data forests offering local citizens a way to store their digital files in the DNA of living plants and trees. 

Rather than storing their data in far flung, carbon emitting server farms, citizens and groups can obtain plots for themselves in nearby data forests to grow and care for their data. From family pictures to their favourite NFTs, these forests act as truly local and personal archive facilities. Data may be open-source or encrypted depending on the type of data and needs of the citizen. To secure organism preservation, protocols are put in place to help citizens retrieve data in a way that respects the natural growth cycle of the plant life that carries it.

These regenerative spaces for data storage are a site where local citizens and workers collaborate to preserve data and the living organisms which carry it. This all contributes to bringing biodiversity and data back to the city, involving people of all ages and creating new local meeting places.

New Jobs in the Data Forest

As data infrastructure necessitates the creation of new jobs, Urban Data Forests might offer new opportunities for local employment and a chance for urban workers to reconnect with nature. 

In this speculation we imagine how new roles would emerge such as Bio-archivists who know everything about the data stored in the plants. Many used to work as archival specialists, while others are synthetic biologists trained to transform digital media into sequences of DNA for storage in plants and trees. Data Migration teams keep everyone updated with how data is spreading in the forest through pollination. Data Harvesters are specialised foragers who care for plants and the data inside. If a plant is unwell they ensure data is backed up across organisms, seeds and synthetic DNA.

Research and Development Process

The design process for this project, located in The Hague, Netherlands, involved a series of workshops and sessions with a diverse working group, including Witteveen+Bos, local stakeholders, In4Art, and members of the local government.

Through these sessions, it became evident that understanding local concerns, especially urban planning, was crucial. Stakeholders provided insights into zoning, infrastructure, and preservation considerations that needed to be integrated into our plans.

After identifying these issues and constraints, we organized a visionary workshop based on our own speculative design methodology, to collectively explore the potential for Data Forests in The Hague in 2050. This workshop helped us envision use cases, such as community-specific applications, and also potential challenges, like impacts on local ecosystems.

The vision-based workshop allowed us to assess both the benefits and drawbacks of our concept, ensuring it aligned with ambitious 2050 sustainability goals while mitigating potential challenges. We also delved into new interactions between people and living systems, including the creation of new job opportunities, drawing inspiration from local archives.

This led to a final proposal featuring two data forest typologies designed with consideration for space, ecology, community, and data, following urban planning models. The design was context-specific, with Living Archives in the more urban, sea clay and low peat landscape and the Breathing Museum in the dunes region, each featuring carefully selected plant species for ecological synergy.

Working with the botanical garden of Delft, we selected organisms to form these data forests, considering attributes like carbon remediation, compatibility with existing ecosystems and of course genomic size as an indicator of data storage capabilities. To bring this research to life, we created renders and produced two films to provide a more immersive and human touch to this complex research.

Vision and Outcomes

The Urban Data Forest was first exhibited at ZKM, Karlsruhe (2022) and has since been exhibited at Highlight Festival (2023). The installation is a semi-enclosed space that incorporates various elements of the research, including two large infographic posters, a display cabinet containing selected plant species and their genomic information as well as the display of two films for Breathing Museum and Living Archives. 

The purpose of the installation is to communicate a vision of working with nature as technology for data storage, encouraging visitors to see an opportunity for new symbiotic relationships with other organisms that might promote regeneration and healing in place of destruction and extraction. 

The Urban Data Forest proposal has more recently been nominated for a S+T+ARTS Prize by Ars Electronica.

Ultimately, my hope is that this hopelessly hopeful literally green vision for the cloud might inspire us to rethink and transform our associations with digital data and our conceptions of urban environments. Our experiences with both the digital and physical world can be beautiful, vibrant and low-carbon.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this piece please consider subscribing for free to support my work. Please share and of course leave your comments.
Until next time, Cyrus 🌱