<aside> 💡 Feel free to add startups or your insights anywhere in this document.

The goal of these open-sourced documents is to improve our web3 community’s ability to make sense of web3 applications for authentic climate impact — and, in doing so, drive better investment decisions.

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Eclectic notes or insights

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• DAOs are partially hamstrung by the fact that most people want to minimize extra work, even if a consulting gig is at a rate significantly higher than their work rates

  • from a conversation with DeSci Labs and Ale Borda

• DAOs and others are over financializing their products when people mostly care about the mission, problems, and their careers

• Early ecosystems attract a lot of founders drawn to the light, rather than with expertise focused on solving the major problems

  • therefore, it may be more interesting to help other experts consider how to use blockchain rather than accelerating blockchain-focused founders

• Security issues still exist —

  • it’s ridiculous that consumers need to read smart contracts to be safe. They are not notified whether smart contracts have potential issues, such as a connection to a known scammer. Source: Trust Wallet CEO Eowyn Chen on the barriers preventing Web3 mass adoption. (Coin Telegraph)

Challenges

• From Ollumi in the Aera Force Discord:

  • What has changed from the last iteration of blockchain is that previously it was thought of as a dead instrument of record, and now it's more commonly thought of as an engineering tool to iterate on underlying product. Fascinating, if the product doesn't suck.

  One of the bigger questions about blockchain for climate, or for that matter any investment, is why x product for this problem. The previous set of startups did not answer this question very well, with iterations of "stapling" a carbon credit to each on chain token or "on-chain" market failing to answer "why blockchain" spectacularly. It's also probably my foremost question to consider(aside from team) when looking at any current project.

• Many web3 climate startups are now possible because oracles (sources of data) are now on chain.

  • Newsletter #6 world bank article on new web3 applications: “most of these applications only became possible recently because they could not previously interact with real-world data previously. “... in recent years, 'oracles' – entities that connect real-world data with blockchains have become market-ready. As more and more environmental data sets – such as weather patterns or internet of things sensor readings – are fed onto blockchains, developers are beginning to produce a wide range of environmentally-conscious smart contract applications.”
  • From the 8th web3 climate newsletter: What failed in prior waves of blockchain startups? (2-minute summary)

Project examples

• Colu failed after a $20M ICO (they offered rewards for local city-scale actions and returned the majority of their funds to investors).
• Supply chains
• Diatom DAO — vote to disband
  • In February ‘22, Diatom announced their $1.95M raise and announced expert advisors like Fabien Cousteau in their quest to reduce ocean plastic pollution. However, after struggling to meet early expectations, the Diatom team released a proposal to change their working cadence and incorporate KYC (know your customer) forms for long-term legal compliance. The community decided (87.08%) to vote against the changes and refund their investments. So, the DAO sent back the remaining capital and disbanded.
  • This vote highlights the power of aligned DAO stakeholders, the speed of change in web3, and some challenges for open-sourced founders when building strong communities:

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