#1. Climate tech, DeFi and DAOs.

Welcome to Brave New Earth - my newsletter about Climate Tech, Decentralised Finance and DAOs.

It’s born out of my long experience investing in the climate, sustainability and web3 sectors - and my strong belief that DeFi can really power the financing of the brave new founders and innovators that are both improving the planet and scaling valuable businesses.

The need for innovative financing of asset heavy climate/sustainability companies, and crypto’s new focus on real world yield, is a combination that is tremendously exciting. This newsletter will explore that intersection of climate and crypto - delving into the most exciting solutions, insights and news.

DAO's and DeFI

BraveNewDAO.earth. I’m a core contributor at Brave New DAO which is a collective network of individuals and domain experts in climate, crypto, credit and community - working on creating a credit protocol for financing founders and innovators that are both improving the planet and scaling valuable businesses. Check us out, and sign up to the community here.

ESGDAO. Check out our friends at ESG DAO. They are working on building a smart new ESG Score to incentive companies and create a new wave of Web3 Applications Tee Ganbold ??

Pfizer joins VitaDAO: Corporates moving into DAOs. Pfizer has applied and is on track to join?VitaDAO, a blockchain-based biotech collective working on drugs that could extend one’s lifespan as a stakeholder, plus invested $500k. Laurence Ion

MakerDAO opens 100m DAI loan to Huntingdon Valley Bank: which is the first commercial loan participation between a US Regulated Financial Institution and a decentralized digital currency.

Coinbooks: Quickbooks for crypto companies - which is a much needed solution. Coinbooks are from the latest YC class.

DAO's are becoming the company structure of the Metaverse.

What is a DAO? There is a great overview of DAOs written by the Airtree VC team here - with an extract below John Henderson

“DAOs or Decentralised Autonomous Organisations as a Web3 native model of collaboration, challenging the traditional model of a corporation. DAOs can be broken down into the following components:

1. Smart contracts:?the backbone of a DAO, which codify the rules of a DAO from token emissions to thresholds for passing proposals.?
2. Whitepapers and community-led initiatives: quintessential for providing thought leadership and guidance for shaping culture.?
3. Tokens:?the focal point underpinning the DAO paradigm. They crystallise the intangible ideas of decentralisation and are crucial for aligning incentives. Anyone can buy a project’s token, participate in governance and ultimately benefit from value accrual; should the project be an ongoing success.

Innovative solutions improving our planet

44.01. One of the most innovative carbon capture storage solutions, based in Oman - mineralising captured CO2 into peridotite rock. Find out more from Talal Hasan

Future Feed. Adding around 5g of FutureFeed's Asparagopsis seaweed per kg of dry feed matter lowers methane emissions in cattle by over 80%. Find out more from Malcolm Nutt

Melibio Honey production in it’s current form is highly damaging to wild bees and their ecosystems. Melibio's bee free honey, made without bees, can make a major difference to the 20,000 wild and native bee species that endure immense pressure from commercial beekeeping - helping the re-wilding of our environment. Find out more from Darko Mandich

Insights

"How does web3 and blockchain address climate change?" A view from Harry MacKenzie co-founder of BraveNewDAO.

Australia goes from climate laggard to climate leader - in just one election (is Brazil next?). Climate was the #1 issue in the recent election in Australia. The new government has immediately gone to work, and passed a new climate bill which forces companies to make carbon reductions of 3.5-6% annually, and has a 43% reduction for Australia by 2030. We're watching the upcoming Brazilian elections with interest, because if Lulu wins, Brazil could flip in a similar way.

About me

Since 2017, I’ve been working in the climate and sustainability sector, starting with co-founding SparkLabs/Cultiv8 Ventures in 2017, which has 36 investments in sustainable agriculture/food tech and climate tech. We've just started deploying our second fund into the Ag/Food tech sectors.

I also co-founded Equilibrium.ai in Jan 2020, which developed a comprehensive climate/ESG data management platform for corporates, which we self funded until Aug 2021 when we were acquired by FiscalNote.com - who subsequently became a public company on the NYSE in August 2022.

I am currently running the climate and ESG business for FiscalNote; also am an investment partner for Cultiv8 Ventures; and a core contributor for BraveNewDAO.earth. The views in this newsletter are mine, and not representative of any of the above companies.