In the last handful of years, a movement have started in web3 that focuses on how we can use this technology in order to help scale impact. 

Much has been written about Regenerative Finance, or ReFi, and in this short piece, we will take a quick look at how blockchain has already started to become an amazing tool to transform how we can build impact driven projects.

Funding

Web3 introduces novel mechanisms for value transfer across the Internet, making transactions of money (in the form of cryptoassets) as easy as transferring information.

This has brought a wave of innovation on how projects can raise funds, from Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) in 2018 to crowdfunding through NFTs (Non Fungible Tokens) and forming a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) while pooling resources in the form of crypto. 

New platforms have emerged over the years that experiment with how smart contracts can facilitate these funding mechanisms, or funding legos (we talk a lot about building blocks - or legos- in web3!). Giveth and Gitcoin, for example, allow for new types of crowdfunding and donation campaigns, while platforms like Zora and DoinGud focus on NFTs as a means of fundraising.

Organizational Design

With a new way of thinking about value, comes a new way of defining the organizations that create it. 

Web3 invites us to think about the power of decentralization, and the resilience of incentivized communities of builders and creators. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, or DAOs, have been pushing innovation in organizational legos, with specialized tooling like DAOHaus, Tally and Aragon helping anyone start a DAO with their no code approach.

But not everything is technical. New types of organizations demand new ways of thinking about work, and our relationship with the orgs we build and the processes that regulate our day to day. And of course, not everything needs to be built from scratch. DAOs have learned from cooperatives and other horizontal organizations' management frameworks, with a work culture that might be more aligned with what impact driven individuals feel comfortable with than the culture instigated in more traditional organizations.

Decentralization is not always the rule, however, and it can be a long term goal while the organization explores its first stages. Tokenized communities and orgs built with decentralization as a long term vision are now referred as Internet Native Organizations, or INOs, as Jess from Seed Club likes to call them.

Product

Technical-driven teams exist as well, with those who think about the disruptions smart contracts can bring about at the helm of projects like Toucan Protocol or Regen Networks.

These projects adopt the technology at the core of how they create new solutions, which were previously inefficient or downright impossible without blockchain.

We have discussed Gitcoin for example, which introduces Quadratic Funding as a way to complement donations and enable public good's founders. Or the ever expanding climate solutions that rethink carbon bonds with smart contracts, relying on blockchain's transparency and traceability to bring hope to a very criticized tool of regeneration. 

User Incentives

How can we keep a community of regens incentivized? This is a question that could be dismissed at first glance, because in an ideal world, impact driven individuals would work towards regeneration regardless of incentives.

But ours is not an ideal world (that's why we need to regenerate it in the first place!), so we need to come up with ways to recognize those who help us build and scale impact.

Enter tokenization as an incentive mechanism. Both fungible and non fungible tokens can be part of how we reward regens. Incentive legos can be more than mere digital money too, they can become discount points in a sustainable ecosystem of products and services, or means of recognition for those who contributed to a shared effort. 

Web3 for Good

While this list is not exhaustive, I hope it can illustrate some of the practical ways web3 can help founders, builders and creators in their mission to scale impact. 

If you would like to learn more, I recommend visiting Impact DAO’s Telegram Group or going through the resources ReFi DAO has curated!

Technology can be the tool that finally gives us hope in building a better future. And web3 can become the schelling point for regens all over the world.