Next week we are considering putting to a vote a proposal for Toucan Protocol’s $NCT to have its approval revoked by Regen Registry. Branch Out’s vote is a strong yes in favor of revocation, which we conclude is necessary for ethical, ecological, and methodological reasons.
Our original reporting draws on evidence neglected in RND’s approval of the $NCT,
and adds to the growing scientific consensus against Verra’s carbon credits, and its ‘avoided deforestation’ methodologies in particular. We have provided a detailed critique of the process by which the $NCT pool was selected, its methodological basis, its financial entanglements, and three of the projects which make up the majority of credits in the pool.
In support of our findings, we have drawn on over 100 sources which we have compiled as Works Cited for ease of review here.
Last month, Gisele Booman (Head of Science at RND), started a discussion thread on commonwealth seeking community input and participation regarding how the Regen Registry should approach credits issued by legacy registries facing scientific criticism such as Verra.
Two of the questions she raised are:
What tools or specific digested information would be useful?
How should Regen Marketplace achieve the right level of transparency that buyers need to make better informed decisions?
Last summer, $REGEN tokenholders voted 99.71% in favor of our Climate Wiki proposal which placed subs
This is a timely and important conversation. Thanks for bringing it to the forum and thanks for pledging to bring the conversation to governance.
Regardless of how this conversation and vote go…the fact we can have a public conversation and a public voting process around this, and grow a community capability to dig into some of the most complex and challenging and ethically important conversations is very exciting to me.
I have a couple of questions for you at Branch Out:
From your article, I could not tell if your concerns are:
Ideological around all credits as a market mechanism?
Methodological around baseline measurements specifically and the scientific disagreements that have been outlined in recent articles?
I am also curious to know if you see a world in which lower quality credits and higher quality credits co-exist?
Are you aiming to disallow NCT from the marketplace and Regen Ledger entirely, or just Regen Registry? Some further context about that question: Previously as the community adopted a pluralistic approach to self governing eco credit classes, there is really no way to enforce a Regen Network wide standard. Is that something you think should be different? If so why? And what is the role of local self governance of standards in that case?
If this vote does not go your way, because different community members and/or orgs have a difference of opinion with you, how would you react to that, and what would you want to see happen next?
There are other fronts to discuss to unpack things for people to have full context for a vote, but I need to sign off for now. I am actually in the midst of spending some time in the field with communities exploring radical alternatives to existing crediting systems (which is where I believe we should be going and where we spend most of our energy, so I think there is community wide alignment on that front)
Thanks for starting this conversation, and for your reporting. In the future, it would be helpful to provide a summary of your ethical, ecological, and methodological rationale for cancelling $NCT.
To me this discussion falls into 1) the category of transition ethics, and 2) the need for us as a community to define the standard of credits we are willing to accept into this ecosystem.
I am willing to accept the presence of a lower-quality credit such as $NCT for the time being because I can see that it supports the development of critical infrastructure that will incubate a liquid carbon market. I want to see where that experiment goes! And I fully expect that as this ecosystem matures (in terms of community participation, monitoring capacity, and many other factors), credits will be held to a higher and higher standard. Lower quality credits could have a sunset date as well (is this possible? idk!) so that we can confidently attest in the future to a uniform high standard for credits.
Which brings me to 2) How might we define as a community what that higher standard is for the credits we accept into the ecosystem? It would be great for us collectively to determine a baseline ethical, ecological, and methodological standard that we hold all credits to. There’s nothing in the Regen Library guide about ethical considerations for methodologies and credits – that’s something we get to decide via community process if we choose. So, IMHO this is actually a way bigger conversation than just $NCT and whether it is too neocolonial to qualify for Regen Registry.
What I would love to see and participate in: A live, participatory, and inclusive community governance process where we collectively define our values and standards for credits in this ecosystem, ethical as well as ecological and methodological. Having that artifact will make it much easier to transparently and fairly make these determinations in the future before credits get into the ecosystem, rather than havin
Thanks for this interesting discussion, Thomas of BranchOut.
I’d like to include in this conversation, to ensure the community has full access to this work, existing assessments conducted within the Regen Network community around the questions of scientific integrity brought to light by The Guardian article, which are relevant in this discussion’s context.
Scientific critiques that affect Nature Carbon Tonne (NCT)
RND’s Scientific Critiques of REDD+ and the Guardian article
Since The Guardian article, the team at RND has taken time to learn, listen, and read the comments of stakeholders and thought leaders, before formulating our own response. Please read the full response here. This information draws from this published analysis co-authored by Dr. Gisel Booman, PhD landscape ecology.
The internal science team at RND reviewed the scientific literature cited in The Guardian article carefully. The Guardian article cites scientific papers that take issue with highly technical elements of the methodologies used to determine the number of emission reductions to generate carbon credits and relies heavily on three scientific research papers, one of them not yet peer-reviewed. There are concerns about the scientific debates in The Guardian article being misunderstood and taken out of context by The Guardian journalists, and that the research used in this article was authored by journalists, not scientific experts. At this juncture, neither the data nor the methodology and calculations used by The Guardian journalists are yet disclosed.
Scientific debates regarding REDD+
**(1) Do the carbon credits issued by Verra’s REDD+ program represent pos
An informed public conversation followed by a governance vote in the community on the what regenerative “credits” actually means is extremely important and mertited. Thanks for prompting the discussion Branch Out, I am thankful for that. sincerely. The Regen Foundation will solicit as much informed engagement and participation in this prompt as possible, as such we are actively inviting and requesting our ecosystem to weigh in.
Having read the report which contextualizes this proposal, I want to tease out 2 things at play. The first is general introduction to the perils of carbon credits , ReFi, and NCT as told by Branch Out. The second is a public announcement that Branch Out exists, and is launching this summer.
I’ll start with the second part. Congratulations on launching this project, and I think there is big potential for Regen and Climate Wiki to have a productive relationship defining what really is and isn’t regenerative.
Onto NCT.
Regen’s work is focused on the issuance of original, high integrity credits. Many of which are coming online in the coming months. With regards to NCT specifically, I’ll let others more directly involved speak to the motivations for its incorporation within Regen Cosmos Zero Program.
For the community to have an informed vote on keeping it, I think we will need more than just the primary source used in the essay, Elias Ayrey. It merits discusions on what due diligence RND practiced in the process of making the NCT bridge, as well as looking at any and all other data-backed reports on the matter, including independent ratings. To do that it would be great for Branch Out to pull out a citation list of sources, reports, and data they have used in their journalism. I say they, however the essay is signed by one person.
Of particular importance is the need to parse the factual extent to which NCT is repackaged BCT, as this is a core part of the critique.
This points a very active question on permissions and quality assurance in
@corlock as a follow up the information you shared about how the Regen Network technology works, and the longstanding understanding of the network’s intention to support a “multitude of different standards of quality and rigor when it comes to managing ecocredits”, would you be willing to share here for visibility the engineering arc (timeline, releases, scale of work completed to date, entities involved) for the NCT bridge?
I think it’s important context for the community, and especially validators, to understand both the scale of work that “revoking NCT” would affect.
I will post another set of information about the timeline of development, public discussions of NCT, and general consensus that wallet holders across the network are already in support of and have for 1.5 years been directly involved with this development arc. I will also share information about what benefits this work will acrue to the network, insofar as network activity, increased utility, crosschain liquidity, and refi and cosmos-wide benefits, as this is expected to be a material positive to the network’s token holders as it is implemented.
@Branch Out regarding this question: “Why was Branch Out unceremoniously booted from our community newshour to make way for Verra’s top PR official?”
This was a miscommunication. I have no record of BranchOut scheduled on the Regenerati newshour as a speaker. I apologize for any confusion.
A short discussion on discord explored scheduling a time for BranchOut to give a public update on Community Funding Proposal award for Climate Wiki. This was scheduled on the community call because of the screen shot feature required for a product demo.
Did BranchOut participate in the newshour featuring Verra? This was a public opportunity for community members to ask questions regarding the Guardian article directly to the organization that governs these standards - Verra.
NCT was under development for 1.5 years. Why did @Branch Out not engage with the many public discussion around the bridge, NCT standard, Cosmos Zero, etc until this week? These developments were extremely public, and this is the first engagement your team has had.
Sam Bennetts (Regen Registry Product Manager) from RND chiming in. I think there’s a lot to unpack here and I have a mix of personal and professional opinions I would like to convey. With that in mind I will call out any personal opinions I have as such.
I would like to start by defining the word ‘registry’. Within the context of ecosystem service markets, registries are databases which track information and claims made by projects registered under a certification program or protocol. Registries are not the program or protocol themself, rather the digital synthesis of information backing claims made about ecological state. Within the context of Regen Network, the registry (i.e. database) is built on Regen Ledger using the ecocredit, data, and groups modules.
Unlike other ecosystem service registries, such as Verra, Gold Standard, or American Carbon Registry, Regen Registry is a public, ecological credit registry system that any community can use to register projects and issue credits using programs they design. The Regen Registry Program outlines the processes communities must follow to develop these programs (i.e. credit classes) and run projects prior to credit issuance. Regen Registry can be thought of as a neutral and open registry system any community can use as long as they follow the processes established in the Registry Program. This includes credits from other registries, such as Verra. We chose this approach because we believe registries are a public good anyone should be able to use, as long as they are transparent about the data and information used to back claims.
At this point in time, RND is the only entity who can instantiate credit classes. As we mentioned in our proposal last November, “RND plans to support the digitization of credits produced by other registries as outlined and allowed by the Regen Registry Program … by creating credit classes which mak
Hello @Branch Out
In response to @S4mmyb ’s question “How would you react if in the future other credits are issued into the Regen Registry you don’t like?” you asked “how is this question even relevant?” I have been reflecting on these edges all weekend while gardening (yayy, no rain). I believe that your inquiry is not “beyond the scope of (y)our proposal” as you imply, but is in fact inherent to it.
This is my core (personal) thesis, which welcomes debate:
I believe that $Regen token holders hold the $Regen governance token because they believe in the fulfillment of the White Paper’s vision. I believe that to fulfill the White Paper’s core philosophical, practical, and architectural tenants of credit governance decentralization, they have purposefully delegated the governance of credits to each Credit Class (i.e Credit Class Administrator) via their history of on-chain votes. I believe that the $Regen token holders do not possess the rights to revoke a Credit Class that meets the Whitepaper’s defined inclusion criteria of “ecological claims,” under any circumstances, according to the on-chain governance voting record and the Whitepaper.
It is critical that we dig into the viability of and implications caused by a vote to revoke any Credit Class. I believe that token holders should consider the long term effects of such a vote on the underlying core architecture of the Regen Network. I believe that any $Regen token holder decision to revoke a Credit Class is in direct conflict with the precedence of the underlying architecture of Regen Network (blockchain functionality and code basis). I believe any vote by $Regen token holders to revoke a Credit Class is currently, even if passed, fundamentally unenforceable.
Let’s use a real-world example to showcase the potential implications:
My name is Sarah Baxendell (me), I am a land steward with 14 seasons of farming experience, who is currently restoring 16 a
To James (I’m sorry, I’m unable to reply to your message specifically), I would like to apologize for the miscommunication regarding Regenerati News Hour. I was deeply regretful of that situation and I’m sorry for not communicating that clearly at the time. I was working as an intermediary and had some incorrect assumptions on the process.
While our email chain did not include this topic, it seems like this issue could have been best raised within the forum posted by our head of science, Dr. Gisel Booman, PhD, posted soon after the release of the Guardian article. However, better late than never! I often find myself in a small bubble of Regen Network and it has been fascinating to read in-depth analysis from so many facets of the Regen Network community!
I’m just a degen ape, not a climate activist. There is a lot to unpack here – thrown at the wall to see what sticks as some might say.
From your article, I get this tldr understanding: Big companies are involved in the carbon game, colonialism is bad, and Vera is included in the basket of nature-based carbon credits that make up Toucan NCTs, which regen is bringing to the Cosmos. You don’t like the Vera portion so the whole thing should be scrapped.
As others have said, imperfect NCTs at this stage do not justify halting the work that has been done thus far.
That said, while there may be somewhere in all this worth considering i.e. something that Regen could take into account going forward and improve upon, it’s hard to trust the source in this case as you seem to be acting in bad faith. Regen NCTs are not new news, this has been coming for a while. This is something that can be built upon, worked on, and improved going forward. The timing… trying to blitz/scuttle things a week before launch is suspect.
Looking on the Discord server governance channel: Your team got 400k REGEN back in June 2022 - with one 33% for spending and 66% to be staked. All funds have been undelegated and most liquidated. 75k remains in the wallet, undelegated. https://www.mintscan.io/regen/proposals/12
1) I value collaboration & interoperability - NCT, with all its flaws, is still a token of genuine cooperation within ReFi, and I think it’s important that Regen Network** embrace collaboration **with the rest of the space.
2) I value disintermediated systems - I believe the benefits of blockchain in the context of ecological assets are centered around transparency & traceability of data - having an immutable audit trail - ideally down to the dMRV associated with projects, free from the reliance on “trusted intermediaries” to decide which credits are “certified” and which aren’t. I choose to develop a methodology on Regen Network because of this, not because I want Regen Networks “seal of approval”, but because the origination process & subsequent transactions can exist on-chain, on a fairly decentralized system.
3) I value the acceptance of uncertainty - Truth is ephemeral. You may grasp a glimpse of it for a short while, but unfortunately unequivocal certainty in a world of boundless complexity is a rare occurrence, indeed. My point being that I just can’t say with certainty whether NCT is ultimately good or bad, even given a report of supporting documentation.
**4) I value net-positive energy - **a life philosophy I adhere to is “net-positive energy”. When a river is flowing it’s much harder to build a dam to stop it than it is to dig a trench & divert the flow to somewhere new. The energy expenditure to achieve a result is higher when fighting against something than it is when attracting energy to something new. To put it plainly & in context - **if we all collectively put our energy in getting others excited about Regen Network originated eco credits which we believe don’t have the same issues as NCT, it would likely result in more $ diverted away from NCT **than with that energy flowing toward trying to destroy demand for NCT by restricting & limiting it. simply put, _creat
I am commenting mainly from my personal view on this, but this view will probably also be the one of the Empower Validator, which is validating on Regen Ledger today.
TL;DR. The answer is No. I am ambivalent about this discussion because of how (and when) it is happening.
I am not really an expert on carbon credits, but I have tried to read up on both sides of the argument and failed to see any damning evidence that NCT is inherently fraudulent, fake, or otherwise completely ineffective. I will mainly comment on the proposal and discussion, which I believe has several issues.
I want to start by applauding the response to this, first and foremost. I am not sure I would have been able to stay so level-headed if I were in the position of RND. The reason is that I am not confident this proposal is being made in good faith. The discussion is good; there is no doubt about it, but the use of (what I perceive as) quite an inflammatory language in both the article and in many responses here seems disingenuous to the supposed mission. I am unsure if that is just your style, if there are any hidden conflicts behind this, or if you are just angry. I can’t tell which it is, but I don’t appreciate it as a basis for discussion.
I will also note that I found the arguments and proof very hard to follow and understand. I doubt many people, besides those already deeply ingrained in the ecosystem, will grasp what is real and what is not here. When I see this amount of “stuff” thrown at once, I will often assume that there is either: not spent much time making it concise and understandable, or it is actively meant to confuse. Again, I am unsure which is the case here, but I hope it can help you communicate more clearly.
Finally, I am surprised by the timing of this proposal. It seems very late, and according to what I can see in the discussion, it could have been brought up many times before. This is not crucial for our vote, but it doesn’t exactly add to the credibility of t
Hello @Branch Out,
I appreciate the discussion and the general momentum for what I see as an open door to evolve the VCMs into something better, which is one of the points why Regen Network even exists.
First I´d like to make one clarification, apologies for the also internal confusion about the referred “highly relevant public evidence to analyze these projects” that originally @Sarah Baxendell then argued by @S4mmyb. This comes from our original Science team assessment of the articles back in January and refers to the lack of any scientific report with any detailed methodology description, raw input data and results from the analysis that was carried out comparing the number of credits originated from the original project´s baselines to the synthetic ones, from which most of the claims about credits issuance overestimations were based. I couldn´t find any link to any scientific report from the assessment cited in the Guardian article, but maybe if you can point me to that information that would be awesome. I saw your last report but I don´t see this technical analysis linked there neither. Without that detailed information there´s no way for us to asssess whether those claims are backed up on good scientific methods and unbiased. I would also argue that there´s a deeper scientific debate around the reliability of synthetic baselines, and so even if having all the data and methodological description in place, experts might desagree in the way those baselines should be set and arrive to different conclusions about the accountability differences from the original assesment. It would be good to see if there´s any scientific peer review of that information, either formal or informal.
Given the tone of this discussion I would highly advocate for those scientific reports and all the necessary data to replicate results to be public, if it
This discussion is important, i believe that we can only improve the quality of the Credit.
Your concern is very real and its something i have thought about. Reading through Branch outs mission statement made me feel better that there are people in this community are aware of the details that go into a truly ethical means of “Tokenizing Nature”
We can improve the process of verification and transparency through Governance and different community developments. Bringing a Social aspect to Regen Network can improve onchain data availability and allows investors to connect with the Marketplace on a personal level. (these are more solutions)
I believe we are in control of the backend development to the $NCT, as a collective. We need this kind of awareness in this platform, it will only help purify the process.
BUT. I believe that providing the $NCT to the Internet of Blockchains is a crucial step in the evolution of the entire ecosystem. There are bright minds that are hungry for a change. Allowing the inclusion of the cosmos can give the opportunities to be that change and allow for more community driven initiatives.
Greetings all. We appreciate the extensive dialogue around this topic raised by Branch Out. Generally, we agree that while NCT has issues, we don’t believe these are fatal by any means and it is not worth revoking NCT’s approval which was already deliberated upon and discussed by the community. Further, revocation of NCT would create a number of logistical, business and partnership problems that have been developed based on previous community endorsement of the current NCT approach. Finally, we expect and encourage the listing of a wide range of nature based ecological credits types to serve the diverse needs of the market.
LOA Labs validator will vote NO if this proposal goes on chain.
Disclosure: LOA Labs is a founding partner of Regen Network, supports day to day marketing communications for Regen Network Development and Regen Network ecosystem and have also played a leadership role in Cosmos ZERO campaign focused on offsetting carbon footprints of Cosmos blockchains utilizing NCT.
Just noting here that we have a science/registry/foundation community call tomorrow. Originally we had planned to give a presentation about the things we’re currently working on and leave a bit of time at the end for community discussion. I understand folks will probably want to talk about this during the call, but noting that this is a relatively large discussion curious if it makes more sense to set up another community call to talk about this proposal specifically if people would like to discuss. Just trying to be cognizant of the time we have on that call and recognize that the original presentations might take up the majority of it.
As a co-Founder of RND, Inc and a contributer to Regen Network from the early days, I want to thank you for this thread. Not because I agree that we should pull NCT from the Regsitry, but because of the rigor that has gone into this and the invitation of the community into this discussion. There are many important points being brought up in this thread.
Since the founding of Regen Network, we have worked to cultivate a community with strong feelings about regeneration, an ability to bring them to the community, and a forum to discuss such opinions. We have always wanted the robust discussion to be part of the vetting process that helps people decide which credits they should buy and which they should not buy. And here it is! I am thankful to have such passionate, clear, and articulate members of the community chiming in!
I have always advocated for transparency, peer review, and open and respectful sharing of opinions about the merits of credits so that buyers can make informed decisions about which credits to buy and which not to buy. The legacy markets have so many holes in them; that’s a big reason why we started Regen Network, and as our native credits come online over the coming months and years I look forward to the continued robust discussion about the merits and shortcomings of the various methodologies and projects. None of them will be perfect; all of them need community interest, oversight, and suggestions for improvement. If we’re not actually affecting positive social and environmental impact, we have failed our mission (and our children).
**I will be voting no on this proposal if it goes to vote, as **I think the discussion about NCTs would be best discussed at the market level rather than the protocol level. That being said, I will get behind and support whatever the community at large decides through the on-chain governance process.
Again, thank you for bringing this level of dialog.