Proposal: Community pool spend to purchase and retire ecocredits from the Regen marketplace to offset Regen Network’s validator set, from either the start of testnet or mainnet through the end of 2022.
Background: The environmental cost of blockchain technology is often cited as a problem that needs to be tackled before widespread adoption. Proof of Work consensus algorithms, like the one utilized by Bitcoin, create an arms race of computing power in order for a miner to be the first to create a new block and so obtain the reward.
Cosmos’ Proof of Stake validation system drastically improves on this by making this competition take place over attracting more delegation of stake from users. Validators are not required to perform deliberately complicated calculations and so can run on relatively low-power machines. However, these machines are still required to be online 24/7 and perform calculations to confirm each block as it is generated.
Based on feedback from carbon footprint data reported by validators of Regen Network, Regen has emitted at most 4,637.5 tons of carbon since the start of mainnet and an additional 1,510 tons since the start of testnet. Some assumptions have been made for testnets where data is unavailable. The total carbon emission for all networks is an estimated 6,147 tons. This proposal should also be considered a signal to offset future years footprints, which will be actioned in future governance proposals.
Decision: There are several decisions for us to make as a community regarding how we want to approach our validator offsets.
Firstly, we must choose to offset both testnet and mainnet networks, or just mainnet. There is a benefit in being able to state that Regen’s entire operation has been offset, so ECO Stake leans towards offsetting both mainnet and testnet.
Secondly, we must decide which ecocredits to use for our offsets. There are two options available for offsetting on-chain, NCT and Regen Marketplace ecocredits. R
I would love to see us go 50/50 on our ecocredit purchase. Regen Marketplace will have ecocredits that really reflect Regen Network values, but the NCT pool is going to be so fun to participate in!
Thanks for putting up the proposal @ECO Stake ! I’m all for this, though I do want us to be cognizant of that offsetting using only credits from the Regen Marketplace would deplete the community pool by ~40% at the current token price. With that in mind my vote is for either 50%/50% or 100% NCT.
Awesome to see all the support, thanks for the comments everyone.
@S4mmyb@totallysarious completely agree about the impact to the community pool, and the benefits of using NCT. For any other chain I think 75% NCT makes most sense cost-wise, but Regen can easily justify a slightly larger purchase of CFC credits than normal. 50/50 seems like a good middle ground here.
It seems like the majority of votes are currently for:
50% CFC, 50% NCT
Offsetting both mainnet and testnets
I’m leaning toward 80/20 - mostly because I’m interested in more deeply supporting the utility and usage of NCT as the liquid carbon asset in Cosmos. I also like the idea of reserving CFC credits for discerning corporate and other potential customers via the Regen Marketplace.
Seems like an easy YES - there is no way for us to propose offsetting via Regen to other Cosmos chains unless we do it for Regen itself. We completely support this proposal.
Thank you for this proposal @ECO Stake! I’d like to upvote @Regenerati Bonobo’s suggestion of a carbon negative offset of validator node operations. In the spirit of Regen Network’s north star of “planetary regeneration or bust”, a carbon negative offset would align with Regen’s regenerative rather than sustainable ethos. Perhaps this can be implemented in future offsetting proposals.
Thank you all for your feedback. Due to the NCT pool not launching until early 2023, we have opted to post a signalling proposal for now. A CommunitySpend proposal will be submitted just before the NCT pool is launched.
We opted for a 80/20 split as discussed in the comments. The proposal is live on-chain now: Mintscan
I’m happy to share that the NCT Pools on Osmosis are slated for launch next week, 4/13. Just wanted to give you a heads up, so your team can coordinate implementing your passed Cosmos ZERO proposal!
