Written by @montymerlin, with input from @owocki & @christypdxeth.

In the midst of extreme market turbulence, geopolitical uncertainty, and an ever shifting blockchain ecosystem landscape, Ethereum’s future and culture is a source of fierce debate. Yet in this time of growing division—both in the wider world and within Ethereum itself—a new movement is quietly taking root.

Together, Ethereum Localism and Regen Coordination offer a compelling vision for a future of blockchain and peer-to-peer technologies — one grounded in their real-world application to local communities and economies. With new models of funding, governance, and coordination we can empower people to organize and regenerate from the ground up. Beyond being a speculative finance machine, Ethereum can become the cosmo-local coordination layer for community collaboration, resource allocation, and regenerative economies.

👉 ethereumlocalism.xyz

👉 regencoordination.xyz

“Cosmo-localism” is the idea that we can share knowledge, technology, and governance frameworks across geographies, while grounding their application within the specific needs and wisdom of local communities. It combines the power of global coordination (cosmos) with the importance of contextual place-based, community-driven solutions (local). It embodies the idea of overlapping and interconnected sovereignties where communities can maintain autonomy and build resilience, while also collaborating and participating across regions and networks.

Why Now?

Current shifts in global economics and geopolitics are creating natural openings for localism to flourish. Trade tensions, supply chain disruptions, and changing public service models are revealing cracks in the globalized systems while highlighting the value of more resilient local alternatives.

• Economic fragility: Centralized financial systems are vulnerable to systemic shocks that leave communities exposed. They have prioritized extraction over resilience and are concentrating ever more wealth in the hands of a few.
• Environmental pressures: The climate crisis and other ecological concerns call for economic and governance models that actively regenerate rather than deplete natural systems and resources.
• Digital sovereignty: As technology platforms consolidate power, communities face questions about data ownership, algorithmic governance, and maintaining local agency in increasingly centralized digital landscapes.
• Community belonging & identity: Local community-scale interaction provides the in-person context for authentic collaboration, mutual support, and shared identity that online technology alone cannot fulfill.

As national governments hollow out and global systems wobble, the time is now for local coordination and regenerative economics.

This moment of transition presents a unique opportunity to reimagine how local economies function, how communities coordinate and relate, and how technology like Ethereum can serve as infrastructure for more participatory, resilient, and regenerative systems.

Ethereum Localism?

Ethereum Localism represents a new paradigm in how blockchain technology integrates with everyday community life and local economies.

It represents a shift from speculative bubbles to practical utility. From global centralized finance to cosmo-local collaboration. From extractive markets to circular economies rooted in place and context.

Rather than remaining as abstract far-away financial infrastructure, Ethereum-based funding, governance, and economic tools can be embedded into the fabric of local community organising — becoming practical living infrastructure for real-world coordination and resource management.

The Ethereum Localism approach responds to several fundamental challenges in the current relationship between blockchain technology and local communities:

• Ethereum is too abstract for local economies — For most local communities and residents, Ethereum remains conceptually distant from everyday needs and concerns. Ethereum Localism bridges this gap through tangible applications: local payment networks, community currencies, and participatory funding mechanisms that demonstrate immediate, practical value.
• Public goods are underfunded and invisible — Current Web3 funding systems predominantly support digital projects, venture-backed startups, and speculative DeFi applications. Yet Ethereum technology can fund not just software but local infrastructure, cooperatives, public spaces, and community resilience projects, while creating verifiable impact records that attract municipal, philanthropic, and impact investment.
• Web3 capital doesn't circulate locally — Today, much of Web3 local community funding quickly exits through centralized exchanges and conversion to fiat currencies. Ethereum Localism aims to empower systems where new capital is on-ramped and value circulates within local Web3 economic networks, supporting ongoing economies instead of one-off grants.
• Shifting narratives and expanding Ethereum's addressable market — Ethereum's future growth depends on demonstrating real-world relevance. By addressing and solving local challenges, Ethereum evolves from a speculative finance protocol into a comprehensive substrate for civic participation, economic activity, and collective governance across diverse communities worldwide.

Putting this into practice, Ethereum Localism seeks to make Web3 technology accessible and valuable to local communities with three core strategies:

1. Creating Real-World Utility — Deploying Ethereum-based innovations that can address tangible community needs and empower local capital flows: participatory funding mechanisms, local currency systems, decentralized credit networks and more. Making Web3-based platforms tangible, useful, and indispensable for local communities, from rebuilding local supply chains to financing cooperative housing, organizing community-owned energy, and restoring local ecosystems.
2. Building Sovereign Economies — Developing the infrastructure for communities to self-organize, govern resources, and circulate value without excessive dependence on centralized institutions, thereby grounding Ethereum’s vision into everyday community life.
3. Enabling Cosmo-Local Collaboration — Connecting communities globally through knowledge commons and resource sharing—allowing governance models, funding approaches, regenerative practices, and open-source tools to spread horizontally while being adapted to local conditions and needs.

Regen Coordination is Powering Ethereum Localism 🌐🤝🌐

At a time when centralized institutions are faltering and global challenges demand new forms of cooperation, Regen Coordination has been at the forefront of making Ethereum Localism real. From theory to practice.

Founded by ReFi DAO and Greenpill Network and supported by key partners CeloPG and Gitcoin, Regen Coordination is weaving across a constellation of cosmo-local regeneration networks — including ReFi Local Nodes, Greenpill Chapters, BioFi, Ma Earth, Bloom Network, AgroforestDAO, and others — with a mission to build shared tools, resources, and funding mechanisms that empower diverse regenerative communities through Web3.

A key philosophical foundation for this work comes from the idea of 'Coordi-nations' — a framework proposed by Jessy Kate Schingler and Primavera De Filippi of @BlockchainGov as an alternative to dominant narratives around "Network States". Coordi-nations envision a world where polycentric networks of communities come together through voluntary association and they exercise interconnected sovereignty based on shared values and governance rather than territorial control or centralized authority.

Progress So Far

Over the past year, Regen Coordination has:

✅ Pioneered innovative regenerative funding rounds — Through initiatives like the Regen Coordination Genesis, Regen Citizens, and BioFi Pathfinders (the first-ever quadratic funding round focused on advanced bioregional organizing teams), Regen Coordination has raised and distributed over $370,000 to directly empower local communities, ecosystems, and cooperatives around the world.

✅ Built onchain proof-of-impact and capital allocation systems — Regen Coordination and its partners have researched, developed, and implemented a new onchain impact reporting and evaluation system tailored for decentralized community ecosystems. Leveraging the Common Approach Framework and integrating with Karma GAP to enable flexible and transparent tracking of activities, outputs, and outcomes. Using these foundations, Regen Coordination is pioneering the deployment of ImpactQF — a new model that blends quadratic funding with verified impact data for more equitable and effective capital allocation in public goods funding.

✅ Grown the ReFi ecosystem and impact culture — Regen Coordination has played a key role in supporting the broader regenerative finance movement, fostering the growth and development of ReFi Local Nodes, Greenpill Chapters, and other regen Web3 communities around the world.

In Motion 🏃

Right now, Regen Coordination is helping to further grow the wave of Ethereum Localism through three active Gitcoin GG23 Localism-Themed Rounds:

1. Regen Coordination Global — With a $96,000 matching pool, this round supports regenerative finance (ReFi) networks making meaningful contributions across the world. Building on the success of the GG21 Genesis Round, it brings together ReFi DAO, Greenpill Network, and other partners to continue growing a global movement leveraging Web3 for real-world impact.
2. ReFi Mediterranean — The first quadratic funding round at localized bioregional scale, with a $10,000 matching pool. Sponsored by Ma Earth, Celo Public Goods, Kevin Owocki, the round empowers projects driving ecological and social impact across the Mediterranean bioregion.
3. Regen Rio de Janeiro — Launched by Greenpill Brasil, Fabulosa Lab, and Regen Coordination, Regen Rio de Janeiro is a QF round focused on impactful local nonprofits — with $30,000 in matching spanning @glodollar, @MentoLabs’s cREAL (Brazilian stablecoin), and local @grassEcon commitment pools. Blending workshops, onboarding sessions, and community events, participating nonprofits are being equipped to harness the power of Web3.

Support these rounds today 👉 grants.gitcoin.co

What Next?

Building from current foundations, Regen Coordination seeks to further scale Ethereum Localism. Key areas of focus for the next phase include:

🔹 Cosmo-Local Capital Stacks & Partnerships — Blending Ethereum & Celo ecosystem grants with local philanthropic, cooperative, and municipal funding pools to create self-sustaining, regenerative funding engines. For example, Zazelenimo’s pilot for Urban Greening in Split, Croatia, where a 3:1 municipal matching model will fund community-driven greening projects using Ethereum-aligned infrastructure. Once proven, models like this can be adapted globally — helping cities launch participatory funding rounds, issue local stablecoins or governance tokens, and circulate Web3-based value within local economies.

🔹 Onchain Impact Infrastructure — Continue improving methods and tooling for tracking activities, outcomes, and value flows within local economies — Karma GAP, Hypercerts, Prosperity Passport, Proof of Impact NFTs and more.

A key next focus will be developing systems for tracking Total Value Flowed (TVF) — measuring how capital circulates through local Web3 networks (payment systems, QF rounds, credit pools, stablecoins) rather than being extracted into fiat. Tracking TVF will help allocate ecosystem grant capital more effectively, prioritizing communities that strengthen local impact and Web3 capital retention. For example, communities like @ReFiMedellin and Celo Colombia, who are supporting $cCOP (onchain Colombian Peso) adoption by developing localised payment solutions and onboarding local people, organisations and merchants.

🔹 Local ReFi Toolkits and Community Infrastructure — Creating and expanding practical toolkits, playbooks, and workshops that provide step-by-step guidance for communities to launch regenerative economies and initiatives using Web3 tools. These resources offer accessible frameworks for activities such as hosting empowering meetups, coordinating environmental projects, launching local credit pools, deploying regenerative digital infrastructure and more. Helping leaders turn Ethereum Localism into everyday action. The goal is to lower the barriers to entry, spread best practices, and empower a new generation of regenerative communities to build resilient local economies from the ground up.

🔹 Expanding Bioregional and Localized Funding Rounds — Scaling the network of bioregional and local ReFi nodes running their own local funding rounds. Building on the success of the Global, Mediterranean, and Rio de Janeiro rounds, expect many more localized rounds in GG24 and beyond.

Through these initiatives, Regen Coordination is helping to build the scaffolding for a decentralized, regenerative civilization, powered by Ethereum.

In a time when Ethereum’s price charts look a little scary and its culture feels at a crossroads, maybe Ethereum Localism can show us a new path forward 🌱