The Institutional Pioneerism of Celo and The Climate Collective

Since its inception, Celo has presented itself as a protocol constituted by the need for a blockchain infrastructure adapted to the needs of a future market.

Even if the Web3 ecosystem is marked by innovation, a relevant portion of the solutions launched aim to solve already recognized challenges or improve existing solutions.

Celo, since its initial design, is not part of that statistic. Celo was designed as a solution to a challenge that was not specific to the ecosystem but to the human experience itself: solving the problem raised by the Aristotelian denunciation of chrematistics.

What was this problem?

Most of the solutions launched in the ecosystem follow the same premise, of being neutral in relation to the type of problem they can solve. This is a good strategy to avoid the emergence of niches within niches in an ecosystem that was already small.

The ecosystem that emerged from the technology generated, in large part, solutions that presented themselves as innovations for the original technology itself.

Applications started to come later, generally driven by incentive programs on the part of the protocols themselves.

Celo’s pioneerism

By presenting itself as a blockchain designed to house solutions related to the planet and social justice, Celo stood out with its successful pilots and its alliances and partnerships with traditional institutions in the impact field.

This institutional design is noticeable both in Celo's history and in the options for places and challenges to be faced (pilots developed to face challenges in the Global South, in places like Colombia, Kenya, and Nigeria).

If this design positively highlighted Celo inside and outside the ecosystem, the alliances created around themes such as social transformation and climate action provided Celo (and its partners) with centrality in the field of Blockchain For Good.

The first alliance, The Alliance for Prosperity, quickly brought together more than 100 initiatives dedicated to offering financial tools to redesign our relationship with money.

It was a simple initiative in its intent to bring together global interests in overcoming the challenges of inequality through DeFi, and innovative in its realization (in fact, bringing together companies, startups, funds, and various initiatives native or not from the web3, in a common goal of positive impact on the planet).

The second alliance, Climate Collective, however, did more than bring together initiatives.

The Climate Collective

The Climate Collective is an initiative that was born within the ReFi ecosystem and had such a decisive contribution that we can define it as one of the main catalysts of this ecosystem. The CC definitely contributed to the consolidation of a new ecosystem that comprises what many believe to be the key to achieving mass adoption and guaranteeing the reversal of the process of destruction of human living conditions on the planet.

Consisting of twenty-four initiatives (Astral Protocol, Byterocket, Celo, CLabs, Curve Labs, Flow Carbon, kolektivo Labs, Loam, Moss, Plastiks, Regen Network, Toucan Protocol, Wren, Allegory, Flori, Mento, Open Earth Foundation, SimplexDNA, Spirals Protocol, Senken, ValuescCO (SocialStack) & Thallo), the initial objective of the CC was about creating a trusted marketplace of high-quality environmental digital assets that bring prosperity to people and the planet.

With global reach and relevant market cap, the Climate Collective accomplishes this mission both through the efforts of each of its members and collectively, through initiatives such as the Grants system.

The first wave of grants covered fourteen initiatives (Plastiks, Untangle Finance, ReFi Spring, Athena Protocol, Atem, ReFi Podcast, Kernel (the Regeneration Guild), SimplexDNA, Thallo, Senken, Sequestr, MRV Collective, Socialstack, and Closer) which after less than one year after receiving the funds, bring together a network of partnerships that encompasses most of the global ReFi ecosystem, and specific ReFi locations.

The carefully curated first wave covered both the more immediate challenges of raising awareness and educating on Blockchain and regeneration such as Kernel and ReFi Spring, as well as solutions built focusing on a long-term regenerative finance global structure such as Socialstack and Athena Protocol.

The Climate Collective has also proven an increased impact on the overall ReFi ecosystem on its own development as an organization. Important upgrades range from independent fund management to high-level governance (multisig and beyond) and grants selection process.

It remains to be seen, the operational and practical effects of such changes, but it has adopted the governance and fund management best practices, something expected of all after the hurtful experiences of crypto 2022 bad examples.

The next challenge as a community and ecosystem is expanding it beyond the adoption of a niche to a standard practice of crypto, as we initially observe beyond the newly established Social Impact Collective with similar experimentations of Polygon, Ethereum, and Solana foundations.

The adoption of the best governance practices, together with an agreement about planetary healing and the support for new ReFi initiatives makes Climate Collective the place to go if you want to understand the growth of the ReFi movement in 2022.

But, what are the expectations of Climate Collective for 2023?

In the year ahead, the Climate Collective is focused on advancing the use of web3 technology to unlock climate action at scale. They’re doing this in three ways: First, they’ll accelerate the adoption and deployment of digital environmental assets (DEAs). Second, they will help build trust and credibility for the web3 x climate sector. And finally, invest in frameworks and interoperable tech infrastructure that support market-making activities.

So, now that you understand Climate Collective's mission and its accomplishments you are ready to contribute to this mission. If you have an outstanding idea that you think is able to fit the mission of CC, make sure to contact them using the links below:

https://twitter.com/clim8collective
https://climatecollective.org/