[BUIDL Asia 2023 Fireside Chat] Why Blockchain? Accelerating & Funding Climate Solutions at Scale

Transcript

foreign hello everyone again um Professor chair hi it's really great to have you here um can I call you uh Dr J yes amazing um cool so um thanks again for sticking around so as I just alluded to in the last talk um we wanted to have a conversation about regenerative finance and we were really humbled and really grateful for Dr J agreeing to join us today

um Dr J is extremely accomplished teaching at uh ehua University is that did I pronounce it correctly well ish close and previously at the national Seoul University um and and before that Dr J received this PhD from uh from Harvard University uh in the US and so once again we're really really excited uh to have him here today um and maybe um yeah just to start uh is it worth maybe sharing a little bit more about your background uh both as an educator but then also in in climate

okay to begin with to to be very honest I don't know why I'm here at the moment um I'm not really familiar with what you guys do I'm trying to understand listening to you and then previous speaker um but believe it or not I've been writing congratulatory remarks for for a number of books that's been published by the leading experts in the in this field in Korea but let me confess myself that I really

don't quite understand the detailed physical mechanisms of blockchain Technologies I came here to really learn what you guys do but at the moment um I I am also leading a group called biodiversity Foundation which was founded by myself and the famous Jane Goodall changodo is coming in about a month to Korea on my invitation now we we are trying to mobilize people to save save the world from from this environmental

degradation but recently we were thinking what if we could somehow you know hold hands with these technology people they seem to be doing something something very interesting is there any way we can connect to each other and that's why I'm here to learn and we're grateful to have you here and I think um one of the topics that we wanted to to talk about together is is refi regenerative Finance which is a topic that I think is still relatively new in the broader crypto space but it's an exciting topic and it's one that I think

actually presents an opportunity for us to as you said work together to tackle this you know really big and ambitious problem um and so I guess yesterday was World environment day uh and I wonder if maybe that's a good um um reason to remind everyone you know why should we care why why should we be you thinking about climate change why should we um be thinking about it even in in the web 3 ecosystem well the environment is is the one that enveloped all of us right so environment collapses will probably have to go

with it anyway um I'm glad to see all of you without most of you without masks right now but we've been suffering for the for the last three years um because of Kobe 19. covid-19 in my analysis is the result of environmental destruction caused by mainly climate change and biodiversity laws now I am a tropical biologist I study animals in in the tropical jungles all through my all through my career and I know

uh for a fact that when you go to Tropical jungles you you get to meet bats all the time we described little more than 1400 species of bats in the world but about 95 all live in tropical jungles but in recent years they've been moving into the temperate regions because of climate change the the temperature in the in the temperate region is is going up and so they find temperate region is livable as well so they're moving into

where we we live I'm not saying the human species only lives in temperate region but we are most compact in in temperate region anyway what that means is the the virus and bacteria that that bats carry around has much easier probability to come to us now and that's probably why this thing happened this time biodiversity as well we have to be we have to be very concerned um Homo sapiens our species has been here for more than uh 250

000 years before the most part almost 240 000 years we were literally nothing but in the past about 10 000 years we've been cultivating we've been doing Agriculture and that's how we became um we became dominant species on this planet so during this kovi 19 we biologists got together and tried to calculate um the importance of Homo sapiens in this earthy ecosystem it was interesting when we calculated

ecological dominance of homo sapiens about ten thousand years ago we were less than 10 percent in terms of biomass but now at this time if we calculate that again um Homo sapiens biomass of homo sapiens and the biomass of all the animals we we raise compared to all the mammals and birds living on this planet at the moment we comprise of nearly 99 percent so we were only 10 000 years ago we were less than one percent but now we're nearly 99 so if you are a virus or

bacteria living on the wild animals in the wood chances are you will probably have to move because your life is getting miserable there when you move nearly 99 of time you will land on either Homo sapiens or Homo sapiens livestock so what that means is just looking at probability we're going to go through this kind of disasters more often more and more again and again so our environment is so important it's it's it's a life and death situation for us and if we can find some way to save it

using using blockchain technology I'm not going to hesitate to jump in yeah wow um I've never actually heard that before that that pandemics now are going to be more more frequent with with climate change and certainly I think we can all agree that wearing more masks is probably something that we want to avoid going forward um so and you mentioned fighting this with blockchains and of course there's a a whole area now within web3 that's formed this burgeoning field called refi who

here has heard of the term refi before in the audience just so that we can kind of get a sense of the crowd so maybe about 20 30 percent um have you heard of the term well yeah I don't quite understand what I heard yeah so maybe just for the for the rest of the folks in the audience um so refi stands for regenerative Finance um and um you know many people have different definitions of it but one definition that I like is uh decentralized Finance uh where you have positive externalities baked into the protocol itself and so you can create these new types of

financial systems that can actually have a positive side effect on climate change on on pollution on ecological diversity uh even on Community Health the term is starting to become quite quite Broad increasingly folks are talking about getting green pilled which is you know when people get excited about this movement uh and and kind of start digging in so hopefully we can all green pill you a little bit today um and [Music] um the one reason why why um I'm up here today is because cello has you know almost by accident become

kind of the home of refi um you know crypto has gotten I think historically a pretty bad wrap when it comes to climate change right I think with proof of work networks um you know they were very frequently um using a lot of electricity that understandably made a lot of people skeptical about the impact that they would have on on climate change and so three years ago when the seller Network launched there was a governance proposal that passed and the ecosystem that committed to um or that made it so that the seller Network would programmatically buy

carbon officer credits and retire them using block rewards and since then the network has actually been fully carbon negative already it doesn't use much electricity because it's a proof of stake network but on top of that we wanted to really plant a stake in the ground show the world that that crypto can actually be have a positive effect on climate change and since then the protocol has once again you know programmatically been buying carbon officer credits and I think because of that fact now a lot of these kind of new and exciting refi protocols have come to cello and so I have the the the joy of getting to to learn about a lot of these

um and um and in many cases you know help them out a little bit uh as they build out their protocols and think about the impact that they can have on the environment I know then you guys are trying to trying hard to reduce the the consumption of electricity when you when you create coins and whatnot but that that's a negative side but I have a question about the positive side how would you really to someone like myself how would you explain the blockchain technology could be could be helpful in in terms of

stopping or slow slowing down the climate change or or even um restoring our environmental ecosystem yeah it's a great question and I guess I would say um it can help in in two ways perhaps uh so the first way is around um organizing uh people to to take on big and ambitious things I think ultimately uh fighting climate change I think we as Humanity know what we need to do right we know we have to lower emissions um and we know that if we do that quickly enough we can we can actually avoid the catastrophic effects the hard

part is actually executing that plan and one of the amazing things about crypto is that it can be it has historically been used to organize people to take on big and ambitious things one you know maybe entertaining example of this is the Constitution Dao right the fact that in one week a group of people could raise 47 million dollars to try to buy a copy of the US Constitution in one week um that to me shows that these types of networks uh can be really good at spurring action incentivizing people to to participate in something really big

and ambitious uh and and do something pretty big and exciting so that's that that's kind of the first I would say of of the two ways uh the second way is just around um you know the fact that with crypto money is programmable uh and when you make money programmable you can create these systems that have these positive externalities I mentioned how the cello blockchain is buying carbon opposite credits programmatically every day uh soon it will also buy carbon officer credits you're using 20 of the transaction fee that you spend whenever you sign a transaction whenever you submit a transaction to the network we're calling this Ultra green money um 80 will be burned to make cello

deflationary and then 20 will go towards um buying carbon officer credits programmatically and retiring them and you can create these systems uh really easily now um in smart contracts and it's not just at the blockchain level but you know those protocols built on top of cello that are doing similar things and you can create these really nice systems that can actually have this positive impact that's really nice I was listening to to your talk sitting there um like something caught me um you talked about Sylvie

tree planting the idea right now um I'm at the moment also working as a special Envoy for unfccc they're calling me a algor avatar algo is too expensive to to invite so they're saying you're cheap so you can we can just send it tell yourself short so whenever whenever they have a meeting someplace in the world um well as long as I have time they sent me a air ticket then I go and give a talk how talk on how important climate change

but surprisingly surprise to their them I guess in a way I right from the beginning I've been talking about biodiversity rather than climate change because in my opinion climate change is is very important very serious but I think biodiversity laws is going to be even more immediate even more immediate threat to us temperature goes up there are a lot of things will happen but we have a technology of air conditioning and or things like that we may be able to escape to a certain

extent but then those plants and animals out there without that technology will will start disappearing we've been worrying when IPC sees me in talking about stopping temperature rise up to two degrees Celsius we've been worrying in the biologist worried about worried that that that that goal is to to to bake in a way because when you when when you have a two degree two Celsius two degrees Celsius increase in World temperature we we worry that nearly half

of biodiversity will disappear when half of the entire world biodiversity disappeared would human be human species survive we don't think so so we we were trying to encourage people to come up with this uh agreement and whatnot so we're trying very hard to reduce the the level of temperature rise and all this but then not many people are paying attention to biodiversity laws and in in my opinion that's something usually I should now from should look into

with climate change Maybe the tackling the climate change maybe maybe easier compared to biodiversity issue because you you have a major clear measure emission level and whatnot but for biodiversity what do you have to do do we have to go and find out how many species are still still surviving or whatnot it's going to be very difficult in terms of measuring that the change in a way and I wonder when you you talked about earlier to me that there are people in the world taking samples of soil and plants and

whatnot and cataloging that that genetic material in a way that's in my opinion very important thing but how would uh again once again blockchain all this web 3 business could help that kind of activity yeah exactly and so we were backstage earlier and we were chatting about Simplex DNA which is a project that is is actually doing exactly that they're using a token economic system to incentivize people to go out into the world go out into remote parts of the world to to collect soil samples to collect water samples and then send those samples to Labs so that they can

be sequenced so that we can create a catalog of all of the DNA all of the species that exist today on the planet and they're doing it using using you know they're trying to do a big ambitious thing and they're trying to get a lot of people to coordinate together to solve that big ambitious thing and again they see crypto as as an amazing enabler to to pull that off and so it's really exciting to see them be working on this and absolutely I think it's it's it's really important the tree planting protocols I think are also really interesting and I know that Sylvia is also really thinking a lot about biodiversity and you know the founder of Sylvie

actually had this really interesting statement he said that you know there's this goal that's frequently talked about how if we if we were to plant a trillion trees uh it would have a huge impact on climate change and if you think about it a trillion trees is actually not that many trees per person uh it you know it comes out to you know planting for example two trees a year per person throughout your life and when you break it down that way suddenly it seems actually quite manageable but how do you incentivize everyone to to plant two trees a year um especially if you're talking about everyone you're talking about reaching

people who may not have bank accounts who may not have government recognized IDs right suddenly crypto is actually a really appealing platform for you know trying to do something that big and ambitious and I think it's 100 possible and again I think this is the kind of thing that is really made for web3 um and I think we're going to see a lot more of that in the future I have well I have a good news to share with you um one of the Korean uh K-pop companies called SM the founder of SM Mr Yi Suman is is having quite laudable idea he wants to mobilize

K-pop fans worldwide to plant trees together so he asked me to help help out so I'm going to go to that event sometime later this this month to talk about um you know how we could go about doing that and I I am quite excited because you you think about the fans of K-pop that that's a huge um that's like the whole population of the world right that's everyone and so I asked Jane Goodall to to help us out too so Jane Goodall uh already made a small short recording and asking

uh the young people to join this movement um so again if we could use that blockchain technology to somehow keep keep records for individuals about as as a as they plant trees that would be that would be something we could do yeah that's fascinating you can imagine giving giving folks nfts giving folks tokens as an incentive but also even just as a Memento to remember the action that they took um and maybe even somehow uh tie it back to the individual tree itself that's

really cool huh but then let me let me ask you some some some question that might be quite unsettling as I understand this AI business always the internet businesses it seems in the last few years something comes up then everybody gets so excited and then in a in a couple of years that somehow slowly disappears from from everybody's talking surrounding in a way

technology like blockchain or web3 or are they really sustainable will they be around in 10 more years 20 more years 100 more years yeah it's a great question and it's it's an interesting question actually uh because it's almost if you think about these systems it's almost a tautological question because in a way they're designed to actually survive um so much work goes into thinking about how to make these systems resilient against everything so that they do survive and so that when you do put something on the Chain when you do get an nft for planting that tree you know

you have that record forever and so I think absolutely I think that's like part of what makes web3 interesting is the fact that so much thought goes into solving exactly that and when it comes to developer interest you know we're in a bear Market uh certainly but I don't know about you but every time I go to a crypto conference especially the Builder focused ones the amount of energy the amount of people that I see you know it's unlike anything that we've ever seen before if you look at the the metrics that you know folks like Electric Capital put out year over year we're still increasing a number of developers that are coming

into the ecosystem and contributing so I'm I'm really excited I'm definitely very bullish well for that matter I I am um quite mad at my my own government Korean government we are highly technological Nation we're probably you know moving faster than any other countries but then all of a sudden Korean government is crashing down on on this blockchain technology I don't I don't quite understand their their logic their worry I don't know I I understand they're worrying about some bad effects of this technology but there are that's not that's not the only part you guys

are having right there are a lot of great things you can do using this technology yeah and I guess I could I could uh empathize certainly with the desire uh to um limit the speculative parts of crypto because I think um it's certainly easy to to see you know the negatives there but um what gets me excited about crypto is all of the you know incredible things that we're building that weren't possible before um you know we talked about Protocols of plant trees there's also protocols that incentivize a collection of plastics

there's stable coins that are actually being created that are backed in part by trees so that you can have a positive effect on climate change simply by using one stable coin over another um you know we talked about protocols preserving biodiversity there's so much exciting stuff happening even on the carbon officer credit side of things there's a whole industry now that's tokenizing carbonopsis credits and creating new mechanisms for effectively solving some of the issues with the voluntary carbon offset Market that exists today and we need to solve these issues because if you look at the projections

you know McKinsey is projecting that the market will grow by 15x by the end of the decade in seven years that's a crazy amount of demand for carbon offset credits that will land on them on our doorstep and the current systems don't scale they don't have enough price transparency they don't have enough transparency as to what you're buying There's issues with double spending or double retirement which is something that crypto is is really well versed at solving and so there's all of these problems that crypto can solve that create real value um to people today and you know

certainly to the environment tomorrow um and and I think um you know that's definitely what gets me excited about the about the space our remain optimistic because I study ants and unlike most other most people believe and Society is completely decentralized Society Queen doesn't have complete control over things going on in that Society work our hands themselves and somehow controlled everything in that society and blockchain Technology being the the core concept of blocks chain technology as I

understand is decentralization and that's where I I have a hope you guys will somehow figure out what to do wow what a nice thing to end on there you have it ants ant colonies are decentralized just like crypto that's fascinating awesome well thank you so much for your time it was really a pleasure [Applause] [Music]