TaterDAO: The New Way To Manage Ecological Projects With NFTs
TaterDAO is a wayfinder for real property to meet the blockchain
Gitcoin Climate Grants are part of an initiative to promote sustainable development through the use of blockchain technology. They are open source grants that the Gitcoin team has developed with the aim of incentivizing the development of innovative projects focused on the transition to a low-carbon economy and more diverse ecological end point. Projects funded through the Gitcoin Climate Grant program will be those that use blockchain technology to reduce emissions, increase efficiencies and promote green technology, or those that connect stakeholders from different industries to create new solutions for the climate crisis.
Beavers As Ecological Workhorses
NFTs offer a powerful and innovative way to manage beaver habitat and reward ecological contributions. NFTs provide a blockchain-based platform for communities to store and track environmental data and ownership information related to beaver habitats. Specifically, NFTs can be used to represent the ownership rights of land parcels that beaver habitats might comprise, allowing for more efficient management of habitat resources and better enforcement of existing conservation laws. They can also be used to incentivize individuals and organizations to contribute and be rewarded for their conservation efforts.
As an example we minted a TATR #18 on TaterDao to demonstrate how we can begin to import data and layers from multiple sources. To interact with the TATR you might need to switch over to the Arbitrum network. Though we plan to bring Taters to Ethereum as well. The idea of Beaver habitat taters was inspired in part from @tmoindustries of Basin for showing us http://regen.earth.
We bring one project to life as an NFT and introduce you to the Jay Wilde Beaver Restoration Project.
NFTs are Just 3D Websites With a Token
The NFT is a token on a blockchain that points to additional metadata. This data can be on-chain, or perhaps in the Amazon Cloud. Most NFTs point to an image of a piece of art. This NFT comes with provenance. A fancy way of saying, we were first. The token can also be used in a variety of ways in smart contracts that run on the blockchain. For TaterDAO we want to make NFTs that are useful for real world use cases, in our examples we want to make it easy to describe real property interests.
Here you will see the usual data that is includable in a TATR as metadata. You can see:
Image
Description
Land and Building Classification - Agricultural Pastureland - Ranch Improvements
Location - These are the points of the polygon. This could be exposed to see if property was “double spent”. Was the parcel entered and put into more than one carbon program?
Deed - Ownership, how is the title held. This is important if the property is expected to be used and encumbered for some use. Here think, solar leases, land trusts, trail and wildlife corridors, etc. This information is generally verifiable in the land records, against a title report, etc. Helps to increase verification and accountability and reduce fraud.
Tax Parcel Identification - These are the local tax assessor parcel identification numbers that are used generally to collect state and local taxes.
Owner - Who owns this property. If we are interacting with legal contracts, who should be the party to the agreements?
KML - This is a system to overlay a polygon shape somewhere in the world. This is helpful to be able to see what the property looks like. Are there riparian areas, or natural corridors, can they be stitched together with neighbors to make larger areas for management?
Tags - This is similar to blog platforms such Medium, just to make the NFT searchable by tags.
Create at - This is the time record that the information was saved to the blockchain. Blockchains are really time chains. When was this information committed to the blockchain records? Remember that blockchains are time-chains, where each entry is basically time stamped for the record of ownership, location, etc., at the time that it was committed to the blockchain.
Taters are MRV to Relate with the Real World
Measurable, Reporting Value (MRV) is a methodology used to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of a project or program. It is designed to determine whether, and to what extent, a project has achieved its intended objectives, and to identify the areas in which further improvements can be made. MRV helps to ensure that the benefits of any project are understood and monitored against project goals. It also helps to delineate accountability and points of comparison when changes are made to projects over time. MRV also enables data to be used to its fullest potential, enabling stakeholders to better manage and report on their projects.
Using NFTs helps to further increase data visibility and improve MRV. MRV is real world data important for understanding ecological impacts and progress toward goals. By linking real world data to NFTs, humans, governments, and corporations can gather data about the world around us in order to monitor and make decisions about our environmental stewardship efforts.
Of course, NFTs also make it much easier for NGOs and other parties to create sustainable funding mechanisms for their projects. By minting NFTs that represent funding, environmental outcomes, and other environmental data, it is possible to use NFTs to create incentives for individuals and organizations to contribute to ecological efforts. An analogy might be the “adopt a road-sign” where people agree to adopt a project and support it. Who knows? Maybe this nascent coordinating and organizing can turn into something larger. Tiny ripples make waves.
External Data sources that can be linked
Now we bring up the external link which is the living breathing part of every TATR NFT. This is the difference between committing data immutably to the blockchain (when, description, etc.) and items that can be changed and updated. When a TATR is minted it can point to an external source. In the example of the Beaver Tater it points to a project URL at Farmapper.com for the Jay Wilde Beaver Project. Here we can point to MRV, documents, or live updates to measure the goals. We can also relate other Beaver restoration projects to each other on a map. In other words each NFT can also be a way-finder to arrange data sources related to the original timestamped NFT.
This can be the verifiable oracle to monitor that the trust part of the land trust is fulfilling the purpose, or simply to help a DAO manage a real property project. Imagine if the project is updated with photos, trackers, sensors and other verifiable outputs that the property is in fact, being regenerated according to the plan.
In other words the external link can be updatable and relate to outside extraneous data sources. The data magic is how to use and layer in free and open data, such as this from Joe Wheaton to track Beavers and restoration. With beavers in the right places, it is a solution that improves fish habitat, water temperature and quality, among other things.
For another example of how Tater NFTs can be minted and data stacked we can look at TATR #17. This tater shows an overlay of fire damage near Yosemite. The external source points to another Farmapper project, but really the external source can go to a NGO, a website, a database, or even a sensor. So in the case of a fire, one might update the external source based on remediation efforts in the area. It might be updated for mushroom hunters, or people who want to show where fires have been and offer natural protection against future burns.
Could a project have rewards for fire-smart building practices? Could it tether together private, public and quasi-common areas to provide defense and better forest management?
Conclusion
NFTs provide an innovative way to manage ecological efforts by providing a platform to store, track, and access environmental data. Such data can be used to create sustainable funding mechanisms that incentivize individuals and organizations to be involved in the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Additionally, NFTs can be used to represent ownership stakes in the environment which can be used to better enforce existing environmental laws and manage habitat resources. By incentivizing those who work to restore our planet, NFTs help create a new way to keep ecological work moving forward.
TaterDAO is using NFTs as table stakes to allow regenerative ecological projects to use NFTs in their own coordination mechanisms. We expect TATRs to be picks and shovels, that make it easy to connect the real world to the blockchain. This is part of an initiative for the tokenization of land trusts, carbon markets and ecological impact incentives. NFTs are the blockchain technology that can support these efforts and make environmental data more accessible and transparent. TaterDAO hopes to be a tool to help create a world where sustainability is the norm.
Gitcoin Alpha us here and please add TaterDAO to your shortlist - As we have been so appreciate of all the support, but beavers aren't going to save themselves #Beavers #GR15 and #ClimateAction.
Love the metadata examples for the NFT and the potential use cases. I've actually been thinking through what a digital/crypto native land registry looks like and this has a lot of overlap and given me some more to think about!
Thanks for sharing this post!