The Data Mechanics of Saving the Planet

all right hi everyone I'm so grateful to be up here so my name is Gregory I'm here with Reece tow and we're going to be talking about region network so I'm gonna try to start on a pattern level to talk about what it is that we're up to because we're doing something that I think is sort of a unique and unusual at this moment use case of blockchain and distributed ledger technology so what we're up to is nothing short of completely reversing global climate change how are we going to do that how are we going to do that we're going to create a large ecological data network and a token system that incentivizes regeneration of Earth's soils so you know I wanted to talk a little bit I'm I'm a farmer I work with farmers I spent my whole life working with soil so I'm not a developer we have some amazing talented developers on our team but I sort of wanted to just ground this whole conversation everyone here depends on farmers a hundred percent so who ate today alright so there are 500 million small family farmers that feed all of us every year and they're also the poorest people on the planet and they also happen to be the only people who can save us from climate change unfortunately centralized compliance based systems simply will not work and I think we could all understand that in this room so I'm going to show a really brief video that frames the carbon cycle and the potential of soil before we dive in a little bit deeper into the data mechanics of what we're up to if you're like most people you're probably feeling a little hopeless about climate change and the damage we've done to our planet well now there's a new way to look at climate change and how to deal with it that might just turn that hopelessness into a whole climate change as we know is all about too much carbon in our atmosphere but carbon is not our enemy it's the building block of life everything alive is made of it even us the problem and the solution are simply a matter of balance let's step back and look at the five pools where carbon is stored on planet earth starting about 500 million years ago when plants first appeared on land carbon began to cycle in an amazing balance between these pools a balance that allowed for life as we know it to evolve then one life that would be us figured out how to extract carbon from the fossil which was pretty much a timeout zone for carbon we've been burning it for energy putting into play and disrupting that balance the way we manage land and do agriculture is moving even more carbon into the atmosphere specifically we've moved eight hundred and eighty billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which is heating up the planet and destabilizing our climate the oceans have absorbed a lot of this excess carbon throwing off the oceans balance resulting in ocean acidification and accelerating a mass extinction of sea life so in order to save life as we know it of course we need to stop burning fossil carbon the big question is where do we put this excess carbon to get the cycle back in balance the good news is that the answer is literally right under our feet it's the soil plants using sunlight and water naturally perform photosynthesis they pull carbon in from the air and turn it into carbohydrates sugars then they pumped some of these sugars down through the roots to feed microorganisms who use that carbon build healthy soil voila carbon move the plants pump it in and the soil stores it nature's living technology is amazing scientists have recently discovered that applying a thin layer of compost can help regenerate healthy soil setting up an ongoing feedback loop that brings more and more carbon into the soil each year together with other regenerative practices like not tilling the soil planting trees and cover crops and planned grazing we can build and retain billions of tons of soil carbon this is carbon farming this is regenerative agriculture unlike more carbon in the atmosphere more carbon in the ground is good furnace it makes healthy soil which is nutrient rich and full of life and holds way more water this means more nutritious food and crops that are more resilient in the face of drought that's good news for farmers families and everyone who eats remember this the way we grow our food fiber and fuel either puts carbon up into our atmosphere or pulls it down into the ground the regeneration of soil is the task of our generation our health the health of our soils and the health of our planet are one in the same well I don't know about you guys but that gets me inspired every single time because that's a big crazy problem and it turns out it's actually not that hard to solve the challenge is being able to verify what's actually happening on a farm so that we can support farmers and incentivize them to be actively sequestering carbon so I just wanted to go through a couple numbers here to sort of frame the bigger problem and hopefully show how completely achievable it is so the the world soils have 320 gigatonnes of carbon stoy storage capacity we only need to sequester 128 gigatonnes over the next 20 years to completely reverse global warming Wow okay there's 500 million small farmers so you know we need roughly a third of those people to be participating on our network in our program actively regenerating soils so we've been working on two core aspects of our protocol one is proof of regeneration so that is the ability through farm IOT sensors and satellite protocols and drones and user smart phone interaction to be able to prove what's actually happening on any given farm in a decentralized way that is not owned by any central authority and to creating a reverse mining protocol that is the ability to mint tokens by proving that you've done something that's in the public good which is sequestering carbon into your soils so those are the two foundational pieces of region network so we're going to spend sort of I'm going patterns to these details here we're gonna spend a little bit of time coming right up with Rhys toe going through one of our pilot projects which is actually calibrating the proof of regeneration protocol at this moment with real-time sensor data from a farm in New Hampshire we're actively working right now on some of the scaling problems our network is going to have to be sharded there's no way around it and we also have to work a lot on identity because you can't have we actually have to have proof of identity proof of location as a core part of our our whole protocol so just to sort of frame some of our technical challenges we're looking at validation of claim and outcome as a core part of the protocol verification of location identity the ability to validate data authenticity and also verify data integrity so I'm gonna hand it over to restore here so that he can talk a little bit about the role that streamer is playing and helping us develop a market for this highly valuable ecological knowledge that drives the incentive for farmers to be participating this program thank you very much Gregor it's great to be here Grigory of course and his team are the experts on regenerative agriculture where streamer comes in is on the data side they're the key aim is to verify if the conditions are conducive to carbon accumulation in the soil to answer that question you need lots of data from various sources and that's where we assume can help there's a number of things which can be monitored on a farm taken together such measurements give a pretty good indication of soil health and equilibrium and that's important because the carbon sequestration is one of the core functions in a healthy soil now we've got lots of data in here I won't go through that all just to mention some of these low-frequency like satellite images soil sampling some a higher frequency like temperature measurements numbers on electrical conductivity and so forth but the thing is that you need to combine data from many different sources in here low cost sensor data are important in the calibration of the low frequency carbon sequestration models in practice what you have to do is to collect transmit and analyze all of the data in real time that's the what we have here is the data mechanics how it works press dreamer it's in you start with planting the standards in the soil the that's typically done maybe not by the farmer but by cannot specialized re IOT companies next thing you do is the every time well sensor course across life they Center data data points as JSON to streamer endpoint and then reach Network subscribes to the data as it arrives in here they analyze the data in real time calibrate the models verify the carbon sequestration what happens in between is that the data automatically kind of flows through the peer-to-peer streamer network from source to subscribers the nodes in the network are incentivized by getting paid by data token for their efforts [Music] moving on each data point as it arrives is time-stamped appended persisted in the stream kind of the user interface of the streamer system the concept of three makes it easy to later analyze the data to historical play backs of the row numbers and the analytics Thank You Gregory let's move on and quickly show you an example of the data playback works on the streamer platform here we run through the sensor data from literally until a few weeks ago on the farm in New Hampshire the final points I'd like to make is that the same data can be valuable to many different audiences and data consumers in this case of course the region network is the prime user but this value in the data doesn't stop there apps companies can subscribe to the data user services such as day to day file management performance monitoring yield optimization irrigation harvest forecasting and so forth you can even think if there's any kind of financial people in the audience for other uses like having real-time information about the state of the crop weather events which can be immensely valuable for commodity traders in storage companies with a thought let me hand back over to Gregory for three to recap thanks Risto so we believe that what we're working on here is creating a marketplace where farmers own their own data and can sell it at a premium to all of the people around the world who need that data from governments working on climate change initiatives to people who want to anchor supply chain transparency into their relationships with customers to commodities traders as rista was speaking about but fundamentally the beauty of the project is as those tokens are used to access this data the price of region tokens remains stable or goes up which incentivizes farmers who are the only people as I noted earlier who can mint new tokens so the only way that a new region token ever is going to come into circulation after the initial token generation event is by a farmer proving that they've regenerated soil so all of a sudden farmers are back where they should be which is at the center of the economic system as the people who are providing the base layer of wealth for everything else is taking place so we're really excited about that we're really excited to be moving forward with new pilots in very challenging conditions this is a photo of a farm in Ecuador that we're about to be starting another pilot on so working with cacao farmers to measure the carbon cycle and carbon sequestration dynamics in in their ecosystem and I sort of just want to leave everyone with an invitation because you know what I've learned here at DEFCON 3 which is my first Devcon but what I also know from my work with farmers all around the world it is all about collaboration and the beauty of this space is open source collaborative approach to big engineering problems and I know we have a whole stack of them so we're looking forward to being members of this community and continuing to work on this amazing potential to have blockchain driven community empowered solutions reverse climate change and many of the other big problems facing humanity so thank you all very much [Applause] [Music]