Introducing $REGEN

[revmiller]

This forum post aims to get a temperature check & feedback from the community on $REGEN, a memecoin focused on public goods on Optimism, Superchain and beyond.

Overview

$REGEN is a culture coin for Optimists that captures regen energy; the spirit of having fun and creating impact.

Regen as a project is being grown as a grassroots cultural movement on the right curve of memes and impact. Through the power of memes, the goal is to empower more regen activity; things like public goods, open source software, educational initiatives, growing communities, banking the unbanked, or supporting environmentally mindful initiatives.

There is enormous potential for memes like degen and regen to be more than just memes, as exhibited by the Degen project on Base. There is even greater potential when degen and regen energies are combined. $REGEN will be grown on Optimism to serve as a culture coin and impact token that can fuel this; making being a regen fun and rewarding at the same time.

Check out The degens🤝regens Manifesto representing this vision.

This will involve onboarding regen individuals (fun-gis and fun-gals) and projects by leveraging new possibilities for concentrated and incentivised coordination through decentralized social graphs such as Farcaster. Regen will naturally emerge from the /regen channel on Farcaster, which is intended as a key hub for regens to coordinate and grow. Incentive mechanics have been designed to encourage growth and decentralization across the mycelial network on Optimism and Superchain towards utopia.

$REGEN

$REGEN will be a fun rewards system to encourage regens to be and bring more regens. The token will primarily be distributed via iterative airdrops; programmed to follow lunar cycles, which reward certified regens (often retroactively) for their regen activity onchain.

In the first phase, rewards will be predominantly allocated based on previous ‘Proof-of-Regen’ as well as engagement in specified channels on Farcaster (e.g. /regen /degensxregens, /publicgoods, /green-pill)

In the first phase, people will accumulate points that will turn into an initial airdrop based on the basic ‘Proof-of-Regen’ (mainly Gitcoin, and Giveth donations) as well as engagement in specified channels on Farcaster (e.g. /regen /degensxregens, /publicgoods, /green-pill).

The second phase will enable a tipping system that gives users an allowance based on the extended ‘Proof-of-Regen’. Similarly to $DEGEN, users will be able to comment on aligned Farcaster posts an amount + $REGEN to tip that user.

The ‘Proof-of-Regen’ mechanic will leverage onchain data, for example: Optimism ecosystem contributors, RPGF recipients, Gitcoin grants donors, etc. Allocating regen points via the ‘Proof-of-Regen’ mechanic will help ensure that the initial token distribution is allocated predominantly to verified regens. Plans are already underway to collaborate with regen projects to add additional onchain data points for people to accumulate points for the first airdrop, and tipping allocation for future airdrops.

To grow the Regen movement, incentivising meaningful onchain activity together with the (offchain) tipping mechanic will fuel and reward greater engagement not only within /regen and aligned channels, but across the Internet and IRL. By growing the regen meme, we grow a vibe and culture that attracts more people to use crypto for good. By having more people involved, we grow more value (in every sense). Through this we can create more regen ideas, more regen tech, more regen communities and ultimately enable more regen impact — all on Optimism

Learn more

Read the ‘Introducing REGEN’ blog post to learn more:

Introducing $REGEN

Mint the Regen OG NFT on Optimism (already ~ 2,500 mints)

Contributors

Core contributors behind $REGEN include cyrus, innvertir, nicnode, cjh, mogylnyi, and rev (hosts and moderators of /regen on Farcaster). $REGEN is being grown in coordination with a group of ‘Regen OGs’ from across the regen and ReFi landscape.

What’s next?

Please share your feedback, the project is still in its early phases and the goal is to grow this as a community-first movement. Please share your thoughts on:

• $REGEN x Optimism alignment
• $REGEN as a public goods funding memecoin
• your ideas on communities, projects, individuals, etc. to include as early $REGEN stakeholders
• other ideas — be it distribution, reward mechanism, or anything $REGEN related

Let’s $REGENerate

Head to https://regen.tips and unite with other optimistic regens — earn points, make memes, regen(erate) the world, and most importantly have fun, while tipping what matters!

Thank you! Looking forward to hearing from you.

— Regen core contributors

[FractalVisions]

We will be the first to question the intent behind this project.

What about the token $REGEN that already exists?

Also what is going on with the power bald & lotto pgf initiatives?

It appears another token called $otto is also being launched simultaneously alongside this project.

These initiatives all appear to have launched under the same team in the degensxregens channel & now in the regen channel on warpcast.

Here are channel managers for reference who share permissions.

Warpcast

Warpcast

[nicnode]

Hey anon,

Thanks for bringing up those valid concerns on the table.

TL;DR: I’m the only person involved in both projects. On $REGEN I’m just the “connector” who brought people together. I’m currently mostly active on LottoPGF/OttoDAO, and also started the degens🤝regens group-chat and farcaster channels as a means to bringing those two forces together. LottoPGF is a co-sponsor of the Galactic Giving QF round on Giveth.

I’m Nico Gallardo, one of the instigators of LottoPGF/OttoDAO and the degens🤝regens group and channel.

A lot of people resonated with the idea of bringing degens and regens together (even Vitalik lol check his latest articles), so me with some others (not the $REGEN contributors) decided to open up an invite-only group chat to get those people together. Out of that group, we co-wrote The degens🤝regens manifesto which inspired projects like LottoPGF, Gnomish, $REGEN, etc… and opened up a farcaster channel too.

As a result of that movement, some people (incl. mel, cyrus, rev,…) mentioned through different channels the idea of a regen memecoin. I pretty much just connected them and shared my ideas + contributed a bit on the project, including making the degens🤝regens channel available for distribution since at the moment it was the biggest regen related channel on farcaster by an order of magnitude.

My main project right now is LottoPGF. It will be steward by OttoDAO and governed by the $OTTO token, soon to be launched via a Juicebox crowdfunding campaign. None of the people involved with $REGEN (aside of me ofc) is a contributor of OttoDAO, so the following statement is incorrect:

@FractalVisions

These initiatives all appear to have launched under the same team

Because the purpose of OttoDAO is not only to steward LottoPGF, but (more down the line) to channel both degen and regen energies to research and build other cryptographic primitives to fund public goods, some members in the degens🤝regens channel are suggesting to make it the DAO’s group chat (being voted currently). DM me (@nicnode everywhere) if you want to be part, we’re almost 300 vetted people already!

Although this question is a bit unclear to me, I think I understand your concern:

@FractalVisions

Also what is going on with the power bald & lotto pgf initiatives?

We’re developing LottoPGF as a permissionless protocol to deploy lotteries with the purpose of funding public goods. Nothing new, historically many public goods were funded through lotteries, and many communities use them (mainly by communities in the global south independently, but there are also “national lotteries” in the global north) for the same purposes. We tested our smart contracts and onchain randomness technology with a Farcaster free-to-play lottery called PowerBALD. At some point we activated the option to donate money to public goods to acquire more tickets and chances to win, and this allowed us to be co-sponsors of the current Galactic Giving QF round organised by Giveth!

I hope this clarified your concerns, and I’ll gladly answer any questions related to LottoPGF, OttoDAO and degens🤝regens. (to which you’re invited as well, ofc!).

[FractalVisions]

@FractalVisions

What about the token $REGEN that already exists?

This is the main question that has been asked by others about this project.

It seems like there is some other members of the web3 community asking this that didn’t get a clear response.

Here are a few more statements that were made by others online in a conversation about the other Regen Network that already exists.

Thanks Anon.

Glenn Little II & Alicia Rockafellow

Cofounders of Fractal Visions

[Garance]

Very cool meme coin imo ! I was actually hoping it would happen. As the host of the /solarpunk channel on farcaster i would be happy to collaborate.

[mel]

regm

Thanks for the reply

I’m mel (@innvertir), a dev and community builder, currently leading development for the regen.tips project.

In case that the intent of the project wasn’t clear in the original post, $REGEN will be a fun rewards system to encourage regens to be and bring more regens. The ‘Introducing REGEN’ blog post also provides a great introduction.

Nico has addressed the question regarding Powerbald and LottoPGF with great detail.

Regarding the Regen Network project:

There is a $REGEN token that governs Regen Network - a cosmos SDK based blockchain and platform to originate / invest in high-integrity carbon + biodiversity credits from ecological regeneration projects (https://www.regen.network/)

$REGEN on Optimism (the subject of this forum post) is not directly affiliated with Regen Network. They are pioneers within the Regen/ReFi space, and as true regens both projects are exploring the best ways to collaborate for mutualistic benefit.

I hope this answers your questions, if there’s any more please share!

[FractalVisions]

It looks as if your account was made recently.

Is this your first project related to the optimism network personally?

[mel]

No, I also built and demoed ToThePoint on the Optimism discord (not live atm, but it’s an onchain impact evaluation tool for short format videos that I worked with a Talent Protocol scholar for ETHDenver).

Haven’t been super active on the forum, but looking forward to it

[FractalVisions]

$REGEN outlines a project that seeks to prioritize impact over profit by creating a culture coin to promote and reward regenerative activities, such as supporting public goods and environmentally mindful initiatives.

Here are several points that need further clarification to ensure the project genuinely aligns with the principle of prioritizing impact over profit:

1. Token Distribution and Incentives:

   • The post mentions that $REGEN will be distributed primarily through airdrops based on ‘Proof-of-Regen’ activities. It would be useful to know more about how these airdrops are funded and whether any pre-mined tokens are reserved for the team or early investors. This can clarify whether the project team might profit from increased token value.

2. Non-Profit Assurance:

   • To avoid the perception that the team is capitalizing on token holders, a clear statement on whether the team or developers hold any $REGEN tokens, and if so, how these are managed, is necessary. Transparency in this area can reinforce the project’s commitment to impact over profit.

3. Impact Metrics:

   • Details on how the project plans to measure the impact of $REGEN activities would provide a concrete way to assess its success. Metrics could include the number of public goods funded, the amount of Gitcoin grants supported, or other quantifiable impacts on the ecosystem.

4. Economic Model:

   • A description of the economic model behind $REGEN, including any potential revenue streams and how these funds will be used to further the project’s mission, would help in understanding the sustainability and true focus of the initiative. For example, will any transaction fees be used to fund additional regenerative activities?

5. Community Involvement:

   • Information on how the community can participate in decision-making processes, perhaps through a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), would emphasize the project’s commitment to decentralization and community-led impact. This ensures the community benefits directly from their contributions and the project’s success.

The forum post outlines ambitious goals for the $REGEN project to create a positive impact, further details on token distribution, non-profit assurance, impact metrics, economic model, and community involvement are crucial.

These elements would help verify that the project genuinely prioritizes impact over profit and provides tangible benefits to the broader community without unjustly enriching the project team.

REGEN Funding Mechanics

Retroactive Public Goods Funding

Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RPGF) is a concept aimed at rewarding projects based on their demonstrated impact rather than their predicted potential. This method, championed by Vitalik Buterin and implemented by the Optimism Collective, emphasizes that it is easier to evaluate the usefulness of completed projects rather than predicting future success. The principle is to allocate funds to projects that have already proven their value, thereby encouraging the creation of public goods by providing retroactive rewards Retroactive Public Goods Funding - P2P Foundation Badgeholder learning materials - Retro Funding - Optimism Collective.

In evaluating the $REGEN project, it’s essential to see if it aligns with RPGF standards, which focus on rewarding impactful contributions after they have been demonstrated.

Here’s how $REGEN fits:

1. Proof-of-Regen Mechanic: $REGEN plans to distribute tokens based on previous contributions to public goods, such as donations to Gitcoin and Giveth. This aligns with RPGF’s emphasis on rewarding past impact rather than future promises. By allocating initial token distribution to verified contributors, $REGEN ensures that those who have already made meaningful contributions to public goods are recognized and incentivized Retroactive Public Goods Funding - P2P Foundation.

2. Iterative Airdrops and Tipping System: The project includes mechanisms for continuous reward based on ongoing contributions. These airdrops, following lunar cycles, and a tipping system that allows users to reward each other for impactful actions, are designed to perpetuate a cycle of recognition and reward for tangible contributions. This method ensures that the community can dynamically allocate rewards based on actual contributions, in line with RPGF principles Badgeholder learning materials - Retro Funding - Optimism Collective.

3. Decentralized Social Graphs and Coordination: $REGEN utilizes decentralized platforms like Farcaster to facilitate coordination and growth among contributors. This decentralized approach supports the RPGF goal of broad participation and decision-making, reducing the risk of capture and ensuring that a diverse group of contributors can influence reward distribution Badgeholder learning materials - Retro Funding - Optimism Collective.

$REGEN’s approach of using retroactive rewards based on demonstrated impact and facilitating decentralized coordination aligns well with the standards of Retroactive Public Goods Funding. This ensures that the project prioritizes genuine contributions to public goods over speculative future benefits, thus adhering to the core principles of RPGF.

Long Term Outlook

For the $REGEN token to effectively contribute to regenerating our planet, it must adhere strictly to the standards of Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RPGF).

Upholding these standards is critical for several reasons:

1. Credibility and Trust:

   • Transparency and Accountability: Adhering to RPGF principles ensures that $REGEN rewards are based on verifiable, impactful contributions. This transparency fosters trust within the community and among stakeholders, ensuring that the token is seen as a legitimate tool for environmental and social impact rather than a speculative asset ,
     Badgeholder learning materials - Retro Funding - Optimism Collective Retroactive Public Goods Funding - P2P Foundation.
   • Consistency with Public Goods Ethos: The core idea of RPGF is to support projects with proven value, thereby aligning financial incentives with genuine public good. By consistently applying this standard, $REGEN maintains its integrity and avoids the pitfalls of projects that promise much but deliver little, which could tarnish the overall movement Badgeholder learning materials - Retro Funding - Optimism Collective.

2. Long-Term Impact:

   • Sustainable Growth: By rewarding past contributions, $REGEN incentivizes ongoing, meaningful engagement in regenerative activities. This sustainable model helps ensure that the project grows organically and remains focused on its mission of environmental regeneration and social good Retroactive Public Goods Funding - P2P Foundation.
   • Ecosystem Building: RPGF supports the development of a robust ecosystem where contributors feel valued and motivated. This encourages more participation and innovation in regenerative practices, amplifying the impact over time Badgeholder learning materials - Retro Funding - Optimism Collective.

3. Protecting the Movement’s Reputation:

   • Avoiding Negative Connotations: Any deviation from these standards risks creating negative perceptions around the word “regen.” If $REGEN were perceived as a project prioritizing profit over impact, it could undermine the broader regenerative movement. This would be detrimental not only to $REGEN but to all initiatives striving to create environmental and social good Badgeholder learning materials - Retro Funding - Optimism Collective Retroactive Public Goods Funding - P2P Foundation.
   • Positive Role Model: Successful adherence to RPGF can position $REGEN as a role model for other projects. This sets a high standard for new initiatives, fostering a culture of accountability and genuine impact within the broader community focused on planetary regeneration.

4. Global Movement Implications:

   • Symbol of Commitment: $REGEN represents a commitment to using blockchain technology for the greater good. Upholding RPGF standards reinforces this commitment, signaling to the world that the crypto community can be a powerful force for positive change Badgeholder learning materials - Retro Funding - Optimism Collective.
   • Preventing Disillusionment: Failing to maintain these standards could lead to disillusionment among supporters and participants, weakening the collective effort needed to tackle global environmental challenges. It is crucial for $REGEN to exemplify the values of transparency, accountability, and impact to sustain momentum and support for the regenerative movement.

In essence maintaining the standards of Retroactive Public Goods Funding is vital for $REGEN to fulfill its mission of planetary regeneration effectively. This adherence not only builds trust and ensures sustainable growth but also protects the integrity of the broader regenerative movement, which is essential for achieving meaningful environmental and social impact.

[Gregory_Regen]

HI Optimism REGENs! This is Gregory, one of the founder of Regen Network, which also uses the ticker symbol of $regen, and has always intended to be an interchain / multichain protocol. Our focus is very much on the ground, and building systems to fund ecological regeneration.

We are:

• Excited to explore synergies and have been talking with and trying to colab with the regen culture/meme coin team.
• Worried about naming conflict and the potential of undermining trust in a system built to generate trust in a disintermedited way.
  *By using the regen brand, the optimism regen memecoin/culture coin will be agreeing to a set of terms of fair use designed to uplift the movement. We’d love to co-create those terms in real time. To some degree that is underway! I think the most important thing for us is linking value to ecological health, and the OP regen meme/culture coin crew already agreed to offer points to folks buying and retiring ecocredits on app.regen.network, or via a bridge. That’s awesome!

We have long been working on a REGEN brand commons with allies such as Gitcoin, Giveth, Commons Stack, ReFi DAO, BasinDAO, Metagov and others, to move towards common principles of fair use around the REGEN brand. This is a sensitive topic of course, especially within the culture of permissionless open innovation of web3. It requires quite a lot of dialog and engagement to get something right in which there is openness to awesome ideas and co-creation, and on the other hand, users and stakeholders are protected from naming collisions, scams and rugs. Luckily it seems like that dialog is underway.

Obviously this is a sensitive play, and we are NOT trying to build some sort of private rent seeking system or stifle the use of the epic word and meme of regen. However we do use the $regen ticker, and it would be horrible if there was something that went wrong with a $regen token and it was confused with our project. We also want to see proof of public goods, see solid token economics and real WIN WIN solutions. We think that through the creation of a Regen Brand Commons we can self govern, in an open way, and create a CULTURE of REGEN that transcends any single protocol or specific community, to build a movement.

You can check out my recent post about the idea of a Regen Brand Commons on the Regen Network Forum: Common

We are aiming to build something that can co-govern what it means to be and act “REGEN” and use the $regen ticker that embraces the concepts outlined in “Headless Brands”.

Please engage here in the form, and over on x.com

or in the REGEN NETWORK forum with your thoughts

with thoughts.

We have open questions as to how tightly we ask folks to engage with Regen Network (which is an open, permissionless protocol all the way down to the bare metal validators who run the network), vs being fully open to anything. My current best thinking is to extend the invitation for interoperability and linkage, find ways to incentivize that for a win win, but not every try to “ENFORCE” interoperability.

Thanks for all of your work those of you who are regenerating

Hasta la regen siempre!

Gregory

[brawlaphant]

I think regen network token should be on ethereum already. Otherwise it’s nice of the shroom regens to include network retirements. You want to drive value to both regen tokens and their respective public goods development operations: quadratic donations and nature credit markets. Then the fee to buy or sell regen tokens must have a 50/50 split to regen tokens, donations and nature credit retirements.

Shroom, Is the original post asking for money from op?

Gregory, do you really want to make a new governance structure? Is the region network token ever going to bridge to the liquidity of crypto? If so, it will be a wrapped Version: WREGEN.

The region network is in the middle of writing so many government structures. And the token isn’t really marketed around, integrating with crypto(cosmos and eth ecosystem broadly distributed) as a trading vehicle in these ever-changing times.

What’s spicy, what constraints are there. If regen network is all the way in the cosmos and regen token is right here in the ether what does it matter if until on the same liquidity layer? Both will have to distinguish themselves to the market, and the user always must do their own research.

In the OP airdrop
Owner in the regen network staked with earthist

[brawlaphant]

Regen network doesn’t need to provide any resources to this shroom regeni, they can be wegen instead.

Network has the trademark.

I like owocki idea. Simple

[Gregory_Regen]

We DO want to bridge, we do want to engage with the ethereum ecosystem, we always have. We would like to see $regen (existing token that governs, secures and is used for payments on Regen Ledger, the Regen Network Blockchain). Despite popular misconception we are not some clique of cosmos maxis. (although I do have my critiques, though they come from love and respect not from a place of spite or competition) Side note: I do think that for deepest alignment from a “political economic” and "security (from a cryptographic and economic sense of that word), that maintaining a sovereign app chain for land stewardship and ecohealth is important. I also believe that interchain deployments, bridges and seeking liquidity is important. RND PBC, the company I work for and am CEO of, doesn’t do capital formation work on behalf of regen network. In fact, no one does. It is a gap: a responsible party to more $regen out into exchanges and build liquidity. There are many reasons we dont do that work, but the most important one is responsibility and ethics. I love the idea of getting wREGEN over on optimism. For folks that would like to take that work on I am sure Regen Foundation could make healthy $regen token grants, and I am sure that liquidity could be rounded up from OG $regen holder. in the "integration between OP Regen Culture Coin and $REGEN Network, I am super stoked about ecocredit bridge/retirement work. It will take some time, but it’s so much more meaningful IMHO than minting a new token for automated bot driven meme traffic on farcaster (no offense intended to the growth hacking taking place, which has it’s place). It’s of course a lot of tech overhead. I wonder if there are grants from OP to build that sort of tech integration? There are reasons why I personally will probably never bandwagon a full shift from Regen Ledger to the superchain, and if people are interested in those I am happy to discuss at length, however in this specific convo I think that’s probably “bikeshedding”. For the time being, tt’s important to understand that our moving slow in integrations and bridges is not for lack of desire, it’s due to resource limitations and product focus for building tools that bring RWA and real world impact on chain (onto regen ledger at this moment). Thanks for your productive comments above @brawlaphant

[brawlaphant]

wREGEN needs to be all over ETH, the ecological development on the ground must permeate through the eth ecosystem. Otherwise this will continue. What responsible party could do this if not the regen network? What is unethical and irresponsible about provisioning liquidity for a token that is directly designed to regenerate ecosystems abroad? I’m more confused on regentokenomics dao now than ever. If regen network won’t capitalize on volume…

Maybe you can shed light on the technical implementation you are thinking of around ecocredit bridge and retirement work. i follow the origination and consumption of ecocredits on regen network but if the originator is compensated why not capitalize on volume thereafter via trade across globe networks. Its responsible and marketable. I can setup up some super small pools across cosmos and eventually ETH. i’m talking $1 clips(degenerate strategy).

to circle back to WEGEN, which is what they doing with the ticker REGEN lol, donations can fall short, and do not make a clear concise impact to the degree of these ecocredits in formation and production. I just don’t want to see this get more complicated for crypto’s #1, the world’s #1 regeneration nature credit originator, risking dilution on some donation meme frenzy. its not even competitive in that regard, but the hype and chain of operations is. so please do not give resources that are meant for ecocredit origination and demand to this meme to donate.

[Gregory_Regen]

Regen Network is a whole community! I am just stating that RND and regen foundation are the right places to be in charge of distributing liquidity around the interchain. They can help! The token econ WG and DAO is the right place to coordinate that effort for sure.