Use Case of DeSci in LATAM: Regenerating Coral Reef Conservation | Rodrigo Nunez - MesoReef DAO

insights and potential use cases of web 3 stack particularly in DSI in LatAm. I'm from Mexico. I'm a macro researcher. So, I have been exploring DSI on web 3 since a couple of years ago, like 5 years ago. So, I just ended my masters and try to figure out how can I on board properly to the space colleagues basically.

So, we just want we're quite eager to regenerate coral reef conservation in terms of decision-making in involving stakeholders to for better coordination, you know, using web 3 and DSI. So, I will present some insights regarding this topic. So, it was quite interesting because last year I just presented this initiative to web 3 communities in during EthDenver. So, right now we're a non-profit. We're particularly our approach is going to be one of the DSI DAO's in terms of coral reef conservation.

Particularly right now we're working in Mesoamerica, but we have been some we have some insights for everywhere, you know, because coral reefs are basically in in subtropics and tropics. So, essentially we have interesting audience. We have been supported by many well-known communities in this space like Gitcoin, GreenPill, Optimism, Gitcoin Grants, many of these guys are probably are here somewhere. So, right now this is interesting because this this is a an interesting topic, you know, this is a particular use case. We have been exploring the social ecological system of coral reefs since decades as researchers.

And these are basically the global threats that this ecosystem have, you know, they're quite impacted by cyclones, by sea temperature, by ocean acidification. And the particular thing that we have here is coral reef. A coral reef is basically the unit of this ecosystem. So, essentially, this ecosystems this ecosystems provide goods and services to many people, you know, involving this system. So, you know, in terms of shoreline protection, tourism and recreation, fisheries, and basically is the uh the lives and property businesses.

Usually, this ecosystem thrive uh with people, you know, everywhere. So, essentially, we're creating and prototyping this product. It's called Regen Reef, and we have uh our headquarters is based in Mexico in in Telchac. We have an extension there with a research center, and we have like six factories there to develop this prototype. And basically, uh you know, explore and decentralize science in terms of coral reef restoration and conservation in many hotspots that we have just identified in the Caribbean in Latin America.

So, uh Cozumel is one of them, Loading Bay Caye is another one. We have been done some exploration there. Cayman Coming Crown in Guatemala, Roatan in Honduras. And basically, this is our general approach, you know, to to achieve that, you know. We need to create community, essentially.

Uh we need to implement decentralized science in a proper way with particular use case with stakeholders. And we are quite eager to involve a little by little, you know, this regenerative finance approach. And eventually, we believe that we need to regenerate science at a certain point. So, essentially, this is our basic conservation framework, and I will explain a little bit uh more regarding this. Uh we have just identified in the framework of conservation.

This This article was published by Brown in 2022. And in every process of conservation, we could implement uh tools that we know in the web three space. So, we have been exploring this in terms of how can we leverage citizen science with stakeholders with particular use cases in the region. So, I will present some explorations that we have been done. This is our main product essentially.

We want to create our leverage biotech, marine biotech we research with some restoration with a sociological component and essentially create a DC hub worldwide, you know, because many people are quite interested to get involved and we need to create a new coordination mechanism using these web three stuff, you know. So, basically we we have been prototyping since years ago English aid model or web labs and we're planning to and is scale this using the web three stack that we know, you know, in terms of on-chain metrics for potentially create um new products essentially new products new markets essentially, you know, biodiversity credits and carbon credits. That's our ultimate goal in the long run. So, essentially we have been to we have two prototypes one of coral restoration and one of fish restoration and we were eager to accelerate our research like I said before, but in terms of natural product extraction because we have seen that in the DC space many individuals are quite focusing a little bit in longevity and regeneration stuff. So, we just identified that many biomolecules that we could potentially explore to create essentially to close the loop in many conservation projects, you know, in terms of coral reefs because we have extracted practices since decades ago, you know, in many conservation frameworks and essentially our headquarter like I said before is in Telchak.

We have a huge basement basement there and we're we're quite planning to scale it, you know, on the long run. So, these are some prototypes that we have in terms of coral restoration. You know, it composed by many many components, you know, microfragmentation area, a robotic area, a waste treatment area, essentially biobanking area and this is the basically the theory that we want to apply with on-chain analytic analytics and Web3. As you may see, corals is a holobiont. This holobiont essentially we could explore what are the proper we could explore everything, you know, with this organism.

You know, 3D printing coral bio-coral natural product characterization extraction, and the ultimate goal for this will be close the this loop in terms of conservation or restoration of course, you know, to close and create a really retro-active like funding this kind of tools. So, essentially this the scheme that you could see in your in my left is basically the ReFi framework that we have been just explore a little bit. And for example, we have a demand of climate action projects in Latin America, and we're quite eager to support many stakeholders stakeholders that we know to onboard them properly to the space. And for example, we need to create that's why we're here, you know, to find and incentivize developers to explore a little bit more this regenerative approach of things, you know, in terms of blockchain. And we believe that we need a really good accounting service in terms of auditing data, you know, in terms of standardization or origination, verification, data management management, the things that we have been done a couple of decades ago, you know, with all these sensors, you know, seeds and all these kind of stuff.

IoT sensors and all of that, big data. So, essentially we the governance layer comes in the middle, you know, and this is how the blockchain protocols work, you know, you could essentially leverage this accounting to create a new market. We're quite eager and we we're quite exploring this, you know. So, these are two main areas or studies that we are quite trying to onboard a little bit into Web3 component. This uh, article was published in Frontiers in Marine Science, and we really want to uh, create uh, like an on-chain counterpart of this particular project, you know?

Uh, this is a proof of concept, and actually we're quite um, supporting this initiative. And for potentially, you know, growth coral reef uh, fish species, you know? And we could potentially create a market regarding this, you know? A sustainable market. So, essentially we're quite eager to implement in every stage of this uh, method, you know, some web3 components, and we're quite going on on this.

This is the other part regarding fish. Like I said, this is basically the model, the framework that we just create in terms of post larvae uh, rearing and, you know, the nursery fish area. So, uh, this is the framework that we're quite developing, you know, we are quite developing the protocol level. Probably it will be a EBM uh, compatible um, uh, technology. The the governance level, we're quite working on that, too.

Incentive level, organization level, operational level, and the application level, you know, the ultimate goal. Regarding the our highlights that we have been done, we have been crowdfunding like 3K USD. It's nothing compared to many well well-known web3 protocols, I know, but yeah, we have been supporting with that 30 conservation actions in Latin America. We have around 60 members in in our community in Discord. Uh, we have like 22 months of existence, and we have been uh, quite present in 15 uh, web3 and science forums, you know, traditional science forums.

And these are part of our partners. Many of our members have been quite involved in initiatives like Coral Connect, uh, Wave of Change. This is counterpart This is a a part of Iberostar Hotel Group. Grupo Xcaret is a counterpart that we have in the, you know, the as a private entity. Healthy Reefs is basically chartered in the US, Coral Reef Alliance, too.

And yeah, we we are quite eager to to create a socio-ecological component, you know, with with our stakeholders that we have been known since years. So, this is why the this was quite surprised me this year, you know, because we are highlighted in this PhD gen system for a DC update, you know, by Masari. So, many of these initiatives usually have a lot of presence in the space and we're quite eager to be selected here because look, we're here. And we have been like like I said, we have been funding some research, traditional research and we're quite pivoting and iterating some web three components in each conservation traditional framework that we have. And we here we we have only two initiatives of Latin America.

We have this a lot of them here and misery that only. So, I believe that we the potential use case, you know, in the global south is is huge, you know, in terms of regenerative finance and DC particularly. So, this is an evaluation that we just create with some colleagues, you know, the total the total addressable market with in this initiative is around you know, the blue economy itself is around 3 trillion, you know, if you want to see numbers of the potential use case. So, coral reef ecosystem contribute 2.7 trillion annually, you know, for a report of WWEF.

So, the AI environmental monitoring market is projected to reach like, you know, this amount of of money by 2027. So, essentially, our initiative is quite eager to create new opportunities to create a new wave of independent researchers in the global south if you want to see our way. And we need that, you know, I don't know if you have seen how's the situation in traditional science here in your country. So, imagine that in Mexico for example in Latin America is worse than here. So, yeah, this is the serviceable available market that we have, you know, 1.

9 billion, you know, is and it's growing in terms of compound annual growth rate like 30 to 30 13.2% you know, annually. So, the ReFi impact investing sector, you know, all the deep end structures and all that will be around 1 trill- 1 trillion by 2030. So, you know, and basically it's quite aligned with the sustainable financial goals by the UN and other entities, you know, the World Economic Forum and all that. So, essentially, these are the serviceable obtainable market that we just evaluated.

You know, many stakeholders have just contacted from parts of the world, you know, Mesoamerican Reef is one of the top, you know, reef tracks that we have in the world. The Coral Triangle has another potential and the Great Barrier Reef. And essentially, potentially these will be the first ecosystems that will be quite extinct functionally speaking. So, we need to take care of them and try to build stuff, you know, to for this, you know? It would be quite messy to see the extinction of these ecosystems by the end of the century.

So, yeah, and the basically the key the key stakeholders that we were quite focusing, you know, marine research institution, conservation organizations, public goods and web3 communities in the DC space and ReFi investors. So, yeah, in terms of the unique positioning, we're quite eager to integrate AI, ReFi and token- token-gated impact, you know, with governance tokens or whatever. We're quite open to discuss that. That's why we're here, essentially. So, we're planning as an NGO to be the bridge in conservation, you know, unifying these uh these concepts about technology, you know, DC and ReFi.

I have been We have been quite a good traction and you will see. These are part of our members. As you see, many of us are really good at the conservation itself of coral reefs, you know, coral genomics, invertebrate ecology, socio-ecological artists. We have some socio-ecological artists involved, you know, climate change top researchers. Yeah, coral reef ecology professors.

So, and we have like Antonio that is a Google and web 3 dev, and me that I'm quite enthusiastic with the technology itself. So, these are some prototypes that we have been funding. We have just created like four different um uh field trips regarding the traditional frameworks that we have, and we're quite implementing, you know, with the scholarships, with the people that actually need, you know, that are quite volunteers in our lab, and you know, in trainings, you know, in talking getting trainings with people. And we we we have these synergies with other institutions. This is part of the Xcaret program that we just support.

Uh and as researchers, we have really good impact, you know, in some traditional research in academia, as you may see. We uh last year we just did this article, you know, in terms of reef resilience and recoverability and bleaching in the Mesoamerican reef. Uh we just uh we're more into the theoretical aspect of things, you know. This is a really good uh framework and research article regarding unifying coral reef stress through space and time. So, essentially, regional reefs were planning to scale in hotspot areas in Mesoamerica, you know, with this approach.

And we have a really good expertise on this. So, uh this is a protocol, a treatment protocol that it was a publication regarding this. We could we're quite eager to put some experiments on chain, you know. So, this is quite interesting because uh other these AI initiatives have been done that, and we're quite eager to explore a little bit. And for example, uh last year um personally, I just won an scholarship of Devcon, and my mission was, "Okay, we need to create to people to get involved in this, but not necessarily to be quite involved in my initiative, in our initiative of Mesoamerican Reef DAO, you know, because for example, I just wanted to explore a little bit how was the investor side of things in that area, you know?

And many investors are quite aware that, you know, Southeastern Asia has contains like 11 countries that depend directly of coral reef ecosystem. Singapore is a It's an island, for example. And I just wanted to explore a little bit how's the perception regarding that, you know? And it was a really good exploration. And in terms we just present the initiatives in the DCI hub in the DepCon or the DepCon.

We just participated in the Vis Garden as mentors and the Shanghai Woo in the RS too in the LabPunks. Um So, many other, you know, events. For example, one of DCI Bangkok by the Foresight Institute and some colleagues. And this is quite interesting because as I said before, we have just involved a little bit in the traditional academia, you know? So, we just have we just participate as um as advisors, as coordinators in the Refutures Congress.

This Refutures Congress is a well-known a coral restoration consortium. You know, it's a congress basically. They do it via They do it every 2 years. And essentially we just participate with a workshop in DCI, you know? We're quite focusing a little bit in researchers and in stakeholders that depends of these ecosystems.

So, it was really good. We just presented like 11 different papers around this quite topic that we're quite researching on. And essentially it was a good experience. And actually we're quite endorsed by this initiative by the UN. We're part of the decade of restoration inside the Cozumel Coral Conservatory.

And you know, we're working with stakeholders to automatize this this living structure called Zoe that is based in Cozumel, you know, to implement little by little the DCI stack, you know, in this kind of conservation efforts. So, this is a report the recap that we have in 2024. Uh Last year was quite interesting because we just explore and identify many issues that have our stakeholders. And potentially we're quite eager to do some collaborations even with developers, even with business people. You know, we're quite open to leverage these kind of efforts, you know, to scale properly.

So, actually we just participate on a series of talks by the Mexican Society of Coral Reef Ecosystems and this chapter particularly is part of International Coral Reef Society. So, essentially we're quite making presence, you know, in the traditional field and we're where we believe that we need to create a hybrid model, you know, in terms of research and how can we implement or use the DC stack to leverage this this thing. And actually I have seen I have not seen any pop in this in December. So, we have a pop here for our initiative. If you if you're quite or if you identify and you love these coral reef ecosystems, we just have this is special pop for you during this event.

So, I think that that's all for me. So, contact us and reach us if you want to build something good, you know, a particular use case for this. Thank you.