2022 was a year of building for Solid World DAO, and we managed to build an extremely strong foundation for our impending launch early this year. Looking ahead, 2023 will be a year of shipping and onboarding, where our technology will start to enable early financing for new carbon projects.
We are excited for our launch, and are on track to meet our target launch time of Q2 2023! We are now beginning to test the protocol on a private test net and you will be seeing more updates on our progress in the following months.
For now, let’s take a moment to review the impactful year that Solid World had in 2022. This will be a bit longer than our monthly reviews because it covers the whole year, so enjoy digging in!
We Built A World Changing Protocol
Solid World will help scale the growing voluntary carbon markets by making forward carbon credits transparent and liquid.
Our unique protocol will enable corporations and investors to scale their carbon financing through diversified and derisked carbon financing pools. It offers guaranteed delivery, transparent prices and 24/7 liquidity. Projects are subject to rigorous due diligence (ex-BeZero staff) and are certified by reputed registries, including Verra. These are features that are not currently available in voluntary carbon markets, so this will be a revolutionary innovation.
We built the majority of the protocol in 2022, and are putting the finishing touches on smart contracts and beginning to test on a private testnet. Our target launch date is Q2 of 2023.
Once we reach scale in our initial market of forward carbon, the protocol could be used in other industries as well and will serve as a fundamental financial primitive to build derivatives, marketplaces and other innovations.
Solid World raised $2.8M from T1 funds
All of our achievements were made possible by a large funding round led by Greycroft and Taavet+Sten and other respected investors, in which Solid World raised $2.8 million to build our protocol. The raise was followed by Solid World spinning out from parent eAgronom into an independent entity. Solid World incubated in 2021, within eAgronom, a regenerative farming company with 1 million hectares of farmers that our CEO Stenver Jerkku co-founded. eAgronom provided early talent and resources to help Solid World get off the ground.
We Developed an Ecosystem of Partners
In addition to our groundbreaking technological development behind the scenes, Solid World has become one of the most recognized names and collaborative organizations in the ReFi sector. We have established partnerships with big industry players like StarCB, Vlinder, Allcot, and Sust Global, along with ReFi pioneers like Toucan, Thallo, Flowcarbon, Neutral, Open Forest Protocol, Return Protocol and many others. We have also just recently formed partnerships with Hedera and Polygon.
We Built a Strong Community
Even in the depths of a brutal bear market, we have grown a dedicated community which includes over 1000 people on Discord and over 4000 on Twitter, with these numbers quickly accelerating as we approach our launch. Our community consists of people who truly care about our mission, not mercenary degens.
Our Founders Led as Thought Leaders
Co-Founders Stenver and Rez have each become thought-leaders in ReFi, making regular appearances as guests on podcasts and as speakers at conferences. Rez is now the co-host of a popular podcast called “This Week in ReFi,” which has given him a platform to display his level of knowledge and care about both crypto and carbon, earning him considerable respect in the industry. Rez’s Twitter commentary about the industry has also caught the eye of major media publications like TIME, which quoted him for an article they published about tokenizing carbon.
Likewise, Stenver traveled and took our message to many different audiences at in-person events as a featured speaker. From sitting alongside a Verra representative on a panel at a COP27 event in Egypt, to presenting to an audience from Mitsubishi group, Inclusion Japan, Microsoft, and Genesia Ventures in Tokyo, Stenver has been able to help investors, builders and other industry players understand the unique problems that Solid World is solving in carbon markets. Stenver finished the year out at the NOAH conference in Switzerland where he met with representatives from major corporations like Volkswagen and BMW.
Stenver’s speaking engagements for 2023 are already being locked in, including a presentation at the NFTNYC main event, which happens just around the time of our launch. He is also scheduled to attend Davos in January.
We Assembled A Strong Team
Other members of our team have also earned some public recognition, including Solid World carbon expert Durga Prasad, who gave a presentation about our protocol at ReFi India.
Sujit Ghosh, one of Solid World’s carbon experts, was one of the lead authors of a new peer-reviewed paper on the carbon sequestration capabilities of mangroves. This also happens to be one of our main areas of focus for our launch, as our first liquidity pools will be for blue carbon. The paper was published in the Ecological Informatics Journal.
We also have a strong development team, led by Emil Ibatullin, and recently joined by Andrei Stefan, a senior blockchain dev, who has previously worked at IBM, and on DyDx flash loans.
Our Community Manager, John Vibes, has been engaging with the community, educating our audience about our protocol, and making our message easy to understand for investors. John is a published author who has been writing about blockchain and speaking at industry conferences since 2013.
We have also assembled a strong team of advisors who are passionate about what we’re building, and have agreed to lend their expertise to the project. Our advisors now include Ricky Knox (Tandem Bank), Evan Caron (Sidewalk Infra), Stephen Murphy (Founders Forum), David Rodriguez (Adobe), Artia Moghbuel (ICB), Jason Stephens (12 Butterflies) and Priit Lätt (PWC).
We Persevered Through Adversity
There is no doubt that 2022 was a challenging year for crypto markets, and markets in general. Some of the top funds and exchanges in crypto were proven to be insolvent, sending shockwaves across the markets and soiling the reputation of the industry. This has killed much of the excitement that we saw in 2021, from both retail and institutions. We have also had to contend with macro-economic factors like war and inflation that have made fundraising extremely difficult.
We remain very strong, but we were not immune to the changing dynamics of the past year. In Q2 of last year we had to let a few of our employees go, which was one of our lowest points of the year. We also had to make some significant changes to our marketing strategy and focus on building so we were as conscious as possible about our runway. We also decided to postpone our launch, and rebuild our entire protocol as the bear market allowed us to slow down and push out a perfect solution.
We refused to let these obstacles get in the way of our goal though, and we learned from the chaos that was happening around us. Instead of rushing to market, we took our time, and worked to bring the most reliable, derisked and best solution to the market. Times like these are difficult, but they are also cleansing. The noise of scams, vaporware and get-rich-quick schemes are washed away, which allows the real projects to truly shine and flourish. We have seen this with big projects like USDC and Kraken, which are now getting much more attention thanks to their proven security and reliability. Solid World will be able to shine in these conditions, because we have something truly innovative to bring to the world.
Looking Ahead to 2023
In addition to our much-anticipated launch, we also have major announcements coming about liquidity providers and green layer one blockchains that will help us achieve our multichain vision. We can’t reveal any of those names or specifics yet because the official announcements are still being drafted, but the deals are confirmed and we’re looking forward to sharing more with you very soon.
Our community will grow exponentially in the year to come, as people begin to use our protocol and learn how powerful it truly is. Stenver and Rez will continue to solidify their roles as leaders in the space, as will other members of the Solid World team.
We’re ready to bloom!
