This article is part of a series that completes the proposal #0 made on the Cardashift DAO.
A next chapter for Cardashift…
Cardashift was born from the ambition of three companies to use blockchain technology to fund, value and monetize impact.
The blockchain ecosystem has three differentiating dimensions to drive impact generation:
- Funding: the crypto community represents a new source of funding. As explained in our Whitepaper, the lack of funding is one of the major weaknesses of the impact ecosystem. It is also an access to a new type of investor: the citizen-investor who is also a consumer-investor
- Valuing & Monetizing: blockchain, and primarily the token (fungible or non-fungible), represents a huge tech opportunity. Digital assets offer a unique way to aggregate financial but also extra-financial data. It can be a game changer for one of the main challenges of our time: the valuation of the positive impact creation
- Empowering: This ecosystem is mainly focused on the community. Project leaders are able to federate communities around their vision regardless of their geographical areas. Facing environmental and social crises, empowering communities to choose and act will be a key to the solution
With the Impact Marketplace, we come with a product capable of leveraging all three key aspects of blockchain. And more importantly, it will be an enabler to continue our mission started with the launchpad.
1/ Funding — Reinforcing the launchpad with new ways of funding impactful projects
Following the launchpad, it is crucial for us to diversify the means of financing offered to impactful projects.
Funding needs confirmed
As confirmed with the Batch Genesis sourcing, the need for funding for future impact leaders is critical. Impact startups, such as Pyxo and Revolte, also place a high value on gathering a community around their missions. The proposed products often imply a switch of mentalities among consumers. Being able to rely on a community of consumers-investors is therefore a key advantage.
The NFT Marketplace as a new fundraising platform
The NFT marketplace will therefore be a new way for impactful projects, and primarily the startups selected on the launchpad, to raise funds via the issue of a NFT collection.
This new platform also offers built-in utilities to projects by enabling investors to become product holders in the real world via their NFTs.
Pyxo will be a great example — Invest in a NFT will enable you to own containers and to have a share of the revenues generated by the containers.
2/ Valuing & Monetizing — Giving tools to companies to value their impact
Up to now, we have focused our efforts on enabling citizens to vote and invest in high-potential startups. We now want to work on the other aspect of our value proposition, the impact valuation & monetization.
First exploration with Catalyst Natives
We’ve started the exploration process by launching a Catalyst Natives fund: Demonstrating and Monetizing impact. Cardashift is the second organization on Cardano to launch such a fund with IOG.
Our ambition was to tap into the talent pool of the Cardano community to discover innovative ways to use blockchain to enable companies to leverage their impact creation.
Results: 53 proposals with 36 submitted to the community vote — winners expected for late September!
A solution targeting organizations first
Companies are our priority target: how to equip them to value their impact and encourage them to do more?
The Batch Genesis sourcing phase and the last months have allowed us to better understand their needs on this matter. We met with a representative panel of actors ranging from impact scaleups to large groups and NGOs.
For the most engaged companies, there is a clear need of ‘valuing the unvalued’.
“What if we can capture the value, created by social businesses, that is sitting outside of the balance sheet?”
This question asked by David Berners, the Global Director of Yunus Social Business during our VivaTech Keynote, shows the need for committed organizations to value their positive impact.
Among big corporations, certain business units and/or employees suffer from a lack of recognition of their positive impact on the company and, more broadly, on society
Indeed, CSR departments, for example, create more extra-financial value than financial value. The question is the following: how to value this work? How to put pride in the daily actions of those who act to make their companies more responsible?
Taking into account these two key feedbacks from the field, we will propose the following product to companies: an NFT impact-proof tool with an associated marketplace.
Potential use cases
For example, a company that has conducted a project to improve the energy efficiency of its production process and has reached its KPIs would be able to generate a collection of NFT impact proofs related to this specific project. As well as a company having launched a startups program to stimulate innovation in a developing country.
NFTs will make it possible to trace the creation of the impact, to incorporate the validation of this data by a trusted third party and to materialize the reality of the project via the NFT image or video.
Valuation in-house, Monetization outside
This tool will enable companies to:
- value internally the work of engaged employees and/or business units offering them tangible and valuable trophies for their achievements
- monetize the company’s positive impact to their customers, consumers and investors by isolating this extra-financial value creation in the NFT
This pillar is the BtoB approach of Cardashift for incentivizing companies to change. Valuing the positive actions could create a virtuous cycle internally and spur other companies with less glorious records to action.
For CLAP holders, in addition to creating impact, it will also be an important source of value with the incorporation of a revenue sharing mechanism on the marketplace fees in the tokenomics.
We are currently running the first PoCs with big corporations and impact scale-ups to fine-tune our offer towards companies and prepare the launch of the beta version of the impact marketplace.
3/ Empowering — Launching a community-led exploration for watching impact ambition of big corporations
Creating a citizen movement for impact
Last but not least, we want to explore the possibility of mobilizing our community and beyond on a revolutionary topic: gamifying big corporations impact monitoring.
What if tomorrow any citizen could bet on whether or not a company would achieve its impact roadmap? What if the level of ambition of big corporations’ impact roadmap becomes transparent and accessible?
These companies represent a large part of the problem, environmental and social transitions won’t happen without them. It’s necessary to make them shift their models. We are all aware, as citizens, of the problem but we remain little or badly informed on the reality of the action of the companies. ESG reporting of companies is primarily aimed at asset managers, it remains unclear and not very transparent for everyone.
Our reflection started from there:
How to make impact roadmaps tangible and auditable for everyone? How to incentivize citizens-investors to monitor impact ambitions and achievements of big companies?
‘Speculation for good’
Our first idea is to enable a growing community to bet on whether or not a company would achieve its impact roadmap — a sort of ‘speculation for good’.
Investors would be rewarded if the company achieves its impact KPIs — enabling them to get money while creating a positive pressure on the company.
We have started to explore this exciting project: meeting with impact assessment actors, iterating on the business model, testing potential impact-roadmap NFTs, etc.
But on this product, by essence militant, we want to build with the community.
A community-run product
We will therefore put in place the modalities allowing volunteers to come and work with us to make this exploration project a global brand capable of influencing companies for the best.
It will be the first example in the DAO of a solution built & designed by the community for the community.
What do you think of this new product? Which aspect strikes you the most?
Come and discuss it with us on Discord!
