Regeneration Is Produced on the Ground: draft of a Value Thesis for Regen Nodes and the Wider Ecosystem
I’m Giulio Quarta, part of ReFi Barcelona local node. I’m writing this for people across ReFi DAO local nodes, Greenpill Network chapters -from now on referred to as “Regen Nodes”- as well as surrounding people&orgs and those involved in the Regen Commons process.
This article is an attempt to clarify where I believe we should focus our attention when we talk about value generation and business models—both for local nodes and for the wider regenerative ecosystem we are collectively building. It’s also a sort of answer to Owocki’s recent article “The Wells Are All Dry. Regen Web3 at a Crossroads“ which brought me to finally synthesize what have been working on in the last years.
My core point is simple: regenerative value is primarily created at the local & bioregional level, through real economic activity rooted in specific places and communities. If our goal is to promote regenerative modalities of value generation, and to move beyond extractive economic logics, then our strategies, organizations, and revenue models must be aligned with that reality.
I start from the assumption that most meaningful regenerative outcomes—ecological restoration, resilient livelihoods, social cohesion, and long-term care for land and people—emerge from activities that happen on the ground. Networks, protocols, and financial tools play an important role, but they are enablers, not the source of that value.
While I personally see a post-monetary or credit-based evolution of the economy as the most desirable path to pursue, money remains a central coordination mechanism for the foreseeable future. For that reason, this article focuses on monetary value generation, without denying the importance of non-monetary and commons-based systems which are gladly expanding everywhere.
The argument I make here applies regardless: even within a monetary economy, most of the “good” value is produced locally, out of material resources and the labor of people.
From this starting point, I explore what kinds of economic activities can be considered genuinely regenerative, what this implies for profits and extraction, and how Regen Nodes, Regen Commons, and their partners might structure sustainable business models that support local economies rather than displace or exploit them.
1) What “regenerative value” is (and where it is actually created)
Regenerative value is created primarily through place-based, on-the-ground activity that restores ecosystems, strengthens community resilience, and produces livelihoods without shifting harm elsewhere. (ideally with a Bioregional and BioFi perspective)
In practice, that means mostly economic activity like:
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Regenerative agriculture and food systems
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Renewable energy generation and energy communities
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Care work, mutual aid, education and community services
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Experience economy, arts/culture, tourism, entertainment
A key note: these activities are regenerative only if stakeholders are respected and rewarded fairly (workers, communities, land, supply chains, and future generations).
As I argued in the Regen Funding Support Handbook (for who wants to dig more into it) we have produced in the context of the Regen Funding Support research process: start from local value creation and then map outward into broader funding ecosystems, rather than trying to “import” value from global mechanisms as the primary strategy.
2) “No profits” is not the point; “no extraction” is the point
Without expanding too much about the issue of “profits” which could be uselessly divisive, I think we all agree on the following points:
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Some profit is normal and can be healthy.
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The issue is when profits are structurally tied to extractive asymmetries: one stakeholder systematically captures value that other stakeholders generated or must bear the costs for.
In a regenerative economy, value capture should generally look like:
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reasonable margins that sustain the organization,
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reinvestment into capabilities and resilience,
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fair compensation for labor and stewardship,
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transparent governance and accountability.
The Handbook also warns about “green capitalism” and “green colonialism”—i.e., commodifying living systems and reproducing power extraction under a green narrative. That’s not an edge-case; it is the default gravity of capital markets unless we design against it.
3) The ReFi/Web3 reality check: why so many “regen tokenomics” failed
A lot of the “ReFi space” (check projects listed in The state of ReFi 2025 by Carbon Copy) tried to produce regenerative outcomes via sophisticated tokenomics and protocol designs. I think many of these attempts failed or stayed irrelevant for the following reason (of course among many others):
They misunderstood where value is generated and who is ready to use what. Most local actors are not going to adopt complex crypto tooling because a whitepaper says it’s “aligned.” They adopt tools when those tools solve immediate needs in their context.
This mirrors the critique in the Owocki piece: the era of subsidized token flows and “projects” funded by vibes is over, and survival requires building useful applications that people actually use and that generate revenue because they deliver real utility.
4) What global networks are for (and what they are not for)
Here’s the role split I think we need, across Regen Nodes, Regen Commons, and adjacent partners:
Local economies
The primary value (& revenues) engine: farms, energy communities, care cooperatives, cultural initiatives, stewardship projects, solidarity economy actors.
Regen nodes (ReFi nodes, Greenpill chapters, etc.)
The bridge and operator layer: build trust, map local stakeholders, run programs, coordinate capital stacks, reduce friction, provide tooling support, and make local work legible to external funders without distorting it.
Network-of-networks layer (Regen Commons, Regen Coordination, etc.)
This layer should exist to enable coordination, coherence, and capital formation across many local ecosystems, without centralizing control or displacing local agency. This layer should be a light, democratic vehicle for the expression of Regen Nodes’ will and needs, its stewards merely executor of their agreed plans and missions.
Its core function is to:
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Activate partnerships and funding with global ecosystems that are interested (also commercially, but ethically) to promote such vision and mission. The stakeholders of * Localism Fund are a good example in this sense, but it would be good to also partner with non-web3 actors, as * Oiko Credit, * Give Directly or * Cool Earth just to give some examples, as well as aligned philanthropists and * Bioregional Finance actors of course.
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Weave relationships between nodes, funders, tool providers, and knowledge commons
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Design and maintain repeatable program templates and tools/workflows that local nodes can adapt to their context (pretty much exactly what the Local Nodes toolkit effort led by Luiz Fernando of ReFI DAO is developing)
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Hold shared ethical frameworks and quality standards, while allowing contextual interpretation
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Route resources, knowledge, and legitimacy back to local actors, where regenerative value is actually produced
Impact networks do not scale like traditional organizations. They scale through dense clusters of trust, collaboration, and shared practice, not through top-down hierarchy. The role of this layer is therefore not command-and-control, but alignment: making it easier for many autonomous local initiatives to move in a common direction and reinforce one another.
5) The business model implication: where sustainable revenue should come from
5.1 Technology and finance providers should not be the primary revenues engines
In a regenerative stack, good infrastructure should trend toward low rents:
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If core tools extract huge profits, that’s a warning sign: it usually means value is being captured upstream of real-world work.
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Many components should be open-source / commons-maintained where possible.
The Owocki piece frames the same directional shift: we need “new wells” of revenue based on actual usage that pays for itself.
5.2 Network and node revenues should be tied to real economic activity and programs that empower it
The simplest model for Nodes could and should be: fees for coordination, capacity-building, and operational delivery—because those are real services that reduce transaction costs and increase the success rate of on-the-ground regeneration.
This is exactly what we are trying to test and demonstrate with the Regenerant Catalunya program, which I here briefly mention as an example to keep this piece a bit more concrete: ReFi Barcelona operates a participatory funding and capacity-building program that bridges local regenerative networks with global Web3 funding, while keeping the work rooted in Catalonia and the value flowing to local projects.
6) Regenerant Catalunya as a concrete example of “local value actors + global support”
Regenerant Catalunya is explicitly designed to amplify what’s already working on the ground (regenerative economic activities as the ones listed earlier : regenerative agricolture, care work, experience economy, etc) while generating open templates others can reuse.
Key design choices matter here:
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Local co-funding from established Catalan regenerative actors (Miceli Social and La Fundició / Keras Buti) plus global matching via the Localism Fund.
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A two-stage mechanism: baseline allocations tied to reporting and onboarding, followed by network-level pooled governance, testing local multi-stakeholder allocation with manageable scope.
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A bias toward a minimal Web3 stack rather than imposing complex systems.
This is, to me, the right direction: not “tokenize regeneration,” but operationalize resource flows into existing regenerative ecosystems, then use tooling only where it reduces friction or increases accountability.
7) What nodes should optimize for: a “local regenerative dealflow + coordination” function
If local nodes are the bridge, then their sustainable economic role is to:
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Build and maintain a portfolio of local regenerative value actors (not just crypto-native projects).
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Weave multi-stakeholder alliances (coops, municipalities, foundations, ethical businesses, universities, land stewards).
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Run repeatable programs (funding rounds, capacity-building cohorts, local procurement pilots, monitoring/reporting support).
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Offer operational services (program management, governance facilitation, treasury ops, impact reporting, partner onboarding).
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Integrate simple financial rails where useful (e.g., stablecoin payments for SMEs/coops; transparent pooled budgets; basic attestation/reporting)
What nodes should charge for (ethically)
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Program operator fees (transparent, bounded, justified by workload)
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Retainers from local institutions for coordination services
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Training / onboarding services (wallets, reporting, governance tools) where appropriate
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Small fees on real flows enabled by the node (payments, pooled procurement, cooperative marketplaces), avoiding rent extraction
8) The ethical tension: partner selection is never pure, but it must be explicit
We cannot be purists in a capitalist environment; “100% ethical entities” is structurally rare. But we also cannot normalize extraction because it is convenient.
So the work becomes:
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maintain a living ethical line (network + local negotiation),
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build transparent criteria,
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prioritize regenerative and democratic actors over time,
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refuse partnerships where profit is structurally tied to extraction (classic example: fossil fuel companies).
9) Implications for Regen Nodes and the wider ecosystem
If we take this framing seriously, then Regen Nodes and the broader ecosystem they participate in should increasingly orient themselves toward a shared coordination and enablement role: making local regenerative economies visible, legible, and supportable at scale, while preserving their autonomy.
Economic sustainability at the network level should come primarily from program design and delivery, partnership weaving, and shared operational infrastructure that reduces duplication, increases trust, and strengthens the collective bargaining power of local regenerative actors. As these coordination functions mature and become more coherent, they can turn a fragmented landscape of local initiatives into portfolios that are easier to support, fund, and collaborate with—without centralizing control or extracting value.
Conclusion
My intention is to contribute to a clearer and more honest conversation/research about where value is actually created in regenerative economies, and how our networks can sustain themselves without reproducing extractive dynamics.
Happy to contribute to further articulating what a network-level regenerative business model could look like in practice: comparing node experiences, mapping viable revenue streams, clarifying ethical boundaries, and translating this into shared programs and governance patterns.
(for me there is not much to invent, the question is basically how do we synthesize the work of all the mentioned networks & programs so far in a way that we can become more effective and reduce duplication)
Hope to hear your thoughts and to get some concrete results out of this, for example with a simple working group if there is enough interest.
Thanks for reading and have a nice day/night fellow Regens!
Well they might even be doing