Hey there, SEA supporters!

It’s been a while since our last update, and we have some catching up to do. Over the last six months there have been some extremely positive shifts here at SEA, some big steps forward in our project, and some major advances in our tech.

First up, to address the AI-analysed and geographically tracked elephant in the room (bit of an in-joke there, check our last Medium post) — yes, the goals we set out at the start of 2023 have become somewhat fluid. Last year we planned to release our software in Beta, launch the VSEA token, get our product to market and start seeing the impact, both environmental and financial, of our data ecosystem.

Whilst those goals obviously haven’t emerged, we want to show first of all that they haven’t changed, but that the pathway to achieving them has been modified. We’re as focused as ever on getting there, but the route is different.

The key to the problem is, as usual, funding. We all know the stats: 90% of startups fail, usually because their cash runway is exhausted before they get their product into the market and start generating revenue. Precisely this happened to SEA in 2022. We successfully completed the research project funded by the Algorand Foundation, on time and on-budget; at the end of that project, Algorand (like every other tokenised ecosystem, including SEA BSC) crashed, pulling the wind quite suddenly from our sails. With a global bear market looming, investors battened down the hatches and the resources we needed to push things forward did not materialise.

There’s one big difference between SEA and those 90% of startups that, presented with the situation described above, fail. That difference is simple: we’re not giving up.

We know that what we’re building is going to work, we know that there’s exponential growth in demand for our product (hyper-local environmental data), and we know that the impact our tech will make — the predictive power of a decentralised global monitoring network — is more important than ever. Our conviction to this idea is so strong, that we’ve pushed through the low point where those 90% of startups fail. Ever seen a coyote in a forest fire? They lie down, face the fire, wait for it to almost overwhelm them, then they run straight into it at full speed. They get out the other side — slightly singed, but alive.

How did we push through that low point, without funding? Simple — our core team are 100% dedicated to making our project successful, and we’ve been working on the Nexus non-stop, giving as much time as we can pro-bono, and contributing our own resources to cover costs such as development infrastructure, project overheads, and so on. We’ve put ourselves and our resources on the line to bridge the gap created by the last year of poor market conditions, and to get SEA to the next stage of development. Like we said, we’re not giving up.

Let’s address some of the questions which have been floating around recently:

Q: Why hasn’t VSEA launched?

A: To launch a token on the scale of VSEA, you need capital. Not pre-seed capital, not friends-and-family capital; serious capital. You need liquidity, listing fees and more. When “crypto winter” struck in 2022, the people and organisations we had in the frame to supply that capital stopped spending (quite understandably). Without that investment, we can’t launch VSEA.

Q: Why not “fair-launch” the VSEA token, or just launch it with a smaller amount of liquidity?

A: We’re not about to do our project the disservice of launching a poorly resourced token, or releasing half-made tech. We’re going to do this properly. It’s going to take longer, but it’s going to be worth it.

Q: Why hasn’t the SEA Nexus launched yet?

A: The best way to answer this is to decribe what we have done, rather than what we haven’t. We completed the research stage (researching device capabilities, decentralised storage, earth observation methods, citizen science protocols and much mroe), built a working POC of the consensus mechanisms required to validate incoming environmental data, and laid out the development plan for the next stage of our project. That’s where the Nexus is at right now. We’ll describe the next stages, how we intend to achieve them, and when we’ll get there, in the remainder of this post.

Q: Why has it been so quiet at SEA? Where are the competitions, weekly AMAs, etc?

A: When we completed our research stage and exhausted the budget for that work package, we did the right thing for our project and cut our resource usage to the absolute minimum whilst we sourced the funding to progress. The SEA team was reduced back to its core members, those who believe in the project enough to keep working on it pro bono. Those of us who remain have been putting our time into SEA for the last year, and we’re making progress. However, it makes a lot more sense for us to spend the hours we can give to the project on fundraising, development, and planning, rather than marketing and community management. When we hit our funding goals (see below) and start to expand the team again, we can start to widen our focus, and those fun days will return.

Perhaps the most important question, and the one most of you are no doubt keen to see answered: what does the future hold for SEA?

First, the funding plan. When crypto funding dried up in 2022, plenty of non-crypto projects kept building, fundraising and progressing. How come? Because projects with real world utility, with products not based in or reliant upon decentralised finance, creating value outside of crypto — those projects have access to other funding streams. SEA fits into that category. Our product — environmental data — will supply one of the fastest growing industries on the planet. Our potential revenue is an attractive prospect for investors and grant-makers. This opens up funding pathways to us which other projects would not be able to access.

We’re obviously not at liberty to lay out here our precise funding plans — the who, what and when of how we’ll be moving forward financially — but we can reveal some broad strokes.

First up, we’re working with a UK governmental grant funding body to secure the resources we need to complete the development of our MVP. Government funding process move slowly, so patience is required. If we’re successful in our tender, which we’re confident we will be, we will have the funds in place by Spring 2024. This is a grant, not a loan or investment for equity or tokens, which is great news for SEA BSC holders, and the future holders of VSEA. We feel strongly that the environmental benefit our project offers, not to mention the huge potential benefit to the UK economy, means that the UK government has a responsibility to support our development.

Next, we’re in talks with a number of investors, crypto and non-crypto, who are ready to invest given a successful grant result. When that positive grant result comes in, it conveys a clear message — the UK government believes in the potential of our project enough to back it financially. If they believe in it, our potential investors will too. We have investors in the frame ready for that moment, to supply the rest of the resources we need, to take the project forward once the Nexus is ready to go.

To be clear — the grant funding we’re waiting on will pay for the the remaining development work on our apps and data ecosystem. Once we get the grant in place, we start the final stages of development.

Split into three development sprints, and taking place from May 2024 — June 2025, this will be a period of intense activity and progress, which will take place openly — we can’t wait to keep you updated on our progress as we build the MVP. By August 2024 we’ll be able to demonstrate a large-scale prototype of the full Nexus system for you; by November 2024, you’ll be able to sign up for alpha testing of our apps. The first mainnet release of the Nexus will launch in June 2025, and that’s when we’ll launch VSEA (earlier release phases will use testnet).

While we wait for the result of our funding bid, we have work to do. We’re getting the right expanded team together, ready to start work on the final dev sprints. We’re tightening up the commitments from investors to step in when the time is right. We’re refining the specs for the Nexus, streamlining the project plan, and adding to the research data we’ve built up. New devices emerge every month, and we need to keep on top of their capabilities.

As we’re sure everyone is aware, there’s also a possibility that things in the blockchain and crypto industries could be looking up over the next 12 months. Whilst we’re certainly not relying on it, the timing would be great! Q4 2024 / Q1 2025 is looking like it might be a pretty great moment to announce a blockchain-related MVP.

We’ll be posting updates about our pre-sprint progress over the coming months. In the meantime we appreciate, as always, the ongoing support of our brilliant community — it’s been a winding road, and there’s some way yet to go, but SEA’s team is more committed than ever to reaching our goal.

Questions, comments? Reach out to us at hello@sea.earth, or join our Telegram.

Hey there SEA crew!

It’s been a minute since we posted news — it’s heads-down at SEA HQ right now, we’re deep into the heavy lifting stage of building our apps and API. It’s exciting stuff, but sometimes you realise you haven’t looked up for a few… months! So, here’s a quick update on where we’re at.

In terms of climate news, there were ups and downs to 2022 (and 2023 so far). On the upside: UNEP reported in 2022 that the ozone layer will fully recover in the next 40 years thanks to the effects of the Montreal Protocol and Kigali amendment, France’s ban on single use plastics has now come into effect, and a team led by La Plata National University in Argentina has successfully deployed solar-powered anti-pollution robots into Argentinian rivers and lagoons.

There’s a downside to the news too, though. Recent extreme heat events, storms and disasters are showing that the impacts of the climate crisis could be much more severe, and occur much sooner, than previously thought. It’s looking like many societies — stable societies, with complex infrastructure — could be devastated by these dramatic events before emissions reductions have chance to take effect. Alongside that, many scientists are now pointing to the huge current rate of biodiversity loss as the start of a new mass extinction event. Research — mainstream research, not a couple of sideline papers, we’re talking about a large consensus here — is showing that if we don’t reverse the losses we’re seeing, total ecosystem collapse is inevitable.

In our view, the situation makes an even more urgent case for decentralised environmental research. We need all eyes on the environment, all around the globe, at all times. We need hyper-local data from every possible location, so that we can build a complete and evolving image of what’s happening to our planet.

So, what’s been happening at SEA Foundation? Well, a lot!

First of all, we’ve been expanding our nonprofit networks locally, hooking up with funding bodies, environmental groups, governmental departments and individual researchers and data scientists here in Scotland. We’re now members of The Data Lab, and we’re expanding our team to bring in local expertise in earth observation and data architecture.

We’ve been widening the net in terms of what data will be available for analysis by our systems — as well as data gathered by our apps and API, we’re partnering with some of the biggest players in environmental AI, earth observation and weather data APIs. The reasoning behind these partnerships is simple — there’s no point in us gathering data which is already covered by satellites, weather stations and existing apps with well-trained AIs. Why reinvent the wheel? We’d rather focus our efforts on filling the data gaps, and combining our data with that of our partners, to build a unified global resource.

What does this mean in practice, for the Nexus? Well, imagine that people around the planet are using our apps and API to measure sea ice — the shape, mass and distribution of the ice, and how it forms and melts over the year. They can also measure sea levels, localised wind speed, and other relevant data, all using the Nexus apps and API. Now, thanks to these partnerships, we can combine the data they supply with satellite and weather station data to track changes in air and water temperature, snow and rainfall, and more. When we go looking for correlation, deviation, or other interesting data patterns, we can factor these important data classes into our equations.

Each one of these new partnerships is a detailed and exciting story in itself — we’ll save the specifics for individual reveals as we move forward!

In tech terms, a number of big developments have emerged as we’ve been building. One of the most exciting is our “fast track” data pathway. We’ll be posting a dedicated paper on this soon, but for now here’s the idea. Why do people contribute data to the Nexus? Well, for two reasons: they get reward tokens, and they want to make a difference. Now, our fast-track data pathway gives you a third reason to get involved.

Imagine that you’re a park ranger in Botswana, monitoring the elephant population. You’re good at your job, but with the right tools, you could be even better. Imagine if you had a smartphone app which could not only tell you “yep, that’s an elephant”, but also which elephant, whether it’s male or female, healthy or underweight, where that specific animal has travelled over the last month, even if she’s pregnant. Our fast-track data pathway does exactly that — it gives immediate AI feedback on what it sees.

Think about that for a second — people will use the Nexus app for their own purposes, to find out what species that caterpillar is, or why that tree has black spots on its leaves. And the whole time, we’re feeding that data into the Nexus. The more reasons we can give people to point their phone at a tree, an animal, a coastal feature, a forest edge or a patch of lichen, the more hyper-local environmental data we get into the Nexus, and the richer our data-image becomes.

Right — back to work! We’ll be updating more regularly as we move towards the Nexus launch, and we have some big stuff to announce on the way, so stay tuned! The dates on our roadmap are being kept current and up to date, so keep your eye on that schedule.

Don’t forget to join us on Telegram, Twitter and Discord.

Well folks, there it is — another quick spin round the sun, another cycle of seasons and a whole lot of change. 2022 was a big year for environmentalism, not just because of the rising stakes and accelerating urgency of the climate crisis, but also because these last twelve months have held some of the most audacious acts from both sides of the table. Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, Letzte Generation and many other individuals and groups have stepped up, risking personal safety and liberty to highlight the urgency of the crisis in a legal and media environment biased heavily against them; meanwhile new coal mining was approved by the UK government, Greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise in China, India and Russia, the point of no return for glaciers around the world passed us by, and a key UN report revealed that our planet is approaching irreversible climate breakdown.

In the world of blockchain, things have been equally tempestuous. Huge leaps forward in tech have been accompanied by financial chaos — Three Arrows Capital got wrecked, FTX got buried, and Tether untethered, just to mention a few of the upsets of 2022. It’s not all doom and gloom though — for organisations like SEA, this stormy environment has helped us focus on the things that matter. Of course, we all need a healthy, stable economy; but there’s a lot to be said for making your project resistant to turbulence, and making sure that you can build and move forward against any financial backdrop, nomatter how unstable.

This year has been formative for us. It’s been a year of planning and preparation; of slowly, carefully assembling the pieces required to get our project ready for launch. We’ve built our advisory board, assembled a funding network ready to support our new token, designed and built the tech required to transition holders onto VSEA, developed the core tech behind the Nexus, and much more. We’ve built a solid base, a platform from which we can launch in 2023. Let’s take a flying tour of the highlights of SEA 2022!

We launched into the year with a barrage of SEAstreams, bringing some of the most influential people in ocean conservation to your screens. We talked about plastic with Kendra Nelson, sharks with Brendon Sing from Shark Guardian, ocean farming with Roushanna Gray, bycatch with Simon Hilbourne, founder of Fish Free February, recycling with Siân Williams from Gili Eco Trust, sustainable scuba diving with Michelle Attard from Coconut Odyssey, citizen science with CoralWatch and a lot more. Check our Medium for the full library of articles and AMAs.

In March, we kicked things off with the announcement of our new COO, Milan (who you all know pretty well by now!), and our CTO Wolfgang. This brought the SEA Foundation team to full strength, with in-house expertise ranging from blockchain theory to freediving! We also launched a brand new look for SEA this month — our new, simplified brand was designed to unify the diverse elements of our project under one simple, strong identity.

April saw the launch of the VSEA airdrop window — the process by which existing holders of SEA (BSC) will have their holdings matched with VSEA. The airdrop window is now closed, with snapshots of all wallets stored, and we’re moving swiftly towards the launch of VSEA. Also in April, we made the first of several Advisory Board announcements — Indian blockchain powerhouse Raj Kapoor joined our team.

The advisory board was bolstered further in May with the addition of Alexis Grosskopf, co-founder and CEO of OceanHub Africa. In July, we added Victor Mapunga, co-founder and CEO of FlexFinTx. Most recently, in October, we announced the addition to our advisory board of Optio Capital — a critical partnership in shaping our project from a business, tokenomics and networks perspective. Optio have already been instrumental in streamlining our business processes and developing key relationships.

In September, our CEO James presented the SEA Nexus to a cohort of Algorand developers via Blockbeam’s “Gateway to Algorand” program — the Nexus is now a core part of the syllabus, taught as a case study to all students. Also in September, our COO Milan presented SEA projects at a Web3 Innovation for Climate Change event hosted by Algorand at the University of Cape Town, during the South African Innovation Summit, and hit Crypto Fest Cape Town to spread the news about our project.

In October we announced the SEA NFT & Governance program. It might seem at first glance like an exciting but minor side-project of the Nexus, but don’t be fooled — the NFT & Governance program will be the main instrument of environmental impact for SEA going forward. It’s through this exciting initiative that we’ll fund revolutionary projects, create new marine protected areas, support groundbreaking research and create important educational media. Also in October, we released a key update to our data licensing product — check that out here.

We rounded up the year with boots on the ground at Algorand’s annual conference Decipher 2022, a catalytic event which grew our networks and sparked some exciting new conversations around investment, awareness and collaboration.

2022 was, particularly for people in the western hemisphere, a crystalising moment for climate crisis — the year when the effects of global heating became plainly, painfully clear through freak weather events, previously unseen temperatures and unprecedented natural disasters. But whilst we can’t overlook the massive acceleration of the climate crisis in 2022, it’s important to acknowledge the beacons of hope. Renewable energy foged ahead in 2022, with solar power increasing by 50% in the EU. COP27 was largely a washout, but it did make initial ground on provisions for damage payments to countries adversely affected by climate change. And 2022 will almost certainly be remembered as the year when young people stepped up to protect our planet — more and more people are raising their voices and taking to the streets to champion radical change, and whilst the most entrenched sections of privilegded western society might lament the extreme tactics in use, nobody can deny the urgency of the problem.

Our wishes for next year? Well, we’re going to launch the SEA Nexus, our NFT & Governance Program, and our VSEA token. In 2023 we’ll create new marine protected areas, and bolster existing ones. We’ll launch literally hundreds of micro-projects, enabling communities to monitor, protect and campaign for their local environments. We’ll enable the worldwide tech community to access a global network of highly localised environmental data, enriching their existing applications and allowing for the creation of revolutionary new monitoring and predictive systems.

We want to thank everyone involved in our project, everyone with a vested interest who has stuck with us through the ups and downs of the last twelve months — this community is our most valuable asset, and our biggest inspiration. We know the last year has been difficult, both in environmental and financial terms, and we recognise the commitment of those of you who have continued to support our project.

Our biggest wish for 2023 is simple: let’s make it the year that we turn the climate crisis around. Let’s make 2023 the year when we stop oil, stop coal, stop fracking, and stop plastic. The year when we — all of us, from governments to consumers, corporations to collectives — recognise what’s at stake, see what we’ve already lost, and draw the line in the sand. If we continue as we are, all is lost; but radical change NOW will mean humanity has a future on Earth. Let’s make it happen in 2023!

Based out of Australia but operating globally, Optio has a deep experience across the blockchain market — they support innovative founders and projects across a wide range of industries, including ‘real-world’ use cases coming to blockchain, DeFi, core infrastructure and beyond.

The firm evolved from the team at Meld Ventures, a name which will certainly be familiar to anyone interested in the Algorand ecosystem. Meld have supported some of the biggest projects in the space including PACT, Folks Finance, Tinyman, Algomint, Planetwatch… the list is long.

Optio Capital takes an active role with projects, supporting them in a wide range of areas including strategies on technology, capital raising, product, tokenomics and introductions into an array of partner networks.

“We’re thrilled to be working with Optio, the team has had a transformative influence on our project over the last six months, including helping us clearly define the NFT & Governance Program, and I can’t wait to see what we can achieve together.” (CEO of the SEA Foundation, James Birchall)

Going forward the SEA Foundation will continue to work closely with Optio Capital to refine our strategies and to grow our networks within the Algorand ecosystem and the wider blockchain space. As we edge closer to bringing the Nexus online, and launching the VSEA token, Optio’s guidance will be invaluable to securing the long term success of our project as a whole.

“James and the SEA team are driving the future narrative of climate change by the use of environmental data. We see this as a significant positive step forward and another great use case in the ecosystem.” (CEO of Optio Capital, AJ Milne)

Meet the Optio team at www.optio.capital, and keep your eyes on our Discord, Twitter and Telegram channels for more news as this exciting partnership develops!

The SEA Nexus is the biggest decentralised science project in history. We’re building a suite of apps, AIs and APIs which, when combined, form a unified global network for environmental monitoring. The Nexus will allow us to identify, measure and understand what’s happening to our planet, to build more reactive climate models, and to recognise emerging crises. Alongside our environmental impact, we pursue a lucrative business model supplying accurate, localised data to the environmental monitoring market — a market worth $43bn. For more information on the Nexus and the SEA project as a whole, see https://sea.earth

Following on from our recent update on the SEA NFT & Governance Program, this week I want to talk a bit about our core product — data licensing. Sounds a bit… dry? Sure, talking about data for data’s sake can be somewhat dull; but once you start thinking about the real-world impact of environmental data, things start to get interesting.

But wait, let’s back up a bit — I just said that our “core product” is data licensing. If you’ve read through our learning library and figured out what the SEA project as a whole aims to achieve, this might be confusing. Surely our “core product” is the Nexus? Or the NFT & Governance program, the Marine Protected Areas we will create, our proprietary P2P storage layer, or our support for front line environmental organisations? Well, it depends what you mean by “product”.

By “product”, we’re talking about a marketable output — something that we can package up and sell. Every business needs a product or a service which brings in income. This seems like a no-brainer, but a quick glance around the cryptoscape reveals that, as the song says, it ain’t necessarily so. Crypto Twitter is a veritable compost of shiny new projects and rocketing charts, but it’s relatively rare to find one which actually has a product in the marketplace, or any intention of launching one.

Luckily for us, our efforts to turn the tide on the climate emergency cultivate a very lucrative product — environmental data. The data, supplied by you, that we use to make climate predictions, to draw correlations between environmental variables, and to recognise early signs of emerging crises — that same data is critical to the successful operation of businesses in a wide range of fields. Insurance, agriculture, travel, tourism, engineering, infrastructure and forestry and just a few of the industries which rely heavily on environmental monitoring. The environmental data market will be worth over $43bn annually by 2030. By that time, the SEA Nexus will be the largest, widest, most accurate and detailed environmental data set on Earth.

Let’s get one thing straight: Nexus data will always be free for non-commercial use. This is a core precept of our project, and essential to our impact. We want every researcher, every university, every NGO, every journalist, every activist and every bedroom scientist on the planet to have access to the planet’s deepest data resource. We expect that a whole new ecosystem of revolutionary systems will be built on top of Nexus data — early warning systems, monitoring systems, visualisations, climate modelling environments, and much more — so it’s critical that anyone wishing to create something for the benefit of humanity, using Nexus data, be encouraged to do so.

Bottom line: if you’re making money (or trying to), and you’re using Nexus data, you need a license. Maybe you’re an insurance company, and you need an accurate picture of how climate variables might unfold in a specific location over a specific period of time, in order to calculate premiums. Maybe you’re an arable farmer who needs to know how the climate is changing at your location, what droughts, floods or other extreme weather events might be incoming. Or maybe you’re an engineering firm working on large infrastructure projects such as bridges, tunnels, and road systems — you need to know what’s happening in the environment around your projects. In all of these scenarios, Nexus data gives your company a competitive advantage.

Nexus data licenses are subscription products with no contractual tie-in — subscriptions run from month to month, and subscription plans can be upgraded or downgraded as desired. We offer preset packages with one or more data classes included, or modular functionality whereby users can construct their own package.

Nexus data is organised into data classes. Monsoon activity, coastal erosion, wind speed, sea level, species presence/absence, soil quality, water pollution — these are a few of the (currently more than 60) data classes we will be working with at launch. The most basic subscription product is metered access to a single data class for one month. If a user needs access to more data classes, they can either upgrade to a more inclusive package, or build their own package to suit their needs.

Example: a fruit farmer needs accurate soil quality data to plan their crop, so they sign up for a single data class. After using the data class successfully for a while, they decide that it would also be beneficial to know about water quality in their region, so they add a second data class. The results inform their work further, and they explore what other factors might give them better predictive models — wind speed planning could be very useful, as might monsoon trend data. Species presence/absence might inform them of possible threats to their crop, whilst streamwater base level monitoring could keep them informed of impending water shortages, and allow them to plan their water usage better. After factoring all these data classes in, it makes sense for the farmer to subscribe to an inclusive model — an “all you can eat” subscription.

For their monthly subscription fee, a user gets:

• Unlimited access to their selected data classes — they can view the data online or export it
• Unmetered access to the Nexus tools — visualisation, analysis, search, reporting, monitoring and alerts
• Preferential reward rates if they also supply data, effectively allowing them to reduce their subscription cost by uploading environmental observations

So that’s our core product, in a nutshell. The potential is huge — we’ve conservatively estimated that our income from data licenses will pass $18m per year by 2030. This level of income would be more than enough to support everything else we want to do — ongoing development of the Nexus, the NFT & Governance Program, the MPA creation scheme, our ongoing support of frontline environmental research and activism — but in reality the potential is much bigger. We’re aiming to be one of the biggest players in a fast-growing global industry currently worth $25bn, so the sky’s the limit.

We’ll be posting more soon about how we’ll be bringing data licenses to market, how we’ll attract customers, and other license-related topics. To keep up to date with progress on the Nexus, on the expansion of our data licensing department (we’re hiring!), and everything else going on at SEA, make sure you tune into our Twitter, Discord and Telegram channels.

We recently laid out a series of big announcements coming over the next few weeks — this is the first one in that list, check out the general update here to get up to speed on what’s coming.

Today we’re excited to reveal a brand new element of the VSEA reward ecosystem — the SEA NFT & Governance program. It’s a major advance in how we reward contributors to the Nexus, and a massive expansion of our global impact in terms of conservation, activism and research.

Here’s how it’s going to work: you contribute data to the Nexus, you get rewards in VSEA. We’ve already posted about this a lot, and the details are all available in our learning library. Now — when you get that VSEA, you can use it to buy a SEA NFT. These NFTs are unique artworks made by some of the most famous visual artists, filmmakers, musicians, sound artists and digital creators on the planet — we’re keeping the names under wraps for now, but rest assured you’re going to want these NFTs in your collection!

Now comes the (even more) interesting part — with a SEA NFT in your wallet, you get governance rights. You’ll select a “tribe” to support, and get an NFT with special attributes. Depending on which tribe you choose, you’re supporting a different element of conservation and activism:

Guardian

The focus of this tribe is the creation and governance of new reserves and Marine Protected Areas. You’ll select an area on our interactive map — that’s your slice of reserve. You contribute to governance decisions over that geographical space, with voting power according to the size of your area. If you want to help protect important ecosystems and species, this is the tribe for you.

Pathfinder

This tribe focuses on environmental research projects. You’ll get governance rights to vote on projects to fund, you’ll review early and late stage research, get community input into research projects, access to special discussion forums with project members present, research credits, conference tickets, event invitations and more. If you’re keen to see advances in how we understand our planet, this is your tribe.

Visionary

This tribe supports the creation of culture — enviro-art funding, education campaigns and more. You’ll vote on projects to fund, receive special art benefits and NFT drops, get producer credits, event invitations, tickets and more. If you’re into creativity, education and expanding minds, choose the Visionary tribe.

Warrior

The final tribe works on frontline activism and change-making. You’ll vote on projects to fund, get supporter credits, activist materials, how-to guides and tutorials, invites to special events and more. If you want to be on the front lines in the fight against climate change, this is your tribe.

Freshly minted SEA NFT packs are only available to Nexus contributors — by supporting the Nexus, you get these extra special artworks (and all the governance rights and opportunities they provide) at an extremely discounted price. Once they’re in your wallet, you’re free (of course) to trade these NFTs on the open market.

Those of you who like to take a deep dive into tokenomics might have spotted something interesting in this new use case for VSEA, and you’re totally right. VSEA is a reward token — it gets handed out to people for carrying out a certain action. The trouble with reward tokens is that most people immediately swap them for something more useful — BTC, ETH, BNB, fiat, or whatever. This constant sell pressure isn’t good for token health, and means a consistent downward value trend for most reward tokens with no other use case. Check out some of those charts — even some of the biggest reward tokens are feeling this pressure. But by providing VSEA earners with a financially interesting, environmentally beneficial, and culturally exciting way to recycle their VSEA back into the ecosystem, we sidestep this sell pressure completely. We’ve solved the reward token problem.

We’ll be rolling out the NFT & Governance program as soon as the Nexus is fully launched — there’s so much more to say about each of the four pathways of governance, the MPA creation and support mechanisms, the incredible artists waiting to make NFTs for us — we’ll be getting into greater detail about all that as we launch each element of the program.

Keep your eyes on sea.earth for more updates, and come see us on Telegram or Discord to get involved!

It’s been a while since we posted news — we’ve had our heads down for the last few months, taking the opportunity of these wintery economical times to focus on building. There have been some major updates to the Nexus, including huge developments in the VSEA reward program, and we can’t wait to share them with you!

Before we get to that, a quick general update — over the last couple of weeks we’ve been on the ground and in the room at some incredible events. Our CEO James has been presenting at Blockbeam’s “Gateway to Algorand” program, showcasing Nexus tech to the next generation of Algo-curious builders and innovators. Meanwhile, our COO Milan made the most of his invitation to the South African Innovation Summit, and presented SEA projects at a Web3 Innovation for Climate Change event hosted by Algorand, at the University of Cape Town. We hit Crypto Fest 2022 in Cape Town, too — both Milan and our Primary Science Advisor, Kristina, were on the ground presenting SEA tech to captive audiences.

The dates in our roadmap have moved back, but we’re committed to keeping a realistic and achievable vision of the Nexus rollout and VSEA launch. We know that many of you are waiting for the SEA (BSC) lockup and VSEA airdrop to start — that event is tied to the launch of the VSEA token, which in turn is tied to the close of our seed round. The process for locking up your SEA (BSC) remains the same, the staking and vesting tech is built and ready to go, and we’re looking forward to opening that process as soon as the funding is in place.

We’ve had some huge leaps forward in our fundraising recently, with some large players stepping up to support us — we’ll be talking individually about each of these really important partnerships in separate posts very soon. Every investment partnership we’re entering is about more than money — it’s about guidance, support, network reach and access to resources, too. We think you’ll be as excited as we are when you hear who’s on board!

We want to make sure we give each of these exciting new developments its own space, so we’ll be focusing on each element individually over the next few weeks. Here’s how it’s going to roll out:

October 10th: Announcing the SEA NFT & Governance Program
October 28th: Nexus Data Licensing — product & market update
November 4th (tbc): SEA x Algorand Foundation — funding update

Keep your eyes on our Twitter for the announcements above, and come see us on Telegram or Discord to get involved! As always, detailed project info, learning materials and more can be found at https://sea.earth

If you’re into the financial side of blockchain, we’re sure you’re aware of the current environment — liquidations, tokens crashing, projects collapsing and general bear market stuff. We’d be lying if we said it wasn’t affecting us — our BSC token has, of course, dipped along with the rest of the market (it remains stable, though) and elements of our roadmap have been put back to fit more realistically in with market conditions.

Despite the doom and gloom of the general market, we have some great news for you today — we’re very, very excited to welcome a new advisor to our board — Blockchain, Crypto, FinTech & E-commerce maverick Victor Mapunga!

Hailing from Zimbabwe, Victor is a seasoned entrepreneur. He co-founded FlexFinTx, the company behind the revolutionary FlexID project, a digital identity wallet which aims to unlock access to financial, insurance, healthcare & government services to over 400 Million Africans. He also co-founded Mutapa, one of Zimbabwe’s fastest growing E-Commerce & FinTech startups, serving hundreds of merchants & empowering businesses to expand their markets through a global marketplace.

Victor is deeply embedded in the Algorand ecosystem, and his guidance and shepherding of our project through these waters will be invaluable; he’s also closely linked to MIT, the institution at the root of the Algorand project. And as a key voice in Africa’s blockchain community (Victor has spoken at Blockchain Africa Conference), he’ll be helping us establish the SEA Nexus across the African continent.

“I’m beyond excited to join the SEA team to further collaborate & extend the Algorand ecosystem through platforms like Nexus. I hope my experience working within Africa for financial services complements SEA’s requirements to further strengthen their core platform & scale globally” (Victor Mapunga)

We’ll be enticing Victor onto our SEAstream at some point, we’re sure — watch this space for some huge leaps forward for SEA over the coming months, thanks to his input!

A little while back, we posted on here about the value of networks in bringing people together to tackle environmental problems, and the importance of a strong advisory resource to a project like ours. We’ve continued to work on deepening the knowledge and expertise available to us, and today we’re extremely excited to welcome Alexis Grosskopf to our advisory board.

Alexis is the founder and CEO of OceanHub Africa, the ocean-impact catalyst which connects, inspires and supports entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, businesses and other stakeholders to accelerate the development and adoption of new sustainable ocean solutions across Africa. We’ve been working with Alexis informally since we exhibited at OceanHub Africa’s annual Cape Town gathering for emerging and groundbreaking new ocean tech projects, Ocean Innovation Africa, in 2021.

As our Ocean Technology Advisor, we’re looking forward to the forward leaps Alexis will provide to SEA — his deep knowledge of environmental engineering, wide networks of ocean tech innovators and investors, and acute awareness of the issues we’re up against will be invaluable to the project. We’ll be leveraging this exciting new partnership to form collaborative relationships with like-minded ocean tech startups, expand our network of institutional data suppliers, explore new ways of collecting and distributing environmental data, and to increase exposure and support for SEA across the entire spectrum of ocean tech.

We’ll be holding a special introductory chat with Alexis on our Instagram very soon — keep your eyes on our Twitter, Telegram and Discord for announcements!

If you had to pick out one defining factor of every successful movement for change in history, what would you pick? Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter, the movement against apartheid, #metoo, the indigenous land rights movement — what would you say all of these movements did which made their words and actions stick?

Personally, without hesitation, I would say: connecting people. Drawing together a network, small at first, then growing larger and larger, spreading through communities which share the problems addressed, breaking through into mainstream consciousness, until it reaches critical mass. Sure, resources can help with this — budget for publicising, organising, and fighting legal battles can act as a catalyst. But the primary resource is people, shared experience, and connection.

That’s why, as a matter of priority, we’re focusing on growing our network. We’re right at the beginning of the process — we’ve already grown an energetic and passionate community around our project (check out our Telegram and Discord), but we recognise the need to enlarge our professional networks, to launch SEA into new circles, to gain critical support from key people in policymaking, people who can spread our message out to new communities like ripples on water.

The first step towards this goal is the formation of our advisory board. You all know Kristina, our Primary Scientific Advisor — she’s been with us for a while, and was the first official memeber of the board. But today we’re extremely proud to announce the addition of the board’s second member — blockchain architect Raj Kapoor.

Raj Kapoor is the founder of India Blockchain Alliance, the largest Indian emerging technology tech think tank. He’s a global blockchain educator, Certified Bitcoin Professional (CBP), TedX speaker, and a skilled architect of blockchain, AI, robotics, cyber security, IoT, and cloud computing projects. Raj is a regular contributor to several technology publications including Economic Times, Fortune, Moneycontrol, Mint, NDTV Profit, Daily Tribune, Business Standard and more. He was also selected this year as a top cryptocurrency and blockchain influencer by Asian Market Cap, has designed 4 blockchains, 5 centralised exchanges, 3 swaps and 3 DEX’s, and has worked on numerous sustainable and social impact blockchain projects aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

We asked Raj why he was attracted to SEA — his response:

“An ancient legend foretells how an invisible red string of fate ties us to people we are destined to meet. We loved this idea that whether we realize it or not fate connects us to people around the world we wouldn’t otherwise meet. That is how it was with SEA. The connect was instantaneous.

Add to that a passion for making a difference, and blockchain technology, I could not have asked for more for I believe that blockchain now acts as a virtual thread, removing anonymity throughout the global supply chain and connecting us all. This inspiring technology can empower more people to participate in an ethics economy.

Blockchain ensures product processes and impact on the environment can be tracked, audited and communicated. With Team SEA, I know we will create the impact we want, one block at a time…”

Raj will be advising us on multiple fields including fundraising, community growth, project awareness, market research, blockchain implementation, educational impact and more. Stay tuned for huge steps forward for SEA thanks to Raj’s guidance and networks, especially in India. Raj has already written about SEA in the Daily Tribune, and has multiple events and interviews coming up which will expose our project to huge new audiences.

And, like I said, this is just the beginning. We’re in talks with some of the most influential people in climate tech, conservation, environmental science, decentralised finance and other fields to fill our advisory board — watch this space!