ARQ Explorer - Regen Villages Updates (week 1)

[DiogoJ]

1. Introduction

Regen Village is the name given to one or more Hauses rented collectively in cities hosting Web3 conferences. It was first put in practice by Netx State and AgroforestDAO during a Brazilian Pop-up City called Ipê City. Pop-ups and blockchain conferences gather people that are Web3 native or enthusiasts and could offer a sandbox to experiment with community-issued tokens, and local adoption may be one of Ethereum biggest problems.
According to Bawens (2025), in the cosmo-local society that some people opt to live in, there are three type of players:

• The Local Initiators: locally rooted people taking local initiatives to remedy the problems they are seeing
• The Nomadic Elements, which can be described as “Nowheres” (rootless travellers that look for best options in locales based on their own agenda and arbitraging among places) and the “Everywheres” who are nomadic elements that are willing to be of service to cosmo-local productive economic alliances, seeding vari￾ous locales with the trans-local experience.

Regen Villages can be understood as living laboratories where Ethereum’s “Nowheres” and “Everywheres” converge through the action of local initiators. On one side, Web3 conferences attract the Nowheres—globally mobile digital natives who bring liquidity, technical expertise, and a spirit of experimentation. On the other, the host communities represent the Everywheres—rooted in place, culture, and ecology, with daily economies grounded in food, housing, and care. The missing link between these two worlds is the presence of local initiators: individuals or groups embedded in their communities who act as bridges, translating Ethereum’s “placeless” tools into place-based practices. By co-creating shared houses, commitment pools, swap meets, and agroecological visits, Regen Villages showcase how Nowheres and Everywheres can align around regenerative microeconomies. In doing so, they transform conferences from extractive events into platforms for local sovereignty and global solidarity, testing whether Ethereum can sustain both innovation and rootedness.

This research try to answer questions such as:

- How can Ethereum be useful for local level communities with global level interactions?

- Can conference atendees be more than rootless Nowheres and engage as Everywheres in the local socioecological web?

Web3 conferences generate a microeconomy of their own, and every attendee has to deal with costs of lodging, food and transportation. These three verticals may be delivered via extractive economies - with money going from the attendees to some random company like a hotel (individual room + breakfast) - or may be part of a regenerative economy, where the money flows within the Village before leaving and where attendees pay similar prices but get benefits such as dinners + local experiences + workshops + merch + learning + socializing + serendipity time + a common treasure for the long term.

This research stands upon the 8 principles of Regenerative Economy as described by the Capital Institute:

1. In Right Relationship
   Recognizes that humans are part of an interconnected web of life—there’s no “us” versus “it.” Harm in one part reverberates across the whole. Principles of reciprocity and mutualism, deeply rooted in both biology and many cultural traditions, are foundational.

2. Views Wealth Holistically
   Wealth isn’t only financial. It encompasses natural, social, cultural, experiential, and even spiritual capital, all resting on the foundation of natural capital and ecosystem health.

3. Innovative, Adaptive, Responsive
   Health in economic systems requires adaptability. True “fitness” is about matching the evolving environment—not about dominance. Innovation and entrepreneurial dynamism are essential, but must align with systemic health rather than short-term gain.

4. Empowered Participation
   Every component of the system must be able to both negotiate for its needs and contribute uniquely to the overall health. Inclusion alone isn’t enough—the system must facilitate active and meaningful involvement from all parties.

5. Honors Community and Place
   Economic approaches should be tailored to the unique mosaic of history, culture, geography, and environment of each community or region—a recognition that while universal principles apply, their expression must be contextually grounded.

6. Edge Effect Abundance
   Creative energy often blooms where different systems intersect—the “edges.” Like fertile marshlands at river-ocean boundaries, abundance and innovation emerge where typical systems meet and interact. This requires collaborative, cross-disciplinary engagement.

7. Robust Circulatory Flow
   Just as living organisms need efficient circulation, economies need healthy flows of materials, money, information, and even empathy. This includes circular material flows, equitable financial distribution, free exchange of trustworthy information, and emotional connectivity.

8. Dynamic Balance
   Systems must harmoniously balance tensions rather than optimize one variable at the expense of others. This might include balancing competition with collaboration, efficiency with resilience, and masculine and feminine energies—embracing both/and thinking over either/or.

2. Methodology

This will be an action-based research reporting the process of organizing the Villa, which involves 3 phases:

Phase 1: Pre-event

- Creating a chat group, hosting zoom calls and building and common doc

- Creating a multisig

- Create a slide deck for a Fundraising Campaign

- Share an invitation form ( Login - Tally )

- Exploring Revnets

- Funding the first Haus

- Onboarding people to Commitment Pools, - Educating about social currencies, Community Tokens, Onchain Resources Allocation and Public Goods

- Weaving collaboration among locals for regenerative products, services and experiences

- Create a common agenda and ticket sale on Luma

- Produce a Pre-event Strategy Report

- Checking in the Hauses, Inauguration Night Ritual

Phase 2: Event

- Organizing a common schedule hosting fairs with local products, swap meets, common pantry, dinners, dj, workshops, allocation rounds

- Sell on chain tickets as a Common Venture (via Unlock Protocol) to our scheduled activities

- Sharing online forms for feedback

Phase 3: Post-event

• Gathering and analyzing feedback

• Writing final report

• Staking any revenue in $ETH

The Villa is set to take place during Devconnect in Buenos Aires, but a similar experiment may also happen in São Paulo during ETH Latam in case we manage to coordinate. If confirmed, we will later examine each other’s similarities and differences.

KPIs:

Economic Circulation & Regeneration

• % of attendee spending retained inside the Village economy (lodging, food, experiences) before flowing outwards.

• Number and diversity of local suppliers engaged (farmers, cooks, artists, transport providers, etc.).

• Volume of transactions in swap meets and fairs (quantified in local tokens or ETH).

• Village-generated surplus (amount staked in ETH or reinvested into community treasury post-event).

Social & Community Impact

• Number of participants onboarded into the Village economy (wallets created, multisig contributors, people using the local token).

• Participation rate in shared activities (dinners, workshops, community rituals).

• Diversity index of contributors (locals vs. internationals, gender balance, backgrounds).

• Qualitative feedback on sense of belonging & serendipity (collected via post-event surveys).

On-Chain Adoption & Ethereum Utility

• Number of wallets interacting with Village smart contracts (Unlock Protocol tickets, commitment pools, token swaps).

• Average number of on-chain transactions per participant (beyond speculation: tickets, votes, swaps).

• Funds allocated via decentralized coordination mechanisms (Allo rounds, quadratic funding, etc.).

• Token velocity (how often the Village token circulates among participants).

3. Results

The research is underway with a group committed to meeting online twice per week on Tuesdays and Fridays to coordinate.

Aug 24th:

We are 3 months from Devconnect, and are now with a common multisig and a small number of 7 individual collaborators and some online organizations committed with funding the first Haus, and the group is in the midst of the process of raising these initial funds.

Lodging

At the moment we are researching good houses in the nearby region of La Rural, where the Devconnect will take place. It has been decided that the first Haus should be near the venue, hold locally made breakfast every morning and build a schedule for the week which will allow us to better estimate the costs and services needed for the week.

Food

We are in contact with local producers and will buy products of the season and experience traditional argentinian gastronomy in breakfasts and thematic dinners.

[DiogoJ]

Week 2:

I held the first call with Jango from Juicebox to explore the Revnet created by him. We discuss what parameters we would use for splits, for emission rates and duration. We also explored the calculator dashboard he created to test different scenarios and better understand the flows of funds.

Here’s the summary of the call:

Exploring RevNet vs. Juice Box @ 0:00

Jango and Diogo discussed the pros and cons of using a RevNet (bonding curves) vs. a Juice Box for their upcoming event in Buenos Aires. They explored the flexibility and configurability of RevNet, but also recognized the need to carefully plan the parameters upfront, as they can’t be easily changed later. They agreed that a Juice Box could provide more flexibility for experimentation, while a RevNet could offer advantages such as the ability to borrow and the bonding curve.

Below there’s the video recording of the call and the summary (due to link limitations replace DOT with .) :

https://fathomDOTvideo/share/js5ueagmtMKyU7QL7Rv9eFQUabYssQ1z

Event Budgeting and Financing @ 4:00

The group reviewed potential event costs, including Airbnb rentals, catering, and other activities. They discussed ways to fund these costs, such as selling tickets or NFTs that would directly fund RevNet. Diogo mentioned receiving a grant that could help support event planning. They agreed to use a multi-sig wallet to manage the funds and potentially stake any profits in ETH for next year’s event.

Organizing the Event Experience @ 7:26

Diogo and Jango discussed the event’s logistics, including finding a suitable rental home with amenities like a rooftop terrace. They reviewed a potential property and considered having multiple homes to accommodate the expected interest. The group also brainstormed ideas for the event’s programming, such as local food and wine tastings, dinners, and a marketplace for attendees to buy, sell, or trade goods.

Experimenting with the RevNet Calculator @ 15:06

Diogo and Jango spent time exploring the RevNet calculator, testing different scenarios and configurations to understand how the token economics and distribution would work. They experimented with variables such as initial investment, event ticket sales, and token issuance fees. The goal was to find a configuration that would effectively fund the event while also providing value and incentives for attendees.

Next Steps and Conclusion @ 36:32

At the end of the meeting, Jango and Diogo agreed that a Juice Box approach might be more appropriate for the initial event, as it would allow for more flexibility to experiment and iterate. They discussed the importance of carefully planning RevNet parameters if they choose to use this model, as the rules are permanently set once launched. The group decided to continue exploring the RevNet calculator and meet again to further refine their plans for the Buenos Aires event.

We have more calls scheduled for monday with Will Ruddick to explore the use of Sarafu Pools for pre-event commitment pooling

Sarafu Pools

Today I had a call with Will Ruddick and Coi. I had previously shared the slide deck presenting Regen VIllage Pop-ups, and It was a great opportunity to explore how Commitment Pools could be used by them. He showed his plans to use the pools during ETH Safari Festival next week, which will envolve creating a token that will be accepted by local vendors of food, handcraft and services. Attendees will be able to earn or buy the tokens but won’t be able to sell it until the end of the festival, in order to protect the collateral. Will said that he expects to end the festival with some profit, which would be a great result for that microeconomy experiment.

It came to my mind to ask “what would you do with the profits” that would benefitiate all the festival actors (attendees, vendors, local community, etc). Instead of asking specifically that, I shared the reason why I feel like it could synergize with Revnets, in a way that the profits could generate an appreciation in the token value, so that all token holders benefit. He liked the idea. Maybe at the Regen Village we can hopefully have some profit and give Revnet a try.

Here I share the summary of the call and the video recording. Due to the limit of links in this forum replace the DOT with “.” to open the link:

**Sarafu Pools in Pop-ups Call - September 01

Recording:** https://fathomDOTvideo/share/gXx9xGrtDWJETyrb-Hzh_1k2vXYBWsBB

Summary:

Celo lending program overview @ 0:03

Will explains the Celo lending program, where users can take out loans from a pool and repay them either by putting money back in or by having someone else in the network swap to remove their debt. The goal is to create a circular economy with value being locked in the pools but circulating through the network.

Approving loan vouchers @ 9:12

Coi asks about the process for approving the loan vouchers, and Will explains that they push this responsibility to community groups like Chamas, who decide which members can take out loans and are also the guarantors if the loans fail.

Using gardens for funding proposals @ 11:01

Coi proposes using the gardens platform to allow projects to submit funding proposals, with a focus on commitments to regional regeneration as a key criteria.

ethSafari festival token @ 23:40

Will discusses the eSafari festival token, which attendees can use to purchase goods and services at the event. The token has a one-way pool where people can buy the tokens but not sell them back, and there are ways to earn additional tokens through challenges and activities.

Connecting with Brazilian groups @ 46:18

The group discusses connecting with Brazilian groups like Mutirao and Cambiatos who work with local currencies, and the potential for cross-pollination and collaboration, including Will’s plans to visit Brazil.

Recap and next steps @ 54:16

The group summarizes the key next steps, including creating pools for the DevConnect and Redemption Hill events, and posting about them on the Celo forum. They also discuss the potential to leverage the Celo lending program to fund Celo Public Goods initiatives.

[DiogoJ]

In Week 3, we launched Office Hours as a way to better onboard participants into the Regen Village experiment. These sessions introduced the core concepts of Pop-up Microeconomies, including the reserved house, the role of community currency and treasury, the Sarafu Pool, and examples like the ETH Safari Pool. We also explored the creation of vouchers and shared the broader goals of the experiment and research.

Two participants from the Unlock Protocol team joined, which opened a fruitful discussion about using Unlock for ticketing and membership—notably for the proposed “Regen Pass” (a tier for room renters that bundles lodging, meals, and event access). However, they noted limitations of Unlock in peer-to-peer exchange cases (e.g., trading books for merch or food for services), where the Sarafu Pool remains more suitable. The idea of using Revnets was also raised as a way to channel any surplus revenue into future event pools, strengthening continuity between conferences.

The main takeaway from this session is that no single protocol fits all needs. Instead, we should combine different tools for specific purposes and share the learnings openly during the week, inviting feedback and collective prototyping. The next Office Hours is scheduled for Friday at 2pm UTC.

The summary with the recording can be found in this document:

Regen Village Onboarding - September 08

[DiogoJ]

The 4th week of our exploration saw some important news. Some of the organizations collaborating for the Regen VIllage were moving slow into renting the houses on Airbnb. AgroforestDAO did rent one, but Netx State was supposed to rent another one and after taking more than one 2 weeks to decide it they finally announced that they were not going to collaborate in the organization of the Buenos Aires Village due to too much demand to co-organize Edge City Patagonia.

So for a while AgroforestDAO was the only organization with skin in the game for this initiative. Only to friday Ceci Sakura from Unlock Protocol announced that would also rent a house and that wanted to be part of the Regen Village experiment. She is a very organized and web3 savvy regen from Bolivia and a great partner for the organization of the village.

I also had a call with Jango from Juicebox that confirmed that he would support us by offering a Revnet bootcamp (two meetups to present and experiment together the Revnet protocol). Little by little our Village gathers valuable uses for its token during the week, such as accessing:

• Locally sourced Breakfast ingredients

• Wine and cheese night

• Products from the Community Bazaar

• Revnet Bootcamp

• Ecological trail in Buenos Aires ending at a community garden and restaurant

This monday we had our office-hours call with the presence of Ceci, Afo, Diogo and Daniel, a Buenos Aires citizen offering his local connections and social network for the Village. This call was not recorded, but together we made some important decisions:

• To use Unlock for sale of Memberships: We started by creating an Early Bird edition of 10 NFTs to be sold for sponsors at the cost of 100 USDC on Celo. The goal is to raise 1000 USDC that will be the base of our common treasure and used to buy the local food and back our community currency with which we will buy the second hand goods that conference attendees will sell to our Bazaar.

• We created our Multisig with Ceci, Diogo, Afo, Jango and Max (web3 native argentinian from Fork Forest who is sourcing our food)

• Afo suggested to fundraise with VRBS to contact local artists and make a deal for the art going to our NFTs. We do have many NFTs to be created, specially for event tickets, so we felt that there’s room for such initiative. However, there is urgency to create the NFTs for the sublocation of Airbnb rooms and for the Early Birds fundraise. We agreed on finding a solution for this by the friday call.

• Ceci created a Dework page to coordinate the tasks

• To create a landing page to host all the information regarding the Regen Village

So far, with very little announcements we have a list of 30+ people that answered our form and are interested in participating in the Regen Village, and we are aware that we need to provide them with info about our rooms and activities as soon as possible.

[DiogoJ]

Week 5 of the Regen Village Exploration

During the last week, Ceci, Max and Diogo worked on the program of activities to be held either in the Village or in the Regen Hub. We have defined details of the breakfast ingredients and price, activities, like the theme, date and time, venue and number of participants.

We have created NFTs representing 3 rooms for rent in the Regen Village. The prices include the price of the room + the price of breakfast for 8 days ($80).

We have prepared a landing page showing the info about the activities, the experiment and the rooms NFT links… And we have just sold our first Room NFT!

We are also preparing an NFT edition with the goal of raising 1-2k for a Community Treasure that will be used to buy the goods and services offered by the Villagers and the ingredients for the events. The destiny of any residual funds will be discussed with the community during the Revnet Bootcamp.

[DiogoJ]

In the 6th week of the Exploration Coi and I had a call with Will Ruddick who updated us on how ETH Safari used a community token on Sarafu Pools with trades mediated by NFC technology. In their context there were local vendors and workshop organizers that were paid using the local token via NFC. It is a very good idea that has been used quite a lot in festivals, with vendors, but in the case of Regen Villages there are no vendors in the event, only one Community Bazaar that buys products from vendors and sells them in the Bazaar. So in our case we don’t have to onboard vendors, but we need to onboard (web3 native) community members, by making them use the community token. There will be a few ways by which people can acquire the community token:

• Being an Early Bird Supporter

• Selling goods or services to the Bazaar

• Buying tokens with a 20% fee that goes to the community treasure

• Buying the Regen Pass with tickets to our events

• Getting airdrops as prizes for participation in our activitiea

I had another call with Jango from Juicebox where he confirmed that will be able to host a bootcamp on Revnets (2 days, 3hs/day). We also have a new Local Initiator showing up, which is Lejito from the @bodegabadano, that produces wine and cannabis and offered a venue for us to host events/parties.

We shared our activities with the Regen Hub organizers (Cori, Guil and Luisa from Regens Unite) and are ready to coordinate further.

We have created a home page and started a Fundraising Campaing to build a treasure that will be used to back the currency used by the Bazaar, and have sold 4 out of 15 NFTs priced in 100usd each. The goal is to raise 1.5k to kickstart the microeconomy (we already raised enough to cover food and beverage, yay!). Anyone can visit the mint link and be recognized as a Supporter, getting free access to our events and an airdrop of tokens to be used in the Bazaar.

We are about to get the last cookie in the Research Jar, are ready to provide a conclusion next week and look forward to collaborate in making sense of the explorations. My plan is to keep updating this thread weekly until after Devconnect.

Cheers,
DJ

[DiogoJ]

Regen Villages Exploration Week 7

This week I had the cost of the Regen Haus BAs charged on my credit card ($1k). We have sold one room so far at $300 usd (on Base chain), and the funds are in our multisig and about to be transfered to my personal account. I have thus swapped the equivalent to $700 of the ETH of the Research to USDC and am about to offramp it to pay the Airbnb costs (R$ 5.143,61). Below one can see the total cost in Brazillian Reais (1 dollar = ~ 5.3 Reais)

[DiogoJ]

Summary of the first 8 weeks:

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The project frames Regen Villages as living laboratories where global Web3 participants (the “Nowheres” and “Everywheres”) converge with rooted communities (Local Initiators) to test how Ethereum tools can bolster place-based regenerative microeconomies. Early investigations focus on how conference “attendance costs” — lodging, food, transport — might be redirected from extractive flows toward local value-circulation inside the Village.

The methodology is positioned as action-based research, divided into three phases: Pre-event (fundraising, token design, house scouting, commitment pools), Event (housing, markets, dinners, tokens, workshops), and Post-event (feedback, report, staking revenues). Key KPIs were defined across three dimensions: economic circulation (e.g., % spending retained locally), social impact (wallet onboarding, participation in shared events), and on-chain adoption (e.g., wallet interactions, transaction counts).

From the weekly updates:

• Week 1: You were 3 months out from Devconnect, had a multisig set up, seven collaborators engaged, and initial house research underway near La Rural (Buenos Aires).

• Week 2: A call with Jango (Juicebox) yielded exploration of Revnet vs Juicebox frameworks; token issuance, bonding curves, and event budgeting were discussed and the commitment to lead a workshop was made by Jango. A call with Will Ruddick introduced Sarafu-style commitment pools for the Village.

• Week 3: You launched Office Hours to onboard participants, introduced the “Regen Pass” membership concept via Unlock Protocol, and outlined paths for token issuance, marketplace for goods and services . Recognised that no single protocol fits all use-cases; emphasised a combinatory tool-stack.

• Week 4: Organizational shifts: one core partner withdrew, another stepped in to co-rent a house. The list of 30+ interested participants emerged; NFTs for three rooms+breakfast were created and sales achieved. A Community Treasure fund is being raised via Supporter’s NFTs (~US$100 each) to seed the Village’s economy ($400 usd so far).

• Week 5 & 6: Further development of the program (breakfast sourcing, activity planning), and a call with Will Ruddick on vendor/token models galvanized plans for the Bazaar and token acquisition mechanisms (EarlyBird supporters, token purchase with fee, goods/services contributions). The model increasingly defines how the Village token will move and lock.

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In short: you’re building a replicable, place-based Web3 experiment (“Regen Village”) that uses token tools, community governance, and local economic activity to test whether Ethereum can serve rooted societies, not just nomadic tech elites. The learning path is currently active—fundraising, token model design, partnerships, onboarding—and you’re readying for the first full deployment at Devconnect.

[DiogoJ]

Regen Village Update

We are one week away from Devconnect. Right now I’m in São Paulo on ETH Latam, hosting an Unconference talk, hosted together by GPBR, AgroforestDAO and ReRe. We will have a circle talking about network nations, urban agroforestry and community building IRL and URL.

As for Regen VIllage at Devconnect we managed to sell all rooms in the house + breakfast at a fair price ($10 usd per breakfast) for Everywheres from England, Holland and USA, thus paying costs of lodging for the Local Initiators (Max and Penelope from countryside Argentina and Diogo from Brazil).
Thanks to these and other Locals we had access to a list of organic products and are ordering boxes of fruits and other ingredients + goods to offer in our house and Community Bazaar. We were also offered Olive oil from Antonio who is bringing it from Italy!

We keep udating our Sarafu Pool with more products. Even though it is a tiny microeconomy of second hand goods and local products we aspire to take it to other conferences in the future and have this Bazaar to be an embryo of a cosmolocal venture, with real assets and treasure.

I decided to pause the dinners and parties to be held in the Airbnb house because we want to arrive there first to check the temperature for parties with the owner and neighbours. We also had to change the initial plans of making a paid bootcamp on Revnets in the house and instead offered it as an open 1h workshop in the Regen Hub.

I will also be presenting the Regen VIllage - and receiving offers for the Bazaar - in the Regen Hub.

Excited to arrive in Buenos Aires!

[DiogoJ]

Regen Village Research Report
Gm colleagues. It took me some time, but here is the article about the commoning experiment at Devconnect. I’m pasting the abstract in this reply and you can find the entire article here.

ABSTRACT
This article presents Regen Villages, a research exploration funded by Allo.capital that investigates pop-up microeconomies as a mechanism for cosmo-local commoning during global conferences. The experiment took place during Devconnect Buenos Aires (November 16–23, 2025) and explored how temporary, community-owned infrastructures—such as shared treasuries, commitment pools, and cultural coordination—can support trust-building between local and global actors. Using a combination of onchain data analysis and qualitative feedback analyzed through Reflexive Thematic Analysis, the study examines both material exchanges and affective outcomes such as emotional safety, belonging, and learning. Findings suggest that repeated, embodied experiences of commoning can generate cultural capital, facilitate non-extractive global–local collaboration, and offer an alternative to transactional conference dynamics. Regen Villages are proposed as a repeatable design pattern for cultivating cosmo-local communities of practice across geographies.