HApp Idea for Regenerative Circular Bio-Economies (Pilot)

kamal · March 31, 2020, 11:31pm

Hi All,

Ask: Need help with thinking around how to leverage Holochain and currency design for this specific pilot around a decentralized anaerobic digester (A.D.) near Seattle.

See our interactive map of economic and resource flows we want to monitor for this pilot.

Opportunity Impact BioEnergy has multiple digesters in the Seattle area, with literal tons of liquid bio-fertilizer (compost water), so this pilot would be replicated. The other important part of this is this digester has a community ownership structure in process, so communities can build wealth that is circular and regenerative.

The problem this is solving is implementing an alternative to centralized processing or landfilling, which extracts tons of valuable resources from communities.

Decentralized anaerobic digesters help regenerate resources on location, and can be used for power, heat, Co2 for greenhouses, as well as liquid and solid bio-fertilizer for food production. (See interactive map as well as video below)

Requirements:

Currency that’s backed by food waste “lasts”, perhaps other flows.
An app to allow purchase & measure flows of the biogas and liquid biofertilizer
Purchase in dollars rather than Holo
There are transport costs ultra-low carbon transport costs and benefits that need to be applied as well

Below are some of our models, as well as some of the physical infrastructure that’s up and running.

We will do a zoom video call Tuesday, April 7th, at 11am (PST) to walk through this and get your feedback https://zoom.us/j/391900095

Thanks,
@kamal www.kamalpatel.co
@srirup from Impact BioEnergy http://impactbioenergy.com/

bear · April 1, 2020, 6:33pm

@mikeg, check this out!

pauldaoust · April 1, 2020, 6:53pm

It is so cool that this project exists! What a fantastic idea on all levels. I never thought of compostables collection as extractive (because residents just wanna get rid of it), but it totally is.

kamal · April 1, 2020, 7:08pm

Hi @pauldaoust good to see you again. Thanks for the comment. It’s a yes and really, but yeah, in this case it shows how it’s extracting wealth and resources from a community.

Btw Paul, @guillemcordoba just told me about the REA work that’s being done and mentioned this work might overlap. I just started digging in, and saw you were involved in that work and wondering if you had any thoughts around how we may integrate? Thanks!

pauldaoust · April 1, 2020, 8:36pm

@pospi is lead dev, @lynnfoster and @bhaugen are holding the design vision along with Pospi. Holo-REA is meant to be a construction kit for building regenerative economic networks on Holochain. It’s based on ValueFlows, a grammar for regenerative economic networks (e.g., circular economies, community currencies, open value networks), which itself is based on REA accounting. (I’ll let Bob and Lynn explain more about that.). So where I’d see you integrating with Holo-REA is that you could build the economic engine on top of Holo-REA. This would be handy because (a) it’s already being built and made ready for others to use, so it’d save you some time, and (b) it seems to be emerging as the standard economic model for Holochain apps, so integration among different Holo-REA-based spaces would be more straightforward.

mikeg · April 1, 2020, 9:34pm

Nice. I was going to add Kamal’s zoom call to my calendar next week, except we go off daylight savings this coming weekend so that would be 4 not 5am our time… that is pushing it Will definitely follow. We are not using REA at this time but we are setting up energy → value flows.

kamal · April 2, 2020, 6:52pm

Thanks @pauldaoust! Also thanks @mikeg - We’ll record the zoom call, would love to see how we could collaborate with RedGrid. I’m starting to look more deeply at value flows and REA so hopefully our systems can integrate. We’re definitely interested in collaboration within the Holo Ecosystem.

Hi @lynnfoster we actually met in one of our break-out groups on the Commons Engine class. You introduced me to REA at that time and I mentioned I was working on software for decentralized bio-digesters. We’re finally at a place where we started mapping flows. Since our conversation, I did my best to keep things to agents and resources. I’m still not super clear on how REA works, but did my best at mapping what I could.

I wonder if any of the work we’re doing for our pilot could overlap from the work you, @pospi, and @bhaugen are doing?

See some of our flows on our interactive geographic map (need most up to date browsers).

The interactive model is a place where we can really experiment to understand how this system works and expands, hopefully with a REA or Value’s flow model that integrates with other efforts.

Thanks!
Kamal and @srirup

lynnfoster · April 2, 2020, 7:41pm

@kamal hey yes, I remember well now, I think the very first break-out session. (Memory is not my strong point, especially names!)

And thanks @pauldaoust for getting us into the mix, especially during your “sabbatical”!

Kamal, I’d be happy to help see how Holo-REA might fit with what you want to do from a data model perspective. (@pospi is the one deep into the code.) Or if meshing with RedGrid is better, that’s fine also of course. I can either attend your zoom session on the 7th or watch later, as a starting point.

By the way, will your software be open source?

kamal · April 3, 2020, 6:35pm

Hi @lynnfoster, yes it was the first session!

And we haven’t decided on open source yet, we’re still early in our design. I’m unfamiliar about some of the models on Holochain, I guess I assumed you could fork other projects. I’m still looking to understand the models for RedGrid, Holo-REA, JustOneOrganics and others. Is Holo-REA open source?

I have been studying cooperative economics for quite a while and it’s an important strategy for me. You can see how we’re thinking about data at the bottom of our map (scroll left default panel to bottom).

Happy to discuss more on the call on the 7th if you can make it. Will also post the recording here as well if you can’t join.

Thanks for connecting!

lynnfoster · April 3, 2020, 7:07pm

Hi @kamal , yes Holo-REA is open source. You could fork it; or probably you could just use it and build “on top” or “beside” it. It’s meant as a “framework”, although we don’t really know how that plays out in practice yet. Any other project that is open source could also be forked. Different licenses have slightly different rules.

To be honest, I asked because I’m happy to help people with Holo-REA if what they are building will be in the commons (open source) - to me this seems critical at this juncture in history, time is short. Let’s help get bio-digesters everywhere! If not, I would spend my time elsewhere.

kamal · April 3, 2020, 7:51pm

Got it, thanks @lynnfoster - Yes, that all make a lot of sense. I do see the need for open source and commons thinking with circular economy (including bio-digesters) so that it can scale more quickly. We also don’t have any holo developers in our group, and we’re eager to get a prototype up and running, whatever we can do to leverage what’s already built is ideal.

That being said, do you think it would make sense for our project to be a use case for Holo-REA? We have 3 main flows (food waste or “lasts”, liquid bio-fertilizer, & biogas) that we’re looking to understand how we can leverage Holochain. We do have a Nano Port on order with plans on installing at this facility below.

Thanks,
Kamal

pospi · April 5, 2020, 9:30am

@kamal this mapping work you have done is incredible! Super excited to have connected with you. These are exactly the kinds of case studies the ValueFlows protocol is meant to support. Have you seen Lynn’s story about pie by any chance? I think it’s probably the most accessible and informative REA overview we have.

Otherwise, good to be in touch! Let us know how we can help. But yes- we’re building a lot of general purpose modules useful in circular economy, natural capital and supply chain accounting contexts; and it’s all open source. The Reflow project is also worth checking out as they are building out a parallel circular economy coordination platform on ActivityPub.

srirup · April 5, 2020, 5:54pm

Thanks @pauldaoust, our team has been quietly working on these projects premised on a value-add manufacturing business model, and not an extractive/disposal business model. Decentralized community digesters help folks avoid externalities of centralized processing, while enabling hyperlocal and circular economies. The ultimate win!

kamal · April 5, 2020, 7:40pm

Thanks @pospi! Super excited to connect to you as well, really glad to hear you’re working along permaculture, that’s my background as well! And yes, I have read the story about pie. I’m still wrapping my head around some of it, but I have been designing with agents and resources in mind and looking forward to learning how we could integrate with Holo-REA.

And thanks for sending ReFlow! We’ve been doing co-design sessions with the community in Seattle and Reflow will be super helpful as we think about flows. https://www.circularcitiesseattle.com/

And thanks for the modules information, I’ll look at it more in detail. We’re not developers so we’re hoping to tap into the community to help build some of this, and hopefully connect to the work Holo-REA has already done. @bear mentioned the community may want to help so hopefully we can chat more about that on our call on Tuesday?

@pospi, will you be able to join the video call on Tuesday at 11, PST?

Thanks!
Kamal

Kamal Patel is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: HOLD- Holochain prez
Time: Apr 7, 2020 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

Meeting ID: 391 900 095

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Anton · April 7, 2020, 5:10am

We need a shared calendar of events and calls on this forum so that we can maybe better avoid overlapping events
I am also interested in permaculture and ecology and would like to attend this call but its taking place right during the Holochain architecture course. Bummer…
Next time

kamal · April 7, 2020, 4:21pm

Thanks @Anton, great to hear about your interest in permaculture and ecology. Yeah a shared calendar sounds like a great idea. Also, we’ll record the call and try to send out bite size videos of what we’re doing so we can integrate to other projects. We’ll also do another call soon and hoping you can join.

oro13 · April 7, 2020, 4:28pm

hey @kamal ,

it’s Feli from the Portland event. Excited to learn about this project and the work you’ve done so far. I’m new to the PNW, but have been working with friends on resilience projects across the US and Mexico. Glad to meet people working on such projects here.

My background is in ecological design, political economy, and data science so this is right up my alley. I’ll be tuning into the meeting at 11 and looking forward to learning more.

kamal · April 7, 2020, 5:46pm

Hey Feli @oro13, great to hear! Looking forward to seeing you on the call. I’m going to go into political economy a bit, so would appreciate your thinking there. Looking forward to continued collaboration with your resilience projects! Talk soon.

kerrgreg · April 7, 2020, 10:10pm

Great information guys! you give me even more excitement about the future!

lynnfoster · April 7, 2020, 10:40pm

@kamal sorry to have missed the call! Looking forward to the recording and doing a preliminary mapping to Holo-REA with @pospi …