SEEDS is an Ecosystem for a Sustainable Planet with Seeds as its Digital Currency

Yesterday in a Singularity University coffeeroom chat I was introduced by one of the attendees to SEEDS, a digital platform with a currency of the same name, Seeds (note the lowercase differentiation), whose purpose is to reward those focused on regenerating the planet, encouraging global collaboration, and assigning a new measure for value not based on wealth creation.

SEEDS is an enterprise aimed at ending the disconnect between the goals of financial systems and the finite nature of Planet Earth. Financial systems have been built around the paradigm of growth. Portfolios aren’t just sustainable. They have to produce a yield that accumulates more. But if all of us are growing in exploiting the planet’s resources and accumulating more wealth, at what point do we hit a brick wall?

The Club of Rome 1972 publication, The Limits to Growth, is a book I read back then. It prophesied a mid-21st century catastrophe for human civilization as we consumed more of the Earth than the planet’s ability to regenerate. At the time of writing, the authors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology didn’t factor in climate change which appears to have accelerated the impending prediction.

SEEDS vision is to create an economic and social system that provides incentives to address our current global challenges in the “pursuit of happiness and our collective self-actualization.” I know this sounds idealistic, in fact, like a modernizing of the words in the opening of documents like the American Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution, but it may prove to be a way forward for humanity to collectively reverse the ominous trend of this century toward a climate-change-induced catastrophe.

SEEDS describes the creation of a global, transparent, equitable economy that better distributes both “voice and value” to all of us on Earth. Its vision includes:

• A Co-operative Economy – aligning financial incentives from disparate organizations and movements to create a healthier society.
• A Local Food Economy – facilitating, financing, promoting, and supporting local food movements through delivery and marketplace platforms that invite its users to contribute and not seek monetary gain, but rather share in the total largesse.
• A Regenerative Economy – aligning financial interests with planetary regeneration through incentives to organizations to focus on improvements to the planet’s biosphere.
• An Equitable Economy – providing a digital currency called Seeds that rewards participation in the better distribution of resources, which it calls “Harvests.”
• A Better-than-Free Economy – rewarding people who focus on doing transactions that meet the overall vision.

The Seeds currency is digital in the model of Bitcoin, but with a very different purpose. Its distribution and growth support endeavours designed to improve the health of society, ecology, and the economy. SEEDs participants accept Seeds rather than other forms of exchange. That’s why SEEDS describes itself as a new economic system.

Members of SEEDS establish their own accounts. You can become a member by downloading the SEEDS Passport from the Apple or Play Store. Request an invitation and once accepted you can begin to interact with the community and to buy and swap Seeds. You may choose to be an ambassador or join by alliance which can give you access to SEEDS grants paid using Seeds.

What kinds of projects are currently using SEEDS? Here are four examples:

1. In Pondicherry, India, citizens and local farmers have joined to create a local grow-to-table movement including an information exchange and the creation of a mutual credit exchange to facilitate sharing of goods and services. A grant of 100,000 Seeds was awarded to 100 Pondicherry and neighbouring citizens behind the project.
2. An alliance with Forests Without Frontiers aimed at reforestation projects with SEEDS partnering has turned 20-pound donations into 2000 Seeds to facilitate replanting.
3. An alliance with Finca-Sagrada, a multicultural learning centre and farm in Ecuador working with local indigenous communities is helping to build infrastructure, run the centre, design and implement a holistic land and watershed management plan, and cover the cost of writing and producing a book about the local flora and fauna as an educational tool.
4. An alliance with the Mangwende Orphan Care Trust in Zimbabwe focused on reversing family disintegration caused by HIV/AIDS, poverty, and other diseases. SEEDS participation is focused on helping the Trust feed its community through grants of Seeds to implement a permaculture farm and education centre, and allowing it to bypass the financial challenges of the country’s corrupt regulatory, banking and financial system.

SEEDS is co-created by HyphaEARTH, a DAO (a decentralized autonomous organization). DAOs are organizations with no employees, no bosses, but rather focused on common objectives and nonstop production. A constitution of rules determines how a DAO operates, and all transactions go through a blockchain, the distributed general ledger that was introduced to the world with the arrival of Bitcoin.

HyphaEARTH description of SEEDS is a scaffolding or framework that is serving its participants by facilitating organic growth from within the community, and by delivering mutually agreed to value which is dispensed and swapped using the Seeds digital currency. All transactions are visible with anyone being able to access SEEDS financial dashboard.

Idealism never sounded so good in a world facing challenges that governments are struggling to address.