Coral restoration is essential for the planet. I believe the health of our planet is a core public good. I believe Coral Connect can make a meaningful impact with our support.
# Coral Connect🪸 Proposal
**Why Coral Connect🪸**
Currently in the world there are operations working to regrow reefs in many locations with land-based nurseries. The problem is that there are no coordinated communications between them, no transparency for funding these operations, no aggregated shared knowledge pool for education, and no standard metrics reported. Because of these limitations, reefs are dying faster than we are collectively regenerating them.
Coral Connect is a novel solution to these problems. Our platform will allow for coral regeneration operations all over the world to share research data on species, growth rates, total amount of reef regeneration, environmental changes and so much more. All of this while also serving to translate digital assets into direct real-world impacts actually growing coral with every partner location and individual user added (currently 13 locations in Mexico, Dominican Republic, Indonesia and most recently Palau). This will also provide public access to the larger knowledge base of coral restoration data for standardized reportable impact metrics to be shared. This solves the problem of transparency by adding publicly visible accountability to each site.
**How it works**
Coral Connect is building much more than just one public good. Currently we are on track to provide two direct impacts. The first of these impacts is global. We have already begun development of a Dapp (MVP) to connect the world's coral regeneration projects as described. The Coral Connect Dapp allows all restoration sites to upload data regarding their impact, coral species grown, and conditions of the environment where the grown corals are to be out planted. This platform will allow for data sharing to increase functionality of all existing coral regeneration operations, offer your everyday individual the ability to contribute as well as learn by actively participating in the restoration of our world's reefs.

**Previous tests and Developments**
Prior sections of our development plan have been funded by Gitcoin and the Arbitrum Foundation as we have progressed. The test run was completed in Magnetic Island, Queensland. We successfully grew over 50 corals; each coral was grown on a personalized start disk that was engraved to show the NFT chosen by each individual user. Each coral then has a steward as it grows and is directly linked to the individual via the platform. As we move this technology and partnership locations forward, coral type and location can both be chosen bridging this product to various locations worldwide. The choice of what image is engraved is up to each individual. Stewards can currently feed their coral and check up on the progress with a direct link through their laptop or mobile device. This has been showcased on twitter, Instagram and through other platforms such as Karma Gap. Since the testing went well, we are ready to scale.
 
**Support for ACTIVE regeneration sites**
The second part of this mission is to help fund many regeneration sites regrowing many reefs much faster than currently possible due to funding limitations. All corals will be funded by individuals, the platform allows for you to “grow your own coral”. Inside of the dap the location of impact can be chosen along with coral type. This is completed through a fiat or crypto payment and the funds are given directly to that specific initiative. During their time in these nurseries, all corals will be tracked with a digital twin in the Dapp that belongs to an individual user who sponsors the coral until its final geolocation and out planting. In between initial growth and out planting, the metadata captured will be relative to size, type of coral, individual carbon sequestration, location where it is growing. The entire process to out planting in the reef takes 6-7 months of growth in the tank with a small acclimatizing period. Again, all this data is collected and can be applied collectively allowing all nurseries to grow the most resilient and biodiverse reefs possible in every section of the world.
**Relevance**
This is the technology and process necessary to have the best chance at solving this global crisis. Coral Connect creates a designated platform that will allow existing nurseries transparency through metrics, grow funding for all coral regeneration operations accelerating their impact, and create a larger more accessible knowledge pool for reef regeneration/education efforts by making research data publicly available for all interested parties. This particular public good has the potential to turn the tide as a feasible solution providing the coordination and access necessary to solve a larger shared problem.
**How Does Public Nouns benefit?**
Public nouns holders will have the opportunity to grow their own coral at no cost. A google sheet will be provided for details regarding which image they would like on their disk and all corals grown will be integral to maintaining the biodiversity for our land-based nursery in Palau. You will be given a choice to add it to the biobank for future coral spawning or out planting directly in the Palauan reef system. By doing so, everyone who wants to will be able to use the Coral Connect Dapp to view their digital asset mirroring the living coral in the tank as it grows with all metadata included. Once the corals are to be out planted, each coral will be geolocated and data relative to its permanent home in the reef will be added to the digital asset. If you choose to participate in the biobank the metadata will reflect the exact location of that biobank used for spawning. All in all we want Public Nouns to be the first Nouns showcased in the nursery we are building in Palau. This specific nursery is being funded by the Palauan Government and will be using Coral Connect technology to share research and showcase impact.
**How is Coral Connect non-excludable and non-rivalrous?**
By design Coral Connect is non-excludable. We want everyone in the world to use it. Quite simply the more people, businesses, and initiatives that use Coral Connect the faster we can regenerate our world's reef systems. No one is excluded from use of the platform and even the nursery in Palau itself is non-excludable because it will be funded by global users of the platform itself. Secondarily, Coral Connect is non-rivalrous. Since the goal is to onboard as many users and as many coral regeneration projects as possible, in no way would one person's or initiative’s use of the platform limit another's. Even in the cases of conflicting data sets there is no exclusion, and it does not limit or cause the system overall to be less useful to a single party. The platform and the nursery are both designed to serve all, be hyper scalable, and regenerate reef systems as quickly as possible while opening new channels for participation, donation, and data aggregation to improve global functionality and scope of applicable knowledge for anyone who wants to learn.
**Budget**
2 ETH - directly funds finishing the Coral Connect MVP
1.2 ETH funds server costs for the first year, along with initial set up for all coral nurseries that have agreed to us the platform currently, allowing for adjustments to be made to the MVP
1.6 Eth funds flights to Palau and Indonesia for initial setup with sites across Indonesia and our site being built in Palau. I will personally be going to do this.
**The impact of the Coral Connect Dapp**
- It streamlines global efforts creating large scale data aggregation for direct use in coral regeneration and research operations
- It provides a higher level of visibility and direct donation funnel for all existing coral restoration projects worldwide in a non-exclusionary platform.
- It allows government use cases for mass adoption as well as non web3 native onboarding to solve a globally shared problem directly.
- The platform also provides transactional network instances for public goods tokens and cryptocurrency causing further adoption worldwide.
**Deliverables**
1. Figma design for the Coral Connect Dapp will be shared immediately
2. Standard Key metrics become reportable in Dapp by Coral Regeneration Operations Smart contract then will be shared with Public Nouns
3. Fully working Dapp shared
4. Our CMO will travel to Palau to work alongside our scientists and provide direct oversight of all Coral regeneration operations in Palau. He will also be travelling to onboard existing Indonesian Coral Gardners sites to the Dapp.
5. A Google sheet to be provided for all Public Noun holders to grow a coral at no cost. (1 per Public Noun)
**Reporting (Feedback Loop)**
We propose a simple feedback loop to create a seamless operation between Coral Connect and Public Nouns. Firstly, all current and proposed milestones will be added to our Karma Gap for public transparency and reportability.
<https://gap.karmahq.xyz/project/coral-connect-1/grants/0x48ce1421fdee9b0c7fa260a1b8ebded09f862a0ca6011df563ee162459cd5de0/milestones-and-updates>
Once milestones are complete, they will be reported and attested to on-chain. These milestones will also be reported on our website <https://www.coralconnect.life/>
All deliverables will be shown to your selected evaluator via email including required proofs will be provided promptly as each step is completed.
The Dapp itself and the nurseries involved both already have feedback loops and layers of reporting. This will be amplified by data coming from the regeneration sites and citizen scientist portal native to the Dapp itself. This is actually taken one step further because the corals grown in the nurseries themselves also have feedback loops correlating to growth rates and directly measured outcomes as we begin to showcase the MRV and biodiversity of each site. This takes place within each operation individually and is aggregated through the Dapp allowing reporting for many different reef systems all at the same time through a variety of metrics.
**Request**
We are requesting 5 ETH in total. To finish the current Dapp build. All other funding such as land acquisition for nursery and costs associated with the building of the infrastructure, including the lab have been previously arranged through U.S. developers, the Palauan government, and other companies focused on direct ocean impact. As a team we simply need your help to complete this intermediary step so that we can make the bigger move and provide an outstanding avenue for global collaboration, public education, data sharing, and direct reef restoration.
Recipient Address:
0xFad96031f28BCcE112Fbf71f207a9302d64D937E
Amount in ETH: 5
==Thank you for taking the time to review this proposal and vote to help🙏==
Mike Spaulding (The Hill)
X profile: <https://x.com/hardmoustache>
Linkedin: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-spaulding-862890257/>
# Coral Connect🪸 Grant Request
By supporting this proposal, you are voting "YES" to better aggregation of scientific research, data sharing for amplified direct impacts, an increased knowledge base for public education, on chain global data pools, and increased publicly visible metrics. Basically, you are providing others with the technology they need to solve a larger shared problem. As we see it the coral reef systems of the world are an integral component of life on this planet. In fact, twenty-five percent of life on the planet exists in coral reefs, if they die, we all do. However, from our point of view we have the opportunity to act now and make a direct change not only with our project but with every other initiative and coral regeneration project globally. Currently in the world there are operations working to regrow reefs in many locations. The problem is that there are no coordinated communications between them, no real large-scale visibility for funding these operations, no aggregated shared knowledge pool for education, and no standard metrics reported. Because of these facts coral is dying faster than we are collectively regenerating it.
Enter our solution, Coral Connect. This novel approach will allow for coral regeneration operations all over the world to share research data on species, growth rates, survivability, environmental changes and so much more. All of this while also serving to translate digital assets to direct in real life impact actually growing coral with every partner location we add (currently 13 locations have agreed in Mexico, Dominican Republic, Indonesia and most recently Palau). This also will provide public access to the larger aggregated knowledge base of coral restoration data and allow for standardized reportable impact metrics to be shared. For the last year we have worked to build relationships with many restoration projects, the Indonesian and Palauan governments, as well as highly specialized scientists to provide a direct and efficient solution to not just one problem plaguing these coral regeneration operations but several at the same time. We aim to leverage all of our contacts, government relationships, national media influence, and web3 experience to accelerate a public good that is specifically designed to solve the world's exponential death of coral and turn the tide of regeneration efforts in every country we expand too.
How do we plan to apply this?
Coral Connect is building much more than just one public good. Currently we are on track to provide two direct impacts. The first of these impacts is global. We have already begun development of a Dapp to connect the world's coral regeneration projects. This platform will allow for data sharing to increase relative functionality of all existing operations, streamline donations by creating transparency through blockchain and data reporting, and offer your everyday individual the opportunity to contribute as well as learn by actively participating in the restoration of our world's reefs. Prior sections of our development plan have been funded by Gitcoin and Arbitrum as we have progressed. With their help we have rebranded, developed our website, and begun Dapp development. However, even with our own personal finances combined we simply do not have enough to finish the Dapp in the way we would like to make it as useful as possible to individuals, businesses, and the coral regeneration projects themselves.
The second part of this mission is to create a fully sustainable solar powered land based coral nursery in Palau complete with biobanks and out planting services layered with Coral Connect technology. This facility will include a fragmentation laboratory used for coral propagation and 3d scanning capability for metadata capture to be used in the Dapp. All metadata captured will be updated regularly in the platform for each individual coral. The function of this land-based operation is to directly outplant several thousand corals to the surrounding Southeast Asian coral triangle every six months. During their time in the tank, all corals will be tracked with a digital twin in the Dapp that belongs to an individual user who sponsors the coral until its final geolocation and out planting. All legal guidelines and SOP are followed to increase overall coral survivability and general biodiversity after out planting as well as expedite growth rates 50x faster than the ocean itself. In between initial growth and out planting the metadata captured will be relative to size, type of coral, individual carbon sequestration, location it is growing, and with which initiative it is being grown. As this data is collected it can then be applied to global operations allowing us all to grow the most resilient and biodiverse reefs possible in every section of the world even though all reefs are different and have various species and spawning schedules. This is the technology and process necessary to actually solve this global crisis. While corals are extremely resilient, at this time they need our help to mitigate the damage humankind has done to them. This project creates a specific initiative that will hire and upskill local people, regenerate reefs in the coral triangle, grow funding for all coral regeneration operations thus accelerating their impact, and create a larger more accessible knowledge pool for all regeneration efforts providing publicly accessible data for interested parties globally, while raising awareness of public goods use cases through national media coverage and eco-focused social media campaigns. This particular public good has the potential to turn the tide of a global problem and further the adoption for all public goods as feasible solutions to larger shared problems.
How is Coral Connect non-excludable and non-rivalrous?
By design Coral Connect is non-excludable. We want everyone in the world to use it. Quite simply the more people, businesses, and initiatives that use Coral Connect the faster we can regenerate our world's reef systems. No one is excluded from use of the platform and even the nursery itself is non-excludable because it will be funded by global users of the platform itself. Secondarily, Coral Connect is non-rivalrous. Since the goal is to onboard as many users and as many coral regeneration projects as possible, in no way would one person's or initiative’s use of the platform limit another's. Even in the cases of conflicting data sets there is no exclusion, and it does not limit or cause the system overall to be less useful to a single party. The platform and the nursery are both designed to serve all, be hyper scalable, and regenerate reef systems as quickly as possible while opening up new channels for participation, donation, and data aggregation to improve global functionality and scope of applicable knowledge base for anyone who wants to learn.
Why do we need funding NOW?
With every day that passes the shared problem that Coral Connect aims to solve gets worse. Corals are dying at an increasing rate so the sooner we can pump out this technology and coordinate global efforts the better. Furthermore, by building the nursery in Palau, we can set a global standard of restoration practices with experts supported and backed by the Palauan government to then present our use case of this public good to the United Nations as part of global efforts against climate change. We must act now to take advantage of our partnerships currently in place. If we want to have any hope of survival as a species, we must address this problem with innovative collaborative solutions like Coral Connect and use our high-level relationships to push this efficient solution forward.
Impact/Deliverables
The impact of the Coral Connect Dapp is threefold:
It streamlines global operations creating large scale data aggregation for direct use in coral regeneration and research operations
It provides a higher level of visibility and direct donation funnel for all existing coral restoration projects worldwide in a non-exclusionary platform.
It allows for government use cases and mass adoption as well as non web3 native onboarding to solve a globally shared problem directly. Our platform also provides transactional network instances for public goods tokens and cryptocurrency causing further adoption
Deliverables are broken into four specific reportable outcomes.
Figma design for the Coral Connect Dapp will be shared
Digital asset production.
Fully working Dapp shared with Public Nouns
Mike Spaulding, (The Hill) will relocate to Palau to work alongside and provide direct oversight of all Coral regeneration operations in Palau as well as travel to onboard existing regeneration sites to the Dapp.
Reporting (Feedback Loop)
We propose a simple feedback loop to create a seamless operation between Coral Connect and Public Nouns. Firstly, all current and proposed milestones will be added to our Karma Gap for public transparency and reportability.
https://gap.karmahq.xyz/project/coral-connect-1/grants/0x48ce1421fdee9b0c7fa260a1b8ebded09f862a0ca6011df563ee162459cd5de0/milestones-and-updates
Once milestones are complete, they will be reported and attested to on-chain. These milestones will also be reported on our website https://www.coralconnect.life/
All deliverables will be shown to your selected evaluator via email including proof of Mike’s move, place of residence, and his ticket to Palau, when purchased, will be provided promptly as each step is completed.
The Dapp itself and the nursery both already have feedback loops and layers of reporting coming from the user base, regeneration sites, and citizen scientist portals native to the Dapp itself. This is actually taken one step further because the corals grown in the nurseries themselves also have feedback loops correlating to growth rates and directly measured outcomes as we begin to measure survivability and biodiversity. This takes place within each operation individually allowing reporting for many different reef systems all at the same time.
Recipient Address:
0xFad96031f28BCcE112Fbf71f207a9302d64D937E
Amount in ETH:
We are requesting 5 ETH in total. To finish the current Dapp build. All other funding such as land acquisition for nursery and costs associated with the building of the infrastructure and lab have been previously arranged by Mike through U.S. developers and Palauan companies focused on ocean initiatives.
As a team we simply need your help to complete this intermediary step so that we can make the bigger move and provide an outstanding avenue for global collaboration, public education, data sharing, and direct reef restoration.
Thank you for taking the time to review this proposal.
Mike Spaulding (The Hill)
X profile: https://x.com/hardmoustache
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-spaulding-862890257/