Hola fellow regens, welcome to the next instalment of Odisea! On today’s show, we have John Ellison, the Co-Founder of ReFi DAO. Now building a Network State, supporting Regen Founders, and fostering a global community of impact leaders, ReFi DAO is at the frontier of leveraging crypto to unlock environmental and social regeneration. In this conversation, John shares his founder journey, the importance of inner regeneration, and gives us some alpha with regards to where ReFi DAO is heading to next on their quest to regenerate the world!

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A seasoned entrepreneur, John’s journey has been marked by connecting the dots across technology and design to make the world a better place. His builder journey began in his college dorm room where he tried, failed, and succeeded building startups led by an impact-driven thesis.

Simultaneously, John has also taken a committed approach to nurturing his inner self through his practices of meditation, yoga, and mindfulness. He attributes much of his success and commitment towards regeneration stemming from his own practices of inner work, which have allowed John to access his deepest source of intelligence.

It is with this same prowess that John co-founded ReFi DAO, an incredible community and ecosystem that is inspiring and supporting builders around the world to regenerate themselves and the communities within which they exist. Having partaken in one of ReFi DAO’s Founder Circles, I can say from firsthand that there really is nothing more valuable when one is doing the hard work of regeneration that it is so helpful to have the support of a kindred community.

That same premise is ultimately what led John and I to become friends, as our paths have continued to cross through our journeys in this ecosystem. What I’ve found in John, is not only someone who is deeply committed to the work he does, but is also an incredible kind and wise soul who is always willing to uplift those around him.

Speaking of surrounding yourself with those who are aligned with your vision, ReFi DAO is now working on its next ambitious undertaking - building a network state driven by environmental regeneration.

With the first node already established and activated in Lisbon, ReFi DAO is looking to scale its operations globally, by supporting local nodes around the world. They have a strong emphasis on backing and supporting nodes in the global south, which has already led to a diverse and flourishing set of local communities emerging around them.

As a believer in thinking in post-nation state terms and as someone who cares deeply about social and environmental regeneration, I’m incredibly excited to see where ReFi DAO continues to expand and grow across the ecosystem.

Remember, you’ve still got time to mint your Odisea Community Collectible below. The collectible is available on the Optimism network, which we have intentionally chosen thanks to their commitment to support public goods, largely through their Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RetroPGF) mechanism, which allocates the fees paid by users of the network and then distributes them retroactively to public goods in the ecosystem. Mint yours below and support public goods :)

If you’d like to connect to discuss the episode and explore ways we can collaborate to build a better future leveraging crypto, let’s chat on Twitter or you can join the Telegram community as well!

Odisea is produced with the support of Safe and Ambire Wallet.

Safe (previously Gnosis Safe) is a decentralized custody protocol, securing ~$60 Billion in assets today. It is establishing a universal standard for secure custody of digital assets, data, and identity.

Ambire Wallet is an account abstraction-based, self-custodial gateway to Web3 that introduces a range of impressive features like transaction batching, a pre-payment mechanism, and the ability to pay gas fees in stablecoins. By being accessible on both mobile and desktop devices, with a browser extension version on the horizon, Ambire Wallet aims at streamlining the user experience and ensure convenience across different platforms.