Mushroom Breeding Program

R+D for new mushroom species/strains can be horizontally scaled for greater genetic diversity and cultivation parameters with NFT-based DeFi

Founded/Run mushroom farm (Mycopolitan) since 2014.  

Networked w farms/foragers

Grew 1 fist-size Chicken of the Woods (pictured here)

Market growth for "specialty" mushrooms has... mushroomed in recent years.  There are species of wild gourmet and medicinal fungi with market potential that have not been developed for commercial cultivation due to the current siloed nature of commercial mushroom R+D.

While the R+D is siloed, mushrooms strains are all around us that have the potential to contribute to breeding programs that will birth entirely new commercially-viable varieties.  

By incentivizing the networking of foragers with DIY mycology labs, professional labs, and mushroom farms, we can accelerate the rate of R+D tremendously, while democratizing the commercialization of new mushroom varieties.  All while having a lot of fun with NFTs.

It is also important to understand that the majority of specialty mushroom cultivation takes place within a relatively narrow scope of parameters.  When we realize that people around the world, in different climates, with different resources, are awakening a love for eating and for growing mushrooms, the number of potential species goes far beyond what the established mushroom farms in the world can grow commercially, and we can help to facilitate development of regionally-relevant mushrooms throughout the world for growers of all size, while we are focused on leveraging the desire of established farmers to offer new species to their customers. 

For the sake of focus, let's focus on one species: Chicken of the Woods (a.k.a chicken mushroom, sulphur shelf, laetiporus sulphureus/cincinnatus)

I have some ideas for how to approach this challenge that I'll summarize here.  But I am one person with a limited scope and all I can do at this point is offer a "draft" for how to structure the project.  The goal of this Fund6 proposal is to take the following "draft" and forming it into a strong proof-of-concept. We warmly welcome you to join if you have perspectives/ideas/skills to bring to the table.  

Who do we need on the team for Fund6?  This project involves networking individuals who are not crypto savvy and making it easy for them to participate, so there will be an emphasis on user-friendly front end.  We may (or may not) need to deploy sound smart contracts that are adapted from e.g. Marlowe and execute on block chains/side chains (TBD).  While we may not begin the "build" in this funding round, it would be extremely helpful to have the developer expertise there to help us understand what is possible.  Because we may be stepping into the waters of financial regulations, we also need a legal expert in this field to assure that we aren't opening a can o' regulatory worms.

We also look forward to piggybacking on the great work happening in the Cardano NFT marketplace world.  Some of the biggest open questions in the project are related to how NFTs are bought and sold, both initially and in the aftermarket.  Looking forward to exploring our options with this exciting community!

STEP 1: COLLECT THE GENES

The first step in any breeding program worth its muster is to amass a collection of wild strains, preserved as mycelial cultures.  These cultures can be held at any of the participating mycological Culture Libraries.  For now, these culture libraries simply back up copies of the culture and keep them in safe long term storage.  Down the road, the culture libraries will be responsible for cloning and distributing strains to growers involved in the breeding program.

Who collects the genes?  Foragers!  For a forager to participate they must a) open an ada wallet,  and share b) a photo of the wild mushroom c) metadata associated with the wild strain (location and time of harvest, species of tree host etc.) , and d) a name for their strain and most importantly they must e) send a viable culture of their strain's mycelium to a participating culture library.  For now, we will leave out f) the smart-contract piece.  

Why would a forager want to participate?  Besides the desire to participate in a fun passion project?  Here's where NFTs make their entrance.  A forager that goes through all required steps is issued a token that symbolizes or represents their strain(s).  This NFT, either through natural market forces or executable smart contracts gives them a potential "stake" in the final product.  If a strain they provided goes through the decentralized breeding program and ends up contributing genetics to a final commercial strain, then the value of their NFT goes up, either organically, or through executing their equity.  Before we proceed, it's important to make a distinction between two types of NFTs that we can deploy:

Wild-Type vs Executable NFTs pt. 1

My understanding is that we can break NFTs into two categories: one I'll call "wild-type" and the other I'll call "executable" for lack of better words.  There may be better terms for these concepts floating out there.  Wild type NFT is one that functions solely as a collectible.  While there may be basic smart contracts that enable more functionality than standard collectibles e.g. splitting up ownership, or even royalties paid out during aftermarket activity, these smart contracts pertain only to the collectible itself.  An executable NFT on the other hand represents other assets beyond the NFT itself.  Smart contracts can execute functions that relate to the underlying assets.

In my view, if we have a shot at accomplishing what we want with a Wild Type NFT, we should give it a shot.  In other words, if we can rely on the raw "collectability" of a token, we can perhaps achieve our goals with limited regulatory contact.

In the wild type, the NFT is a collectible that functions as a "symbol" of a wild mushroom strain.  In the executable type, the NFT represents a physical asset (the genes of a wild mushroom).

In the latter type, smart contracts define the owners equity in the final product (the commercial strain(s)) should they be lucky enough to contribute genetics.

But, wouldn't it be cool if the game theoretics of the marketplace play out such that a wild-type NFT owned by a forager (a collectible that chronicles a wild strain rather than represents it)  would organically demand a higher price on the open market thanks to its scarcity, uniqueness, and the story around it?

****Please see comments from @solarcatzshelley below for more relevant info on the Howey Test and how this applies to the NFTs in this proposal and others.***on to step 2:

STEP 2: GROW OUT AND BREED THE STRAINS:

At this point we have culture libraries filled with backups of unique strains.  We have the gene pool we need to begin actively growing and breeding the strains.  Now it's time to activate the Growers!

 A mushroom like chicken of the woods is going to have only a small fraction of wild strains produce even a tiny fruit indoors.  A strain that produces a fruit, any fruit, is a viable candidate for further breeding, especially if the fruit matures healthily and produces spores (generating even more genetic potential).  Other characteristics that might "level up" a strain in the program would be flavor, promiscuity of tree host type, or other phenotypic indicators.

What would incentivize a grower (farmer, hobbyist, research company) to work with the strains?  Well. the hope of breeding something good!  If a forager is incentivize to contribute viable wild strains, a grower is incentivized to advance the breeding program by identifying which wild strains fruit, crossing spores of fruiting strains to yield new strains with e.g. higher yields.  New strains are new NFTs, whether from the wild or from the lab.  

How does a grower gain access to the genetic library?  First, they must pledge to share any new viable strains that they develop with culture libraries, to be shared with other growers.  We hope that social pressure will prevent them from going rogue and conducting a proprietary breeding program; i.e. if they come out with their commercial strain without sharing it, we shame them for being bad actors in the community, and they are unable to participate in the co-branding opportunity (see below).  If there is genetic analysis done on strains, there may even be evidence of wrongdoing.  Anyway, to facilitate the economics of the whole thing, growers may also pay the culture libraries for their strains.  This is how culture libraries traditionally make their money, so this is pretty close to business-as-usual.

STEP 3: ACHEIVING COMMERCIAL STRAIN STATUS

So now we have wild strains backed up by NFTs, we have cultivated strains backed up by NFTs, and we are beginning to make headway.  With every generation, new, better strains are coming out until eventually a grower makes a big hit.  They grow a mushroom that is commercially viable, meaning it's high yielding (enough), tastes good, has decent shelf life, and growth parameters that are fairly easily duplicated.

If you are the grower who hits the jackpot, your NFT represents a commercially viable strain, the metadata includes any important information related to substrate, temperature, fruiting platforms, incubation time etc.  You submit an early-generation culture to a culture library, and that culture library backs up versions of this to go out to other culture libraries, so the entire community of growers involved in the project has access to the youngest, least senescent version of this strain to begin growing the strain for market.

To incentivize the project as a whole, we will try and keep the strain "in the family" at first while we keep things quiet on the marketing side, giving the network of growers a chance to be the first to get chicken of the woods to their customers.  Inevitably, someone will clone the mushroom from a store and the commercial strain will get out into the public, albeit not backed up in its youngest form.  But that's ok, because the project was a success!

FURTHER DISCUSSION

Wild-Type vs Executable NFTs pt 2.  equity chain of custody vs co-branding

Making our way back to the question of wild type vs executable NFTs.  Culture libraries, spawn companies make their money by selling commercial strains and spawn made from these strains.  This is an established income stream.  Perhaps there is incentive for culture libraries to be involved to give them first dibs on selling the cultures and spawn to buyers. 

Chain of Custody via Executable-Type NFTs.  If this is the case, the executable-type NFTs could all connect up to this company itself to the point that all sales of the strain distribute profit down the chain- to the grower that developed the final strain to all the growers who contributed genetics to that strain to all the foragers who contributed genetics to those strains.  All through  smart-contract-backed-NFTs.

Co-Branding via Wild Type NFTs. On the other hand, if we go the wild-type NFT route, we may be able to leverage the story in an ongoing way to encourage value to flow organically through to members in the chain of custody.  Growers can co-brand the chicken of the woods products they sell to end-consumers, plastering the packaging with a collage of all the images of the NFTs that contributed to the final product.  Future fans of the product will see those images, read up on the backstory and find out that they too can play along by becoming the proud owner of one of those NFTs.  They visit the project's NFT marketplace (auction??) and pay up. 

non-NFT-based profit sharing

There can also be smart contracts deployed in the project not connected to NFTs.  There can be, for instance, some level of profit sharing for all participants, whether they contributed to the final strain or not.  This might look like future "releases" of NFTs by the project as a whole, where % proceeds go out to all participants.  

onboarding a new network to Cardano

A valuable "bi-product" :  We now have a network of foragers, growers, labs etc with Ada wallets and a track record of participating in real-life applications.  We can use this network to tackle new challenges.  The network of foragers and farmers and their markets can drive new innovation in areas like establishing incentives for responsible stewardship of forests  (sorely needed, blog post coming out eventually on this topic).  We can take on new species for similar breeding programs.  The sky's the limit.  And with more activity, we drive more adoption, more wallets opening up and a strong network effect.  

The end result?  Cardano is the digital ecosystem for Mushroom people.  And mushroom people are the coolest :)

Looking Ahead

Should we be fortunate enough to earn funding for this project, the next step is to actually build it out!  The front end, the marketplace, smart contracts, marketing team etc.  This will be a much larger undertaking than the proof-of-concept we hope to develop with funding this round.  

But a breeding program takes time.  It's likely 2+ years until a given commercial strain comes to fruition.  There is no reason to wait 2 years to begin taking action on the product side.  Using our network of foragers (and onboarding yet more with this:) we can begin marketing different "decentralized" product(s).  I have a delicious, nutritious, warm, creamy, rich, chaga-full beverage recipe that tells a story of the forest and which utilizes 4+ wild-crafted products.  I would be more than happy to "decentralize" this recipe in order to get a jumpstart on answering first-principle questions related to "what is a decentralized product?" A recipe clue: the main ingredient is chaga.

TIMELINE (no later than...)

3 Months: Establish the core team responsible for releasing the "proof of concept"

6 Months:  produce a white paper/ white board + initial build outs / mock ups.

9 Months:  seek additional funding proposal for the build-out (via catalyst and/or issuance of Cardano Conk NFTs and/or traditional financing)

12 Months: Public Launch, by September 2022 40+ unique wallet addresses from foragers and 2+ culture libraries so we can begin collecting wild strains.

BUDGET

2500 for telling the story, white paper, white board, networking in the mushroom world (that's me and those who want to help)

3000 for developer consultation and mock-ups (front-end, smart contracts, user experience)

500 for legal consultation as relates to regulations and NFTs.  

My Commitment:  Whether this proposal receives funding or not, I am committed to helping to make Cardano and Catalyst as strong an ecosystem as possible, and I will continue to share my general and proposal-specific thoughts on the blog regenseed.io

Thank you for your consideration.