devcon8 / gainforest how we can ensure equitable and regenerative intelligence for nature conservation
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GainForest: How we can ensure equitable and regenerative intelligence for nature conservation?
Duration: NaN:NaN:NaN
Speaker: David Dao
Type: Talk
Expertise: Some familiarity with the topic
Event: Devcon
Date: Nov 2026
Indigenous and local communities steward much of the world’s biodiversity, yet ecological evidence is extracted into platforms they cannot control. What would it mean for a community to own the canonical record of its work while joining an open, verifiable data commons? Drawing on GainForest field deployments, I trace our move from smart-contract-first tools to ATProto and Hypercerts: signed impact claims and media on community-controlled servers; open indexing without making the indexer authoritative; portable verification labels; and funding that references evidence without putting sensitive data on-chain. This technical case study includes why immutable-by-default can violate consent, why wallets exclude users, and why open data can expose sensitive knowledge. Attendees leave with a capture-resistant pattern: separate custody, discovery, verification, and settlement; make revocation first-class; and let communities exit an application without losing their history.