DeFi Revolution Grows Trees for FREE!

At one of our monthly Life with Crypto Meetups, our special guest presenter, Steve McKeon, talked about smart contracts and spent some time focusing on one smart contract platform called MakerDAO.

One of the attendees commented that the information was interesting but there aren’t really any applications. I DISAGREE!

In this article I will introduce you to a project that is very near and dear to my heart. It’s about planting and growing trees around the world and part of its funding comes from a DeFi dApp they created called rTrees. It’s based on Maker DAO’s stablecoin called DAI and the rTrees dApp (decentralized app) runs on the Ethereum network.

https://rtrees.dappy.dev/

Sound complicated? I assure you, it’s EASY! You don’t need to understand the technicals to use crypto to support this non-profit. Who would have guessed that crypto and tree planting could work together for a common good. The non-profit is Trees for the Future. Their website is https://trees.org/.

The rTrees dApp is a smart contract and it’s really cool.

rTree rDAI

To use it you’ll have to own some DAI. The interest that your DAI earns is what gets donated to rTrees. Your underlying asset, DAI, is never touched. Sound awesome, right?

“This is a brand new way to support causes you value without the sting of seeing your account balance go down. It’s made possible by three permissionless money protocols built on Ethereum — DAI, liquid lending pools, and rDai, the protocol that puts the “r” in rTrees.”

“rDai allows users to not only earn interest on their DAI, but to redirect that interest to different Ethereum addresses, such as the one supporting rTrees donations.”

from Medium post

To get started you’ll need some DAI and a Web3 browser. The Metamask wallet via broswer extension available for Chrome and Firefox is the most recommend Web3 browser. Once you have Metamask installed you’ll send your DAI to the wallet. Then go to the rDAI app and connect your Metamask wallet and follow the onscreen instructions.

The easiest way to purchase DAI is to create an account on Coinbase and use funds from your bank account. To learn how to setup and use a Coinbase account I recommend taking our FREE course called Buy Crypto, Safely! Lesson 3 is all about setting up Coinbase. Look for it on the Courses page. This course is part of a series of courses called Get Started with Crypto.

Learn more at rTrees on Medium.