Applicant Name: Nena Jain

Applicant ETH Address: nenajs.eth

Organization(s) or Affiliation(s): Regen Foundation

Why do you want to serve as an Expert Evaluator for the Localism Fund?

I have been working in this space for the past four years, through Regen Foundation and the many community networks it supports. I joined as a skeptical but curious observer, wanting to understand how web3 technologies could contribute to a community-owned and governed regenerative future.

While the technical and conceptual developments in the space have grown tremendously, my focus has been on how grassroots groups can practically adopt these tools and mechanisms to advance their impact outcomes. Over the years, I have supported various project-specific journeys across the globe, and through that work, I have explored a number of interesting ideas, such as:

Community Staking DAO: collective ownership and governance of Regen Network.

Prototyping commons stewardship through DAO tooling: experimenting with participatory budgeting and peer attestation of impact.

Developing hybrid models: creating incremental pathways for capacity building by connecting off-chain events and discussions with on-chain data and attestations.

My interest in the Localism Fund Expert Network comes from this same place. I would love to support local networks in making the best use of these tools—helping them design custom workflows that meet their technical, economic, and cultural needs, while building the capacity to engage with more complex mechanisms over time.