Lemonade Crypto Climate Coalition
Lemonade is a blockchain coalition supporting agricultural insurance for low-income farmers.
Website: https://lemonade.org/
HQ: New York, New York, United States
Active Markets: Kenya
This page was last edited on May 7th 2024Problem Addressed
According to an ISF report, in low-income countries less than 3% of farmers have agricultural insurance. Smallholder farmers across the globe, and principally in Africa, aren’t financially protected against the negative impacts and risks associated with climate change leaving them vulnerable to devastating events such as droughts, cyclones, and floods. Factors such as a lack of meteorological infrastructure in these areas contributes to expensive insurance policies or companies not making policies available to farmers in these regions at all.
Project Description
The Lemonade Crypto Climate Coalition (LCCC) comprised industry experts and organizations working to solve the challenge of providing the meteorological infrastructure and data required to make low-income farming regions viable for agricultural insurance so that farmers there can seek protections from climate change events. The Coalition sought to address challenges around accurate weather risk assessments, the automation of claim assessments, and sufficient funding and reinsurance provision with use of smart contract claims processes and crypto investment liquidity pools.
The coalition included both blockchain and insurance entities and exists as a DAO. The DAO was to distribute insurance “at-cost,” with agricultural insurance smart contracts supported by tech enabled weather modeling. Avalanche served as the blockchain infrastructure for the DAO, with Chainlink operating the oracle services needed to bring data on-chain for the project.
Business Data
Status: Undetermined
Constituency Served: Smallholder farmers
Networks: Avalanche
Known Investors: Lemonade Foundation
Additional References: N/a
Progress to date
On March 28, 2023 LCCC announced the completion of the initial launch project with farmers in Kenya. At the end of the growing season, farmers that were eligible for payouts received funds through the platform’s automated smart contracts, representing the project’s first payouts. Almost 7,000 smallholder farmers in Kenya signed up for the program during the October 2022 to January 2023 season. Farmers featured in the article spoke about the ability to sign up day-of, and described how the funds received through the payout helped them prepare for the next season and provide subsistence for their families.
Lemonade has not issued any new projects for the Crypto Climate Coalition since.
Business Model
Lemonade generates income through insurance premiums and yield generation through capital pools.
Traction
7,000 farmers in Kenya took part in the project’s initial launch, with affected farmers receiving instant payouts from LCCC smart contracts at the end of the season.