2024 A Year in Review: Forests Digital

Just in time for Spring, Forests Digital’s first Reforestation Action of the year just so happened to occur on the International Day of Forests, on the 23^rd of March 2024! The campaign shared how forests are essential for providing habitats for countless animal species, protecting soil, storing water, enriching the atmosphere with moisture, enhancing soil quality, and helping move rain cloud formation further into the land, thereby having an overall cooling effect.

As for people? We find tranquility, peace, adventures with friends, hiking, camping, jogging, amongst many other things, even simply to get shade against the summer sun. To commemorate this day, Forests Digital joined with the association, Šumski Mir, to invite activists, enthusiasts, and business-owners alike to join international or local organizations helping protect, conserve and/or grow more forests near Deliblatska Peščara, and a plan was in the works to begin planting in mid-November. Forests Digital was amazingly active, with the team preparing reforestation action together with Šumski Mir, Mentor the Young, and NTP and attracted a few forest-loving individuals to join December’s Afforestation project. The team eventually went on-site planting the first batch of pine trees and acorns, made an amazing poster, and started recruiting people. Legal questions later inthe year, however, caused the large-scale project to be postponed

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   Between April through July, Forests Digital worked on and launched its first software version of the project, the Forest Digital app, which was deployed on Azure Cloud. As part of the “Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub” program Forests Digital was upgraded to a Level 2 and received a $4,000 infrastructure grant from in July. Thank you, Microsoft!

   By the end of September Forests Digital reached the Ethereum main net by setting up an ENS (Ethereum Name Service)

Similar to how DNS translates cryptic computer addresses into human readable labels, ENS translates lengthy blockchain addresses into short labels we can use to interact with. You can imagine it as an Ethereum phonebook. Besides an address, it provides additional information on records, blockchain issuances, and tokens increasing transparency and service accessibility.

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   October was busy on Forests Digital’s front. The team transitioned to international waters, welcoming Nicole Valmana, who started the junior Graphics Designer position with Forests Digital’s team, founded by Nikola Dulić, Goran Matijašević, and Pavle Spasojević.  A demo pitch was prepared, with the first batch of 4 different ERC20 tokens deployed on the Ethereum Sepolia Test Net, and a website which presents Afforestation Certificates. In addition, Forests Digital got qualified for the Startup Funding Bootcamp, organized by PurposeTech, and a few other VCs from Europe, which started in November with the Demo Day planned for December with the intent to attract some serious investment. The Fundraising Bootcamp organized byPurposeTech guided us through four insightful sessions: Building a Fundable Team, UnderstandingVenture Scale, Early Traction, and Fundraising Do’s & Don’ts.

Conferences were plentiful, which established some valuable connections, and we were able to pitch and present Forests Digital at:

·      FLOW event in Brussels,

·      WWF - Planet Status Report,

·      and Tokenization projects in Serbia.

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   The month of November saw Forests Digital’s software making a comeback! A live demo app was launched which produces a digital certificate including a summary and detailed data on selected Forests Digital wallet tokens. The demo app was built to support Forests Digital’s presentation at the American Chamber of Commerce in Serbia event in December. External consultants aided in designing a new logo and website, and then they had a workshop trying to formulate a marketing narrative for the upcoming conference. There were two notable conferences:

·     Heapcon – Where meeting with friends and old colleagues resulted in valuable insights from the software development industry; and

·     Serbian Chamber of Commerce WMG Foundation on Renewable Agriculture and Forestry, which provided a lot of forestry-related information and contacts.

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Finally, in December, the month started with the Responsible Business Dialogue conference attended, with much effort invested into the conference preparation by presenting the new website design, producing a new set of badges in 4 different color designs, and networking.

Nikola and Nicole attended ImpactHub’s 10-year celebration, which was a nice event starting with pitch presentations followed by a party afterwards. The company hopes to be able to pitch there in one of their following seasons, fingers-crossed!

Afterwards, the team had a workshop with all hands-onboard, spending half a day at NTP recording a video and audio cover for a short company video. Forests Digital submitted the pitch presentations and pitch video as well as other documents to PurposeTech and received some valuable feedback. As a side-effect they made a nice LinkedIn post, with 54 likes, 22 comments 5 reposts and counting!

The company also had Nicole and Nikola Petrovic’s workshop on the website, resulting in an updated website design, multi-language support, and subscription forms, as well as blog posts and monthly newsletters which are in progress. On another note, members of the Forests Digital team did an analogue test-run for an online game prototype representing Forests Digital’s model, whose intent is to be educational and inspirational, with the Game Rulebook being completed. The youth won! The game is still in the works, with plans to move it online in the future.

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To end the year with a bang, the first Token was issued in December 2024 for a private investor in the village of Venčane, close to the municipality of Arandjelovac – which led to the Digital Certificate software 2.0! Here is the token web page on Etherscan.

Why is that important? This is an afforestation project which aims to convert an area of 3236m2 of low-quality land into a natural forest, thus improving soil quality over time, contributing to biodiversity, and even landslide prevention, as it is located on a hill. Venčane is one of the largest villages in the municipality — both in terms of population and area. Concerning theorigins of the name of the village, there is a legend that says that King Stefan the First-Crowned once spent the night in the village, and the village was named after him. Documents from 1650 mention a local log church in the woods next to the Pridvorica stream, dedicated to St. Panteleimon, whose name means “full of compassion, all-compassionate”. The village’s origins itself are quite ancient, too; in the 1938 edition of Politika, it was recorded that, “in the village of Kamenici, near Arandjelovac, some Americans carried out archaeological excavations, during which they seem to have found a prehistoric settlement.” In the Middle Ages, Venčane certainly existed as a small place along the way, since the Turkish road Belgrade-Prizren passed through it.

Suffice it to say, it is befitting that the location of the company’s first token was also the location of the first-crowned king, as well as that of the church of a saint whose name refers to compassion—as compassion for the earth, for nature, and all that its forests provide for us, is at the heart of Forests Digital’s mission. True wealth is of and comes foremost from the ancient Earth itself.

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Forests Digital’s horizons look green with growth as they continue planting the seeds of the future for this fresh new year of 2025!

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By Nicole Valmana