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·4 min read#transparency-report#april-2026#lab#financials

April 2026 Transparency Report

Foundation month. $339 of personal capital into lab equipment and consumables, first agar batch poured on April 15, first liquid culture lost to contamination on April 29.

A robed observer in a button mushroom grow room, reading a clipboard of production charts

1. Summary

April was foundation work, not production. Three things happened that matter:

  1. The site got its current shape — public batch tracking at /lab, a public ledger, and a canonical numbers layer.
  2. The first agar batch (AGAR-2026-001) was poured on April 15 — the start of the cordyceps lineage.
  3. The first liquid culture (LC-2026-001) was lost to contamination on April 29. Both jars went down.

Personal capital deployed: $339.12 (₹31,694.13). Self-funded inflow: $1,077.70 (₹100,000) on April 17. Operating balance at month-end: $738.58 (₹68,305.87). No DAO treasury movements — the DAO is not yet capitalized.

2. Lab status

Two batches were created in April:

Batch Type Status at month-end Started Notes
AGAR-2026-001 Agar 6 of 7 plates healthy, 1 contaminated 2026-04-15 11 g PDA / 150 ml water (above standard ~6 g) — plates poured too thick, condensation issues. 7 plates spread across room / hall / SAB / cupboard for location comparison.
LC-2026-001 Liquid culture Both jars lost to contamination 2026-04-20 Jar 1: primary, inoculated from agar (loose metal lid + hole + micropore tape). Jar 2: sterility control, not inoculated. Both contaminated by 2026-04-29.

That Jar 2 (the uninoculated control) also went down tells us the autoclave cycle on April 19 didn't hold sterility — the failure was upstream of inoculation technique. The autoclave's mechanical timer had already been flagged unreliable that evening at 19:15 IST.

41 lab events logged across the month: 15 stage-changes, 7 location-changes, 7 notes, 6 observations, 3 issues, 2 contamination events, 1 status-change.

AGAR-2026-001-P1 — healthy plate AGAR-2026-001-P7 — contaminated
AGAR-2026-001-P1 — healthy plate, representative of 6 of 7 from this batch. AGAR-2026-001-P7 — the single plate lost to contamination.

Full set of plate photos and the LC jar status is on /lab.

3. Financials

19 confirmed ledger entries in April. USD shown primary, INR in parens. USD is whatever the ledger captured on the day — no month-end re-conversion, so totals match the on-record figures exactly.

USD INR
Inflow (self-funded, 2026-04-17) +$1,077.70 +₹100,000.00
Outflow — lab equipment $141.51 ₹13,141.93
Outflow — lab supplies & consumables $197.61 ₹18,552.20
Total outflow $339.12 ₹31,694.13
Net change +$738.58 +₹68,305.87
Operating balance, 2026-04-30 $738.58 ₹68,305.87

Largest single line was capital equipment (a 23 L autoclave) at $97.12. The rest is small consumables — culture media, sterilants, glassware, tape, tissue.

Per-line vendor, item, and price detail stays private: itemized purchase data is competitive information once we're operating at scale, and it isn't useful to the broader audience. Aggregates and category splits are public; specifics go to existing investors on request as part of the quarterly audit.

4. Production progress

Zero kilograms harvested in April — expected. The path to a first harvest runs agar → liquid culture → grain spawn → fruiting block; we are at the agar→LC transition, and the LC step failed on first attempt.

9 units created:

  • 7 agar plates (AGAR-2026-001-P1 through P7). 6 healthy, 1 contaminated (P7).
  • 2 LC jars (LC-2026-001-J1 primary, J2 sterility control). Both contaminated.

5. Public proof

  • Batches: /lab — AGAR-2026-001 and LC-2026-001 with full event timelines.
  • Lineage: /lab/lineage — MOTHER-2026-001 (purchased mother culture) → AGAR-2026-001.
  • Ledger: /ledger — every April transaction with date, amount, category, description.

6. Risks and failures

1. LC-2026-001 fully lost. Both jars contaminated by April 29. The uninoculated control jar going down points the failure upstream of inoculation — the April 19 autoclave cycle didn't hold sterility. The autoclave's mechanical timer (not pressure-linked) was the likely culprit. Cost: $0 in equipment (jars reusable), ~$1 in media, and 10 days of incubation time.

2. AGAR-2026-001 pour technique flawed. Plates poured too thick (11 g PDA vs. ~6 g standard for 150 ml water); condensation built up and raised the contamination risk. P7 was the casualty. Target for next batch: 15–20 ml per plate.

3. No sterility control on the first agar batch. Without a clean control plate, there was no way to isolate inoculation-side contamination from autoclave or environmental contamination on Batch #1. The LC batch added a control jar (Jar 2) — which is exactly what surfaced the autoclave issue.

7. Next month (May)

  • Run LC-2026-002 with a pressure-verified autoclave cycle (not timer-based) and a sterility control jar.
  • Pour AGAR-2026-002 with corrected technique (~15–20 ml per plate).
  • Calibrate the autoclave with 5-min and 10-min characterization tests.

8. Decision log

  • 2026-04-20 — Pour-volume recipe for agar is wrong. Cutting PDA-to-water ratio toward ~6 g / 150 ml; target 15–20 ml per plate.
  • 2026-04-29 — Pausing new LC attempts until the autoclave is calibrated. Running more cycles without knowing what the timer actually does would just produce more failed jars.
  • 2026-04-29 — Sterility control jars become standard. Every LC batch from here on includes at least one uninoculated jar in the same autoclave cycle. The discipline paid for itself the first time the autoclave failed — on LC-2026-001.

Questions or corrections → Telegram.