Website | Twitter | One-Pager | Support Our Work

This chapter has been written by Louise Borreani and Pat Rawson, with insightful reviews and contributions (in no particular order) from Marcus Aurelius, Sebnem Rusitschka, Vincent Katchavenda, Jacques-André Fines Schlumberger, Louis Schwab, Scott Morris, and Terex Price.

---

Ecofrontiers is a research and advocacy effort with two overarching objectives: (1) improve the public and private funding environments for Web3 natural assets, and (2) enhance the efficacy of projects devoted to sustainable causes within the blockchain ecosystem.

In this blog, we present a sample chapter drawn from Ecofrontier’s first report: New Frontiers in Eco-Capitalism: Public Architectures for the Production of Natural Capital. The report establishes an “Environmental Finance Stack,” for “Eco-capitalism 2.0,” a framework encompassing six material and conceptual layers that are collectively responsible for the production of natural capital assets. The sample chapter published today details the Asset Layer by presenting what we believe to be a first of its kind mapping for green crypto-assets.

The publication of this sample chapter is also an invitation to potential partners who share interest and commitment to natural capital. The team is seeking collaborators for:

• Peer reviewing our work

• Amplifying our social presence and voice

• Legitimizing our work as public partners

• Helping us approach and acquire research financing, such as grants, sponsorships, and funding platforms.

Your involvement can significantly advance the mission to bridge traditional environmental finance to Web3. Those interested in engaging with Ecofrontiers are encouraged to click here to explore potential collaborations.

---

Introduction

“Through an integrative data ecology, our currencies and all global liquidity can be intrinsically bound by biophysical carrying capacities.”— Rawson (2020), Cryptospheric Ecotechnics

Assets are the oxygen of markets, and understanding the types of “green” crypto-assets that exist, and can exist, is the goal of this chapter. A green asset, in comparison to a typical financial asset, is understood as a transferable financial object that generates a positive impact for the environment while providing economic benefit to its holder. Per our stack metaphor, the green crypto-assets explored in this chapter are ultimately issued by crypto-institutions who, hoping to improve the ecological state of the underlying material reality, administer protocols that control the governance surface, supply dynamics, and distribution of these assets through technical smart contracts, legal-institutional negotiation, and socioeconomic intervention. Once existent on a public blockchain, these crypto-assets are exchanged in the open market layer situated above.

This chapter begins by overviewing existing efforts and taxonomies for classifying green assets. By doing so, it establishes fertile ground for what the authors believe to be an early first attempt at cohesively mapping out the types of present and possible green crypto-assets. For each identified crypto-asset type or subtype, a brief discussion of the nature of the asset and insights into their ongoing industry development follow.

Given Web3’s rapid evolution, our Ecocapitalism 2.0 mapping does not attempt to formalize any sort of strict or overly pedantic taxonomy for green crypto-assets. Rather it strives to highlight the novel and organic principles that underpin their design, such as their intrinsically hybrid, composable, and synergistic potential. Once explicated, these principles allow stakeholders in the public and private sectors to see with fresh eyes the fluid nature of all present and future green asset taxonomies. Ultimately, this fluidity unlocks the realization of novel use cases that serve people and the planet beyond existing green assets. We close the chapter by sketching out three examples sitting at the present edge of the green asset ecofrontier.

Green Asset Taxomania!

Every green asset taxonomy[1] enforces a “commonly agreed set of green definitions that can be used by other[s]”[2] to build consensus and legitimacy in international political, scientific, and financial communities around the material sustainability of environmental activities and investments. The climate crisis, among other ongoing environmental crises, produces the ongoing and urgent need to understand the underlying material impact of investments, whether negative or positive, and to direct investment and policy-making resources towards what is truly green while diverting support from what is not. Many governments are developing green taxonomies, and their exponential proliferation is denounced by critics as taxomania—an overabundance of definitions and evolving terminologies causing market fragmentation that undermines sector growth.[3]

Large players include China, whose recently updated Green Projects Catalog aligns with international standards by excluding fossil fuels and focusing on the triple goals of mitigating climate change, improving the circular economy, and eliminating pollution.[4] In the EU, the ongoing development of the EU Taxonomy focuses on six environmental objectives: Climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources, transition to a circular economy, pollution prevention and control, and protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems. Additional taxonomic criteria for water protection, circular economy, pollution prevention, and biodiversity preservation are being developed through the EU Platform on Sustainable Finance.[5] Many nations, such as Russia, South Africa, and South Korea, are in the process of establishing draft taxonomies that broadly align with the EU’s groundwork. Other countries like Japan, Malaysia, and Mongolia have introduced their own taxonomies emphasizing climate change and sustainable resource use; Bangladesh, Canada, Indonesia, Singapore, and the UK, are developing taxonomies in alignment with international sustainable finance frameworks.[6]

Beyond states, the private industry is developing tools to understand the impact of natural asset investment portfolios. These tools leverage their own models and taxonomies to identify and valuate natural assets. For example, one of the most used tools is the natural capital project from Stanford University, InVEST, which offers an open-source collection of complimentary software tools that assess and aim to quantify the value of the life-affirming goods and services provided by nature. In essence, the toolset identifies the cost of the negative externalities produced by socioeconomic activities, helping identify opportunities for market intervention. This helps public and private institutions manage natural resources while navigating the inevitable compromises different environmental management practices invoke.[7]

“InVEST enables decision makers to assess quantified tradeoffs associated with alternative management choices and to identify areas where investment in natural capital [emph added] can enhance human development and conservation […] InVEST returns results in either biophysical terms (e.g., tons of carbon sequestered) or economic terms (e.g., net present value of that sequestered carbon).”[8]

Another example is the Exploring Natural Capital Opportunities, Risks and Exposure (ENCORE) software—“a tool to help users better understand and visualize the impact of environmental change on the economy.”[9] In our stack metaphor, we can understand these types of private industry tools as data layer visualizations that segregate the whole underlying material reality into parts where the financial abstractions of eco-capitalism—such as green assets—are designed more effectively.

Nevertheless, all present green taxonomies and tools face similar conundrums. In the authors’ opinions, the over-academization of state-issued taxonomies and the over-institutionalization of their drafting process have rendered them excessively complex, operationally costly to act upon, and difficult to scale to millions of environmental changemakers—a necessary condition for combatting plural biospheric crises. Furthermore, Web3 throws a huge wrench into all existing taxonomies: new types of green crypto-assets are now possible, and in parallel, existing green assets are being ported on-chain en masse. According to the Bank of America Institute, “traditional asset tokenization may reach $16tn+, transforming infrastructure and markets over the next 5-15 years”.[10] Web3’s entry into green asset production demands updates to these myriad taxonomies and highlights the need for more flexible taxonomy construction practices.

To be comprehensive, all asset taxonomies moving forward green or otherwise must acknowledge the plural intrinsic properties (e.g. supply or inflation rate) and utilities (e.g. collateralization) afforded by programmable crypto-assets:

• Composable: A single crypto-asset can hold multiple roles across varying institutions and protocols. Take for example the utility of collateralization: the institutional capacity to collateralize assets for the production of currency has historically been limited to large, typically state-adjacent financial institutions. Today, many different crypto-assets are used to produce stablecoins with their own institutional governance. Taking this example one step further, Web3’s composability can produce novel cryptoeconomic systems that transcend current financial products. Imagine: tokenized equity in a renewable energy project used as collateral to mint a stablecoin exchanged as a local currency, presenting a novel “green currency” based on the financing of clean energy. The end of this chapter will explore three cryptoeconomic design sketches that further exemplify crypto composability.

• Adaptable, or evolutionary: Crypto-assets can change properties, utilities, and therefore regulatory definitions over time. Imagine a natural capital crypto-asset whose supply adjusts automatically based on some underlying material condition. Crypto’s potential transience has already evoked legal response: Ethereum’s legal classification by US regulators as a commodity or security has been recognized as having the potential to change depending on its evolving distribution and “sufficiently decentralized” institutional make-up.[11] Certain existing green tokens, such as the Toucan Protocol Base Carbon Tonne, began as centralized carbon offsets produced by Verra, and have since been transformed into fungible tokenized offsets.[12]

• Modular: In the case of natural crypto-assets, modularity refers to the design principle where different green crypto-assets can be minted independently and cumulatively to represent the underlying material reality of a designated conservation or restoration area. Regardless of their specific protection or restoration categories, modular crypto-assets can be territorially stacked in a flexible manner, enabling a multifaceted approach to environmental initiatives and pinpointing diverse ecological benefits. With modular green crypto-assets, conservation and restoration efforts can be better customized and adjusted by integrating different assets to meet specific environmental goals for a single overlapping territory.

  In general, the unprecedented programmability afforded by Web3 makes assets more hybrid, diverse, and of an overall higher complexity. Similar to Ecocapitalism 1.0’s InVEST and ENCORE softwares, Web3 tools enabling the analysis and rating of green asset portfolios are being developed to demystify this complexity, such as Particula’s “data and rating platform for digital environmental assets… [which collects] data around 500 digital environmental assets in a standardized way” and compares them “on the basis of more than 300 dimensions.”[13] In general, crypto-assets enable the private sector to test new economic and green business hypotheses previously excluded from the sphere of the possible, such as the Silver Gun Hypothesis, which proposes the global collateralization by Central Banks of carbon assets to produce green, carbon-backed currency.[14]

  Ecocapitalism 2.0’s Green Crypto-asset Mapping

  Following our summary of existing green taxonomies, this section maps out green crypto-assets. The table below offers an at-a-glance overview of the mapping, which is followed by high-level takeaways and separate discussion for each asset type and subtype. The following column properties are introduced by the table:

  • Type and subtype: “Type” refers to the overarching categorization that a green crypto-asset belongs to, defined by its shared fundamental characteristics or a unified regulatory or framework alignment. Conversely, "subtype" describes further subdivisions within a primary type, characterized by nuanced distinctions in functionality, utility, or alignment with specific environmental initiatives. It is crucial to note that our demarcation between types and subtypes does not adhere to strictly delineated boundaries. For example, various subtypes of environmental process tokens could potentially be consolidated into a singular type. However, the distinct initiatives and their respective impacts on the underlying material reality advocate for separation and sequential discussion of each subtype, acknowledging their specific nuances.

  • Legal dependency: This parameter denotes the degree to which such an asset can effectively function and confer its intended economic or environmental advantages without substantial reliance on formal legal frameworks, including regulation, arbitration, or enforcement as typically exercised by state authorities. Low legal dependency means these green crypto-assets can ostensibly operate with relative autonomy, employing intrinsic, often automated, mechanisms to institute transparency and trust, thereby mitigating the necessity for an external legal or regulatory party to ensure functionality and the realization of intended benefit. In short, legal dependency identifies the asset's inherent capability to self-regulate and manage potential disputes or disruptions, while still aligning with broader legal and ethical standards.

  • Materiality: The degree to which the intrinsic and extrinsic characteristics of an asset are interconnected with its tangible reality; its level of abstraction. This concept not only encompasses the physical and measurable aspects of the asset but also intricately links its qualitative and quantitative properties to the palpable, material world. Therefore, the principle of materiality scrutinizes the extent to which the properties of an asset—whether tangible or intangible—are anchored in, influenced by, and have consequential relevance to the physical, substantive reality. This involves a thorough examination of how variations in the material realm—spanning from physical alterations to fluctuations in tangible value—exert a pivotal impact upon the intrinsic and marketable attributes of the asset. Consequently, materiality necessitates a meticulous assessment, discerning the quantifiable and qualitative tethering of an asset’s properties to its material existence and subsequent implications for valuation, utility, and strategic management within a bounded context.

  • Novelty: The origin and uniqueness of an asset, dissecting whether it is an original creation (birth) within Web3, or a tokenization (rebirth) of pre-existing markets. An asset is deemed "novel" if it manifests intrinsically within the Web3 space, demonstrating unique properties or utilities distinct from assets in conventional markets. Conversely, an asset experiences a "rebirth" when it represents a tokenized adaptation of a pre-existing, traditionally traded asset, transposed into Web3 to exploit public blockchain-based advantages while maintaining linkage to established market entities. The concept of novelty thus emphasizes the asset's origin and transition to Web3, offering insight into its inherent characteristics and market dynamics.

    The Green Crypto-Asset Mapping:

    See the below Google sheet for the following mapping (exported as png), as well as functioning links—we welcome quality feedback that adds to the mapping!

    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1muw9swS5aMgvf_flX38kZ_YuHcdNglCC7lkg29QIb4Y/edit?usp=sharing

High Level Insights

Legal Dependency

Certain primary types require a high degree of state involvement, namely ownership, which requires the enforcement of private property rights, and debt, which may require the ability to exercise force to claim and liquidate pledged real-world collateral. While many types can operate without extensive state intervention—such as environmental process tokens —regulatory oversight can provide a level of protection for buyers who expect institutional assurances regarding asset quality.

Beyond use of force, it’s important to recognize the high-level role that the state plays in the regulation and adoption of these new assets. The state can create sandboxes for innovation,[15] attract investors, facilitate public-private collaborations, and support emerging technologies. Alternatively, the state can pursue regulation by enforcement, disrupting capital formation and hurting early innovators. The balance between promoting innovation and overextending regulatory control is difficult to navigate, but ultimately, in the case of green crypto-assets, state institutions mandated to address ongoing environmental crises should not dismiss their potential. Despite their novelty, it’s clear that many of the above assets hold promise in accomplishing the technologically neutral agendas for sustainability, circular economy, and natural asset markets many states are pursuing.

Materiality

The complexity of assessing the degree to which the properties of green crypto assets are coupled to material reality often results in the common ambiguous observation that "it depends." This ambiguity stems from the intricate interplay between factors such as the asset's underlying technology, regulatory environment, economic conditions, and the specific purpose it serves within the broader asset ecosystem and markets.

In designing green assets, there are several key principles that help guide their effectiveness and alignment with their intended goals. While the landscape is evolving, fundamental principles of good green asset design tend to relate to the previous layers discussed in this document, such as the content of the asset’s material backing, the method and transparency of its data collection, availability, and storage infrastructure, and the robustness of the issuing institution as understood by the character of its governance.

Today, audit checklists that comprehensively assess the viability and effectiveness of a token's economics are being standardized, and are highly applicable to the complex diagnostics materiality evokes.[16] While a type such as environmental process tokens have a very clear and methodological approach to materiality—e.g. one carbon token = one tonne of carbon sequestered—subtypes such as the natural asset company require greater due diligence akin to ESG frameworks. Tokenomic checklists serve as valuable tools to evaluate the strength and viability of more ambiguous assets within the broader financial ecosystem, and when extended to green crypto-assets, could include questions like:

• Business-Token Interaction: How well does the token's design align with the business goals and environmental objectives of the project?

• Structural Analysis: Assesses the token's technical architecture, including its scalability, security, and environmental compatibility with its underlying blockchain or platform.

• Allocation and Distribution: Analyzes how tokens are allocated and distributed, ensuring fairness, addressing concentration of ownership, and considering long-term institutional sustainability. Historically, commons-based governance of natural assets has had relatively equal distribution of control. Yochai Benkler, popular author of the Wealth of Networks, emphasizes how open-source software development and collaborative online communities can foster more equal participation and control over digital resources; these communitarian ideals extend to green crypto-institutions.[17]

• Stability and Stress Tests: Tests the token's economic model under various scenarios, including stress tests, to assess its resilience and ability to maintain stability while simultaneously maintaining its materiality.

Novelty

Some of the assets presented in the taxonomy are “Birth” assets and would be novel entries to any green asset taxonomy. But many of these assets are real-world assets (RWA), or tokenized existing green assets. Of note is that certain organizations present a more complex reading grid than the “Birth-Rebirth” dichotomy employed in the above asset taxonomy. The Bank of America Institute proposes a “three bridge thesis” where “tokenized pre-existing traditional assets … continues to exist off-chain in the ‘real-world’ but also exists within the digital asset ecosystem”—as compared to “tokenized traditional assets” where “at no point was token ownership recorded on a ledger.”[18]

Asset Discussion: Understanding the Mapping

Ownership

The primary ownership type can be understood as the act, state, or right of directly possessing green crypto-assets. In traditional markets, the natural assets most commonly owned include property or commodities like precious metals or agricultural products. With Web3, new and evolving objects of ownership are being introduced, such as virtual goods.

Natural Asset Ownership

Tokenized natural asset ownership is the most straightforward case of ownership, in most cases representing fractional property ownership. Direct natural asset ownership contrasts with the non-possessory rights afforded by control in a natural asset company, where the company utilizes, stewards, or conserves the property with the express purpose of improving its environmental health. Understood in terms of asset fractionalization, as discussed in the previous chapter: private fungible ownership over a natural asset implies that it can be reconstituted into a non-fungible whole through some sort of buyout mechanism; in our mapping, a natural asset company lacks this mechanism-of-sale.

While many ongoing experiments are pioneering shared crypto-ownership, especially in real estate, few have tapped into shared ownership as a means of establishing privately held conserved territories, eco-villages, or other regenerative place-based designs.[19] This is explainable in the inherent tension of ownership vs. stewardship: properties possessed as private goods tend to, on a long enough timeline, be eventually realized for profit (and by extension, environmentally degraded); properties of a commons-like nature tend to be well maintained in the long-term due to the fact they are not realizable for profit in the first place. A secondary consideration regarding their lack of adoption is the security-like nature of ownership tokens: security token regulation is constantly changing and is jurisdictionally varied.

Given operational costs, excluding gold,[20] tokenized commodities have yet to scale. The few projects that do exist, such as Agrotoken, aim to build custodial stockpile models that utilize transparent data oracles to provide “Proof of grain reserves”.[21] In general, the tokenization of natural assets challenges current price discovery methods: green coffee, for instance, is mostly priced by centralized futures exchanges in the USA and UK.[22] While on one hand this practice reduces risk across the supply chain, on the other hand, it introduces a high level of financialization prone to manipulation[23] that risks mispricing the asset and centralizing revenues.[24] With coffee and other commodities, Web3’s inherent P2P markets—DeFi—may end up being more efficient than existing market infrastructure once a network of secure and reliable private sector custodians is established.

Green Digital Collectibles

The term “digital collectibles” fails to capture the broad virtual (alternatively: “metaversal”) economies that are emerging in Web3—nonetheless, it is used in this report to refer to the vast tokenized gaming inventories being minted for nascent blockchain-native gaming worlds. These fully composable “inventories” may also be wallets[25] who aim to achieve their own economic objectives as AI-generative agents[26]—a concept that will be revisited later when discussing green supply chains.

While in-game purchases are common to the gaming industry today, their state is not interoperable across games and gaming ecosystems. Web3’s emerging “Game Finance” (GameFi) sphere provides players with remarkable levels of ownership, security, and economic prospects. Web3 game developers have revamped conventional gaming approaches, granting players more control in establishing virtual economies where player-users, and not just game producers, share the wealth. Any NFT or token in one Web3 game can be fully represented in any other game, creating a dynamic history of ownership and usage.

In an environmental context, there exists the unique opportunity to design digital collectibles of high materiality. Today, examples include Ecosapien NFTs—collectibles minted by retiring carbon assets[27]—or the Sovereign Nature Initiative’s experiments in “play-to-conserve” mechanics, where:

“[I]n-game items and cosmetics… gain wild abilities and attributes while saving real animals from extinction… Each time a conservation organisation uploads new data from their field work, in-game avatars as well as item sets and accessories reflect the update.”[28]

As the market for in-game purchases is now in the USD hundreds of billions,[29] all green asset providers are afforded additional financial utility by creating mechanisms that ultimately divert funds from virtual economies to material impact. The primary difficulty lies in connecting distinct projects together in a single, ecologically-minded “autonomous world,”[30] where green crypto-assets take on second lives in relation to each other. In isolation, experiments like the Geo Web who have layered NFTs across the entirety of a virtual earth[31] are not altogether useful, but scale when combined with gamified crypto-assets within and across fully open economies. That is: any green crypto-asset’s potential for impact is immediately exponentialized by the compounding utility of the gameworlds that leverage it in different ways to player satisfaction.

Green Digiphysical Goods

Digiphysical (alternatively: “phygital”) goods typically refer to “goods that exist in physical form, and maintain a cryptographic link to its digital (on-chain) record via NFC [near-field communication] technology.”[32] In contrast to digital collectibles, the virtual half of a cryptonative digiphysical is bound one-to-one with an associated material asset; in effect, digiphysicals, when tightly coupled, are two simultaneous halves of a digital-physical whole.

Their key value proposition resides in their unique enjoinment of virtual and physical attributes, where when tightly coupled the NFT representing the physical asset cannot be transferred without the physical asset in question also being transferred. Looser couplings are also possible, such as Plastiks’ endangered wildlife NFTs, which enter the charitable donor into a lottery for an autographed FC Barcelona T-shirt—an opportunity to redeem the NFT against the good in question (but not the good itself).[33] Other loose couplings include burn-and-redeem, redeem-and-replace, or access functionalities, where an NFT is destroyed, exchanged, or presented in return for a physical good.[34]

Digiphysicalism can improve the environmental quality of goods and services. In the case of goods, the field of green logistics is of particular interest. Green logistics “describes all attempts to measure and minimize the ecological impact of logistics activities.”[35] Digiphysicals can help standardize the measurement of negative supply chain externalities, such as energy costs. Web3’s true innovation is the global liquidity environment every blockchain “smart object” can participate in as its own market agent.

Re-call from the digital collectibles section above that blockchain-based smart objects can manage their own funds as generative object-agents using advanced technologies such as AI. Knowing this, it’s possible to imagine public blockchain supply chains full of object-agents that are capable of autonomously neutralizing the environmental impact of their production, travel, and consumption. The automatization of supply chain process management by smart objects has been posited—typically under the “Industry 4.0”, “Logistic 4.0" , or “Cyber Physical Systems” banners[36]—since 2011.[37] Witthaut et al. (2017) illustrate the unique functionalities these object-agents can perform through a standard shipping container:

“The container ‘itself’ detects that it will not reach the port on time, it ‘picks’ a suitable transportation alternative and ‘chooses’ a local carrier from a marketplace to conduct the transport. The container ‘pays upon collection’ [emph] and reaches the destination punctually, while the financial transaction is being completed at the same time”.[38]

Extending this functionality to green logistics invites speculation on the creation of unique, environmentally friendly processes that can only exist on public blockchains. For example: a cryptonative digiphysical good internationally shipped can self-offset its carbon cost of transport between its point of origin and point of sale, so long as it can reference its transport distance and mode(s) of transport (as, for example, provided by an oracle). To do so, it would calculate its cost of carbon of transport at point of sale, then utilize a public decentralized exchange such as Uniswap to purchase and retire an equivalent amount of tokenized carbon assets. The cost itself could be borne by either the producer, consumer, or the smart object itself (if it has funds) in order for the sale to be processed.

Beyond retirement, the smart object-agents in these blockchain-native supply networks could also be subject to institutional economic interventions by higher-level governance bodies. Imagine a DAO-token issuance policy where consumers mint tokens from purchasing locally-produced goods. This is simply impossible in Ecocapitalism 1.0, where these automations are constrained by fragmented market liquidity and lack of technical interoperability. To summarize: entirely new green crypto-assets, subject to new forms of institutional climate-friendly interventions are possible once cryptonative digiphysicals become the default means for addressing and managing smart objects in supply chains.

In conjunction with the prospective internalization of environmental costs at the nexus of supply networks, the capacity for commodities to manifest their own environmental interactions and histories introduces a novel dimension to their potential impact. Digitphysical entities can embody functionalities reminiscent of a “festival wristband” employed by attendees to facilitate entry, execute transactions with vendors, and redeem rewards.[39] Extrapolating this to an environmental context, one might envision ‘wristbands’ designed to regulate access and facilitate ecosystem services within conservation territories, accruing reward tokens in recognition of participation and verifiable, impactful activities. At its most extreme, we can imagine mechanisms for donation or trade with encountered species utilizing their own “interspecies” currencies.[40] Such a wristband, steered by the monetary policy of a territorially governing socioecological institution, emerges as a potent eco-cybernetic instrument to incentivize and steer both human and non-human entities towards the co-construction of regenerative communities, characterized by impactful collaboration and trade.

Renewable Real-World Assets

In 2021, the founder of MakerDAO presented a bold vision for the creation of “clean money”: stablecoins backed by RWA collateral from “sustainable and climate-aligned assets that consider the long term impacts of financial activity on the environment.”[41] Since then, RWA-collateralized DAI has increased dramatically: as of June 2023, $2.3b of RWA-collateralized DAI existed.[42] Unfortunately, the bold initial vision for clean money has yet to be achieved, and MakerDAO’s current RWA portfolio is not made of ownership of renewable energy infrastructure.

This being said, there is a strong case for the tokenization of renewable energy assets, as these assets hold potential to realize the clean money vision. Web3 offers generalized solutions—programmable accountability, interoperability, transparency by default—to the myriad issues that hamper renewable energy investment, a sector where regulation varies widely, contracts are not standardized, and due diligence is ripe with principal-agent issues.[43] Architecturally, these investment issues[44] parallel the architectural benefits that blockchain introduces to certain types of renewable energy systems, such as solar systems. Distributed solar faces scaling issues due to the “the unavailability of a common platform for communication and information sharing, unavailability of information, improper record keeping and limited information security”—issues that Web3 as a general trust technology mitigates.[45]

Ecological Data Rights

Data tokenization is the process of converting data of any sort into tokens that can be securely transferred without revealing the original data. This process enhances “data security, privacy, and compliance while preventing unauthorized access and misuse.”[46] Datatokens are a new Web3-native asset class, finding no equivalent in the traditional world where the technical access conditions of intellectual property (IP) are embedded into its asset form. All forms of IP, from “patents, datasets, or contractual agreements” are being wrapped inside tokens like IP-NFTS, “enabling easy transfer and collective ownership over such assets.”[47] IP-NFTs are an increasingly popular token model implemented in the decentralized science community,[48] having already proven their usefulness as investment instruments in the biotechnology[49] and longevity[50] sectors.

“The decentralized science movement hopes to become an alternative funding and knowledge-sharing model for scientists… They employ tokens for fundraising purposes, amassing a treasury that is directly used for research funding… Eventually, the project will (hopefully) end up in an IP-NFT (intellectual property non-fungible token) — something like a patent, which is owned by the DAO and governed by all token holders.”— Nature Biotechnology, The Community of the DAO

Data tokenization emerges as a potential data availability solution to the profound challenges faced by AI developers, particularly for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and regions like the EU that are today at a comparative data disadvantage.[51] Recognizing the indispensable role of data in refining and training AI technologies, which are rapidly evolving from mere pattern recognition to advanced environmental forecasting, growing the stock and quality of global environmental data is imperative.

In environmental decentralized science, interest is growing around use cases covering biodiversity DNA sequencing data. Projects such as the Earth Bank of Code propose IP tokens to access sequencing DNA data.[52] SimplexDNA is developing the Franklin token as a “digital eDNA token”,[53] and the New Atlantis DAO aims to create an “open marine metagenomics biodiversity analytics platform”.[54] Space Time Labs, an environmental science and technology venture studio, purports that genetic sequencing data of the natural world holds “the potential for economic gain… [answering] the age-old question for the biodiversity community of how do we make sure a sustaining natural habitat is worth more than cutting it down”?[55]

Ecological datatokens can be considered “green” in the sense that their possession, staking, or exchange on markets generates financial flows that incentivize a growing awareness and understanding of complex ecosystems.  As mentioned in previous chapters, the observation of the biosphere and its constituent ecosystems is the first critical step towards effective intervention. Ecological data informing an ecosystem’s state is of paramount importance for ongoing management of the environment, used in ecological simulations and model development, climate models, verification of research results, meta-analysis, natural resource management, and education (among other use cases).

The market for ecological state data has grown significantly over the years, and many applications requiring high quality ecological data are being developed. New financial branches such as Spatial Finance that integrate “geospatial data with financial analysis and decision-making”[56] and innovative AI algorithms/applications which have the direct aim of conserving or regenerating natural ecosystems are emerging.[57] Example Web3 projects gathering environmental data include dClimate[58] and the Open Climate database from Open Earth.[59] The global environmental monitoring data sector reached several billion USD in 2020, and is expected to double by 2030.

Despite the overall appetite for ecological state data of various types—agricultural, environmental monitoring, weather and climate—available datasets remain limited and siloed across actors, territories, and industries. Web3 offers the possibility to collectivize large data sets to form so-called “data trust DAO[s]”, strengthening the control and market power that data producers have over their data. With this in mind, DAOs hold the potential to democratize the vast wealth afforded by biodiversity and other environmental scientific IP, further incentivizing adequate data collection.

Nonpossessory Rights

Natural Asset Companies

Natural Asset Companies (NACs) are legal entities that manage and govern natural capital, but do not have the right to liquidate/privatize the natural asset. Instead, they “are chartered to protect, restore, and grow the natural assets under their management to foster healthy ecosystems.”[60] In Web3, NAC-like entities tend to be attached to sister DAO entities through some sort of legal tethering. This process enables DAOs to “delegate limited authority over assets transferred from DAO community treasuries (including potentially tokens and IP) to a board/council that is subject to fiduciary obligations solely to the community and DAO”.[61] This is a common requirement for handling natural assets, as direct DAO ownership of natural assets is operationally unfeasible primarily due to legal constraints.

Tokenized shares of Natural Asset Companies, or other institutional control-bearing instruments like network governance tokens, are relevant to this mapping as they have a more or less direct impact on supply and demand for high quality natural capital. Fractionalized control of such entities implies community ownership of a commons, a historically proven governance form that is particularly useful for natural capital co-management.[62] For example, as Nepal’s forests were being threatened to disappear, the government voted in 1993 a forestry act allowing “Nepal’s forest rangers to hand over national forests to community forest groups. The result of this community-led management was a near-doubling of forest cover.[63]

NACs often divert from traditional for-profits. For example, Benefit Corporations (B Corps) are a type of for-profit corporate entity that includes positive impact on society, workers, the community, and the environment in addition to profit as its legally defined goals.[64] Similarly, "steward-ownership" companies prioritize enterprise ethics and mission over financial gain and seek to balance the interests of all stakeholders (including employees, customers, and the community). Steward-owned companies typically embed principles into their legal structure that ensure they remain independent, mission-driven, and governed by those who are most closely involved with the business. One of the most known steward-owned companies is the outdoor clothing brand Patagonia.[65]

In Web3, novel concepts are emerging where NAC shares are being tokenized. One example is the Traditional Dream Factory (TDF),[66] a Web3 co-living space situated in Portugal. TDF oversees diverse food forests and reforestation initiatives, with a unique legal approach where "the land owns itself." In practice, the land is held by OASA, an Association akin to a Land Trust, and legally represents the TDF DAO. TDF Members possess the right to utilize the constructed facilities on the land, coupled with the responsibility to nurture the soil and enhance its vitality. The TDF token facilitates governance over the TDF DAO / OASA, operating similarly to a tokenized NAC share.

Alternative visions of Web3 NAC governance assets include:

• Nature’s Vault Gold Token represents tokenized mining rights to over 150,699 ounces of protected gold. No ownership over the land nor its outputs is granted, as the gold will not be mined. The token grants certain governance rights, whereby token holders can vote on issues such as the “acquisition of new mines, the increase in NaturesGold Token supply … environmental and sustainable projects conducted on preserved mine sites, key partnerships, support of environmental and social initiatives”.[67]

• Ekonavi, a community-staking DAO which aims to multiply regenerative projects worldwide.[68] Ekonavi's role involves validating blocks for Regen Network and IXO, whose block rewards fund DAO decisions on projects to support. Ekonavi tokens translate to control and influence over these funding allocations towards regenerative undertakings—by extension, natural assets.

A visionary progression for NACs involves elevating them through AI governance. Similar to digiphysicals, generative AI-agents could be given limited control over certain aspects of a NAC’s operations, such as management of natural assets. Early experiments with AI already demonstrate greater efficiency than human-governed businesses. Google's 'Democratic AI' stands as an intriguing example, distributing resources based on initial resource disparities—producing results favored by humans.[69] This bold notion aligns with the Digital Gaia’s mission to provide AI “shared insights and knowledge that ground decisions in profit, planet and people”,[70] or bringing the terra0 dream of a self-owned and augmenting forest into possibility.[71] Campaigns to give nature legal status could extend themselves to advocate for giving nature generative agency.[72]

Outputs rights

In exchange for engaging in staking activities or retaining possession of a token, the user is endowed with the privilege to access various types of commodities, such as material yields  (e.g. coffee), financial products (e.g. carbon offsets) or revenues derived from the outputs of a designated natural asset (e.g. a property). This concept diverges fundamentally from traditional notions of ownership, as it exclusively pertains to the entitlement to access and benefit of its outputs.

These types of leases are not alien to the world of traditional finance; profit-à-prendre contracts enable “a person to take part of the soil or produce of land that someone else owns … as in the mining of minerals”.[73] However, with Web3, we deal with innovative crypto-asset utilities, such as staking to earn output rights, a concept with no traditional financial equivalent. Notably, the character of output rights assets assumes a green character when the source of the outputs in question stem from regenerative natural resources. Holders of Coorest’s fruit-bearing NFTrees receive a revenue share from sale of the fruits of “roughly 12 USDC per year,” yet do not own the fruit, the land, or the trees themselves.[74] Situated simultaneously in the energy and carbon sectors, we highlight the Glow token (GLW) which, when staked, renders solar farms eligible to receive rewards for their production of Glow Carbon Credits, a counterfactual offset representing “one ton of CO2 that was not emitted into the atmosphere”[75] due to sustainable solar energy production (see Counterfactual Offsets section below).

SOME OTHER SOCIAL UTILITY OR USE RIGHT

Beyond access to land’s outputs, a specific token may grant privileged access rights or non-equity governance—rendering the token, in some part, a green asset when the DAO in question is ecologically biased. This asset subtype is complex to grasp, and the examples that illustrate its implementation are hugely diverse. We offer three examples to highlight this diversity:

• CabinDAO tokens (₡ABIN) offer the power to curate the “Neighborhood Catalog”—the growing list of Cabin properties available for remote co-living:“By acquiring… ₡ABIN, you gain the ability to participate in the network and govern the DAO. The DAO is responsible for determining the proposal and vetting process, voting to add and remove neighborhoods, managing the protocol and rules for staking, and displaying the catalog”.[76] In essence, token holders gain certain constitutional authority (the rules to change the rules), the power to curate a smart contract whitelist of properties, and the power to set staking rules and other crypto-asset properties. In one proposal, the token holders voted to re-deploy and re-distribute a third version of the token with vastly different properties and distribution than older versions.[77] This highlights the evolutionary nature of tokens as assets whose properties change over time. While ₡ABIN isn’t a green crypto-asset, its use case as a curation token does highlight the potential for self-curating communities to enforce socioecological principles across their membership and their members’ natural assets, e.g. property.

• The Japanese NGO Whole Earth Foundation launched a pilot for “manhole tokens,” where in exchange for submitting a photo of a designated manhole, players of their crowdsourced data collection game received a token to cash out on Line Pay.[78] The token worked to incentivize a certain level of urban ecological data collection—a citywide fetch quest. It was a success, enabling the documentation of 10,500 manholes in 3 days when tested in Shibuya. “It would have taken many years for city engineers to complete the same task”.[79] This urban state monitoring is useful to municipal authorities, as a growing cohort of climate-change aware lawmakers aim to improve the territorial-level resilience of urban zones and their surroundings.[80] Monitoring helps them understand and respond to the infrastructural needs of their constituents, such as increased disaster readiness. Consequently, the manhole tokens prepared the city for inclement weather by lowering the possibility of “damaged manholes” at risk of backing up the water system.[81] Similar projects exist in the emerging decentralized physical network infrastructure sector (DePIN), where network users are rewarded with tokens of various utilities for everything from environmental monitoring to weather station management.[82]

• Tokens could represent the right to utilize or govern certain green or clean infrastructure, such as electric vehicle fleets, without representing ownership in the underlying assets. It’s not unusual for many services today to sell access-based memberships, and following the example of electric fleet membership tokens, Uber has already experimented with membership subscription products.[83] Translated to Web3, Uber memberships are dynamic NFTs that periodically transfer funds to a corporate entity and expire if no funds are available. This business model can be easily re-created with an environmental bias, and today, certain DePIN projects like DIMO are building this type of Web3 rideshare infrastructure.[84]

  Environmental Process Tokens

Environmental process tokens[85] are the green crypto-asset par excellence—flag-bearing assets that aim to represent a specific environmental process, such as carbon sequestration or biodiversity. To ensure fair representation of these environmental processes, their production is institutionally constrained by methodologies defining Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) standards.[86] As a rule of thumb, the stricter the methodology, the fairer its representation of the underlying material reality. Traditionally, these methodologies have been developed, certified, and governed by centralized institutions, whose issued assets are exchanged on traditional voluntary or regulated markets. Today, there are four main companies that develop standards and certify projects: Verra, Gold Standard, American Carbon Registry, and Climate Action Reserve.[87] These issuers and the value chain at large, including project developers and brokers, are under general scrutiny for fraud, double counting, and questionable material results, revealing ample opportunities for Web3 innovation to plug-in and fix structural value chain gaps.[88]

For the past few years environmental process assets have been tokenized due to the value-added benefits of improved market access, transparency, provenance, automation of payments, and integration with emerging digital MRV technologies.[89] Tokenized environmental process assets generally fall into two separate categories: (1) bridged to the blockchain from the traditional world, or (2) natively issued as Web3 assets—meaning that the asset was issued directly onto a blockchain as a token, rather than a private database entirely controlled by a centralized actor such as Verra. Examples include Web3 projects like Nori[90] or International Carbon Registry,[91] who are issuing on-chain native assets, either using open-source standards such as the UN’s CDM methodologies,[92] (e.g. International Carbon Registry, Inuk[93]) or drafting custom methodologies (e.g. Nori,[94] Regen Network[95]).

Environmental process tokens began to be tokenized in 2020,[96] and have steadily grown since. As of August 2023, over 20m carbon offsets have been singularly tokenized through Toucan Protocol—a Web3 platform for carbon tokenization.[97] Institutional infrastructure for tokenization is improving, and Web3 companies such as Thallo are building two-way bridges in collaboration with other registries to move assets bidirectionally between traditional markets and Web3’s open markets.[98] Some projects such as BetaCarbon are tokenizing carbon offsets produced by state entities and not just the private sector—in this case, Australian Carbon Credit Units, issued by Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator.[99]

As highlighted by an article published by Toucan Protocol,[100] there are significant advantages for natively issuing carbon—and by extension, all environmental process assets—as tokens. Those advantages range from increased efficiency through disintermediation, better liquidity, more accurate price discovery, and mitigation of double-counting. Beyond general Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) improvements, tokenization also constitutes new functionalities for native Web3 applications inconceivable prior, such as automated royalties for project developers, where a portion of the asset’s profit is directly transferred to the project developer each time that the asset is traded.[101] Similarly, properties like token demurrage can automate the retirement of assets relying on outdated methodologies.[102]

Carbon Offsets — Negative

Negative carbon offsets (a.k.a. “removal offsets”) are understood in the context of this report[103] as tradable representations of CO2 that have been removed from the Earth’s atmosphere over a long or permanent timeframe.  According to an analysis, removal offsets are expected to represent 35% of the carbon offsets by 2030.[104] Methods to remove carbon are generally classified as either nature-based, such as tree planting, or technology-based, such as Carbon Capture and Storage or Direct Air Capture. A full overview of the technologies used to sequester carbon and their materiality is available via multiple academic and scientific reviews and is not the subject of this report.[105]

As compared to carbon credits (see below section) that are typically exchanged via a state-regulated cap-and-trade system, carbon offsets tend to be traded via the VCM. The size of this market is somewhere between US$1-2b, but is growing fast and projected to surpass $500b by2050 according to Bloomberg.[106] Demand factors for carbon offsets include reaching national emission targets, compliance with carbon tax obligations (e.g. for countries such as South Africa or Singapore), or adoption of global market-based mechanisms such as the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA).[107]

Carbon Offsets — Counterfactual

Counterfactual carbon offsets (a.k.a. “avoidance offsets”) represent avoided CO2 emissions in the context of this report, that is, CO2 which would have been released in the Earth’s atmosphere without the existence of the project financed by the asset. According to an analysis by the Boston Consulting Group,[109] avoidance offsets currently represent about 80% of carbon offset supply.[110]

Oxford University employs an even finer categorization within the realm of carbon offsets, distinguishing between two primary categories: avoided emissions or emission reduction without carbon storage, which encompasses activities such as renewable energy projects, cleaner cookstoves, and methane abatement; and avoided emissions or emission reductions accompanied by short-lived and long-lived carbon storage.[111] The temporality of counterfactual offsets is important, as longer storage periods are generally recognized to be higher quality methodologies.

Carbon Credits

A carbon credit understood in the context of this report is a transferable financial instrument typically certified by state authorities to represent a ceiling on emissions. Consequently, they are generally traded in state-managed markets commonly referred to as emission trading schemes (ETS). Put simply, ETS carbon credits represent “the right” to emit CO2, and have value due to the supply-side scarcity of their issuance and demand-side requirements set by a state regulating authority. Like the VCM, ETS encounter issues with “over-crediting, unclear life-cycle of issued credits, and promoting double-spending due to the lack of transparency and inter-regional communications”.[112]

The first state managed carbon credit system, the Clean Development Mechanism, was created 30 years ago under the Kyoto Protocol, with little innovation since.[113] Today, many fragmented markets exist, such as the European Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS), New Zealand Emissions Trading (EZ ETS), the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Accord (MGA), as well as California’s cap-and-trade program. Given state-imposed market fragmentation, ETS tend to produce illiquid environmental assets with high market transaction costs. Helping mitigate these issues, some ETS legally permit the use of carbon offsets for entities to meet their compliance obligations.

It is possible to find traces of projects aiming to offer on-chain carbon credit systems as early as 2016,[114] yet to date no functional implementation exists of tokenized state-regulated ETS. New proposals involving the partnership of state organizations occasionally appear, such as a well-publicized agreement made between the Venom Foundation and the UAE announced this year.[115] As detailed by Decrypt:

“The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment (MCCE), the Industrial Innovation Group, and Venom Foundation outlines four strategic objectives: reducing emissions, promoting sustainable agriculture, enhancing environmental health, and conserving biodiversity.  [...] As the MoU between Venom and the UAE Government comes into effect, both entities … anticipate the … launch and implementation of the National Carbon Credit System.[116]

It remains to be seen if ETS-style markets will find themselves on-chain, as it’s highly likely that many state authorities are hesitant to adopt the open markets afforded by public blockchains despite their benefits. This being said, carbon arbitrage models where institutions purchase carbon credits from cap-and-trade compliance markets and reproduce them as carbon offsets (e.g. Climate Vault[117]) are in development, and can be expected to be tokenized in the future.

Biodiversity, Plastic, Eutrophisation, and Other Non-Carbon Credits

This hodge-podge grouping of environmental process assets represents non-carbon processes. The most principally recognized today is biodiversity credits—i.e. biodiversity units protected or restored.[118] Evidence exists that these assets are gaining institutional legitimacy. One Swedish bank recently purchased a batch of biodiversity credits from the Orsa Besparingsskog forest.[119] Recently, Verra opened the SD VISta Nature Framework for public consultation, which “outlines how projects can generate Nature Credits, which represent one quality hectare equivalent of biodiversity uplift from a baseline as a result of the project intervention.”[120] CarbonPulse, a climate news platform, forecasts the biodiversity credit market to be worth $18-43b by mid-century.[121] According to a recent report by Pollination, as of September 2023, there are 37 voluntary biodiversity credits schemes and initiatives globally, 26 of which are developed or being developed by private sector-led programs.[122]

Other examples of non-carbon assets include plastic removal, water purification, and sustainable development credits. Registries like Verra have methodologies which aim to produce “enhanced carbon credits” that gain in value through additional certifications—e.g. the Climate, Community, and Biodiversity Standard applied to Verra Verified Carbon Standard.[123] This is also the case on the Regen Marketplace, where carbon assets are sold as “Eco-credits” and additional benefits to carbon are labeled as “co-benefits”.[124]

Many Web3 projects are now producing non-carbon environmental process tokens. Examples of methodologies in development[125] include the ERA Keystone Species Biodiversity Methodology[126] for biodiversity credits, Fibershed for sheep grazing,[127] and EthicHub[128] or Yaupon[129] for agroforestry coffee systems. A batch of “Regenerative Sheep Grazing” tokens are already accessible on the Regen Marketplace, environmental process assets representing high-density, short-duration rotational sheep grazing within vineyard ecosystems.[130]

One key benefit from bringing these new types of assets on-chain is the improved integration with MRV technologies. This is particularly relevant given their complex methodologies. As stated before, Web3 technologies help efficiently structure data from different sources, and pass data between different models, formats and technologies. In addition, asset programmability affords the design of new types of modular stackable credits, such as the Marine Ecosystem Credits proposed by the Open Earth Foundation.[131]

Renewable Energy Certificates

Beyond natural assets, Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) are assets that authenticate the production of one megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity via renewable energy sources for a given year. They are a type of Energy Attribute Certificate (EAC), a “ transferable record or guarantee related to the amount of energy or material goods consumed by an energy conversion device in industrial production.”[132] RECs seek to decarbonize electricity consumption by verifying renewable electricity origin, e.g. wind, hydropower, solar, geothermal, or repurposed waste material.

Envisaging the confluence of blockchain technology and RECs unfolds a panorama of prospective innovations and efficiencies within the renewable energy marketplace. Blockchain, with its decentralized, transparent, and secure ledger system, could streamline REC management, trading, and compliance processes, reducing administrative overhead and fortifying REC market integrity. REC tokenization enables each certificate to be uniquely identified, traded, and tracked throughout its lifecycle—all critical needs for a growing market whose participants include many distributed small-scale producers, consumers, and prosumers. According to the EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum, Web3 enhances EAC markets by precisely and reliably tracking each unit of energy throughout its entire life cycle, as well as the issuance and transfer of EACs in real-time as electricity is generated—a leap in efficiency from prevailing monthly issuance practices.[133]

Examples of projects releasing on-chain RECs include Reneum and Jasmine Energy. The former developed a marketplace selling RECs from 10 existing renewable energy projects,[134] while the latter enables the trading and pooling of tokenized RECs.[135] The Energy Web Foundation is a non-profit entity who has developed the open-source Energy Web Origin (EW Origin) toolset, which intends to streamline and enhance renewable energy procurement in adherence to current standards and regulatory frameworks.[136] Thus far, EW Origin has been utilized by various stakeholders within the energy sector to create decentralized exchanges for green EACs.[137] The HBAR Foundation, has formulated a framework to supply a verifiable and traceable record of tokenized RECs throughout their lifecycle.[138] Multiple projects leverage this framework with a view to generate and amplify the visibility of eco-friendly assets. For instance, BlockScience, a Web3 R&D corporation, used the framework to engineer a pricing structure for RECs and carbon offsets using Automated Regression Market Makers (ARMMs)—a pricing mechanism that groups like assets.[139]

• Debt

Debt instruments are assets that stakeholders use to raise capital or generate investment income for environmental purposes.[140] Debt, while ubiquitously recognized as a catalyst for attracting capital inflows, engenders a multifaceted spectrum of tradeoffs. The leverage that debt introduces onto institutional balance sheets amplifies fiscal vulnerability, particularly by magnifying exposure to interest rate volatilities and the imposition of stringent repayment schedules. While debt can accelerate critical investments in environmental initiatives, the obligatory nature of debt servicing can, paradoxically, divert financial resources away from other pivotal socioecologial imperatives, instigating a precarious balancing act between immediate obligations and long-term sustainability.

Green, Blue, or Impact Bonds

“Green, Blue, Social, Sustainability and Sustainability-linked (GSSS) Bonds represent a new asset class that has gained traction over the past years across developed markets and that can help fill the SDG financing gap. Even though GSSS bonds grew by USD 600 billion in 2021, they still make up just a fraction of the bond market.”- Green Climate Fund, “Making Blended Finance Work for Nature-Based Solutions”[141]

Green, blue, and impact bonds can be broadly understood as debt instruments that are “earmarked to raise money for climate and environmental projects”.[142] These bonds are originated by both private and public institutions.[143] “Blue” bonds are typically tied to marine environmental projects, and impact bonds to any well-meaning cultural or environmental initiative with a positive social or ecological outcome. Traditionally, bonds are certified “green” by independent institutions such as the Climate Bonds Initiative, involving external verification and adherence to their Climate Bond Standard and Taxonomy.[144] Like carbon markets, these types of certifications are meant to legitimize issuer reputation and gain investor trust by demonstrating adherence to standards for transparent, ethical investment. In October 2023, EU legislators endorsed novel criteria for corporations engaged in the issuance of green bonds.[145] This regulatory development aims to mitigate greenwashing and combat deceptive assertions of seemingly climate-friendly initiatives.

Web3 offers the same general benefits to green bonds as it does other types of tokenized environmental assets, i.e. the improved validation, transparency, and auditability of data, scalability, open markets, and payout automation.[146] The Hong Kong Monetary Authority tokenized its first green bond in early 2023, though failed to realize many of these benefits due to their use of a permissioned blockchain.[147] Similarly, Crédit Agricole CIB and SEB are developing their own permissioned green bond networks.[148]

While bonds are useful for centralized institutions to finance large infrastructure projects, it remains to be seen whether or not they can be meaningfully leveraged by smaller, more locally savvy institutions. The bond market is heavily regulated by states, optimized to ensure repayment to investors.[149]  As such, bonds are heavily reliant on state intervention for issuance and enforcement. Frigg, a green bond issuance and tokenization platform, has a 15-point list of issuance requirements,[150] reaffirming that the fixed operations costs for issuing bonds are still high and unwieldy for more localized institutions.

While green bonds have an environmental outcome to determine payout, they may also be green in their denominated currency, implying the potential for “green debt markets” to exist. Imagine: a clean infrastructure project issues tokenized bonds that are only repayable in green stablecoins (see below Currency section). These types of asset relationships help reduce the negative externalities generated by the production of state money, whose debt markets are utilized today to finance many environmentally harmful activities, such as the $1t in fossil fuel subsidies issued by states in 2022.[152]

Green Real-World Asset Debt Finance

Outside bond markets, there exist various debt finance mechanisms that can be tokenized, some of which are crypto-native use cases. An overview of all non-bond debt mechanisms exceeds the bounds of this report. Instead, we highlight two existing examples of debt issuance leveraging green crypto-assets:

• ALMA, an investment management company focused on the sustainability sector, has launched a $13m debt pool—a crowdlending mechanism—on Goldfinch, an institutional Web3-lending protocol. The pool uses debt to finance “carbon reduction project developers” in developing markets, and goes as far to claim that the pool itself is a “carbon neutral DeFi pool.”[153]

• On a smaller scale, Web3 projects like EthicHub are changing the structure of crowdlending by underwriting loans to small, typically organic farmers through staked tokens. The staked “crowd-collateral secures the platform's loans, creating a de-risking system to reduce the perception of risk when investing in smallholder farmers in emerging economies.”[154] While this particular use case is more of an insurance token against default, EthicHub could in the future issue debt tokens—”interest-accruing tokens… representing the debt owed by the token holder”[155]—corresponding to the assets borrowed against their lenders. Nonetheless, the staked tokens as crowd collateral is a crypto-native use case that decentralizes the underwriting process.[156]

Derivatives

Derivatives are financial instruments that derive their value from an underlying green crypto-asset, exhibiting value fluctuations in correspondence with it. Derivatives tend to be settled in the future, and serve various purposes from hedging risk to speculating on future prices. Green derivatives serve as financial instruments that directly tie to environmentally sustainable goals, facilitating investments and hedges in environmental markets through products such as futures, options, or swap contracts. For example, these instruments allow investors to bet on or hedge against the price of carbon emissions credits or contracts linked to the performance of renewable energy projects.

The European Capital Markets Institute—an independent think tank—believes that green derivatives have a key role to play in EU sustainable financing, arguing that they help channel capital towards green investments, hedge risk, improve market efficiency and price discovery, and contribute to long-termism.[157] Building on this, Web3 could unlock new potential in the green derivatives space by facilitating smaller investors and businesses to participate in derivatives trading, which has traditionally been dominated by large and opaque financial institutions. Moreover, with more participants in a decentralized market, more comprehensive and transparent price discovery could be achieved, reducing information asymmetry, curtailing the institutional risks associated with shadow banking, and enhancing market efficiency. Finally, unifying global participants under open markets for green derivatives, including carbon, biodiversity, and commodity derivatives, would mitigate geographical and infrastructural barriers. Despite these potentials, the authors advise skepticism towards green derivatives: given their intrinsic complexity and high level of financial abstraction, it remains to be seen if they have a high level of material impact.

Decentralized derivatives have their own set of institutional challenges, such as regulatory compliance. Certain regulatory bodies like the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) play pivotal roles in governing US derivatives trading with the mission of safeguarding market integrity and protecting investors. Given the CFTC’s recent actions against cryptocurrency-related entities,[158] globally-spanning Web3 decentralized platforms exploring commodity derivatives (e.g. coffee futures), may need to diligently navigate a complex system of national regulatory frameworks to ensure compliance with existing laws and avoid punitive actions.

Carbon Forwards and Futures

A carbon forward is an agreement between two parties to deliver a specified number of carbon assets at a predetermined price in the future. In traditional climate finance, these contracts are typically over-the-counter (OTC), and are customized to suit the specific needs and requirements of both parties. In Web3, new mechanisms are being used to accelerate forward carbon finance. Platforms like SolidWorld are tokenizing carbon forwards in the form of CRISP tokens, which are directly tied on a 1:1 basis with premium prepaid forward carbon credit. Currently, this marketplace offers an attractive return of 13.6%, split into 9.5% in USDC and 4.1% in CRISP-M, the flagship mangrove restoration pool.[159] Concurrently, GreenTrade[160] and Flowcarbon have initiated their own forays into tokenizing carbon forward carbon assets, the latter having created a $845k asset pool of two risk tranches to finance carbon forwards.[161]

Certain risks pervade with carbon forwards, such as issuance-based risks where pre-financed carbon assets may not materialize and market-based risks where the carbon assets may not generate sufficient revenue to manage the debt. Timing also poses a risk if the provision of carbon assets or revenue collection fails to align with debt repayment schedules. Despite the potential, regulatory hurdles in the form of Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements have constrained market access and dampened technical interoperability across Web3 protocols. Consequently, many derivatives like forwards that could stimulate green investment are stifled by shifting regulatory landscapes.

Unlike forwards which gravitate towards the bespoke, futures contracts are standardized products, helping mitigate counterparty risk and bring additional liquidity to the market. Carbon futures have long been used in traditional finance to speculate or hedge against the future prices of carbon allowances. For instance, a deal between Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and CarbonCapture procured 40,000 tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide removal services over five years.[162]

Similarly standardized futures contracts have yet to emerge in Web3, but the authors note the DeFi innovation of perpetual contracts as a starting place for their adoption. Perpetuals are distinguished by their absence of an expiry date, providing traders the convenience to hold positions indefinitely. This contrasts with traditional futures contracts, which necessitate the settling of accounts at a pre-specified expiration date. These instruments derive their value from an underlying cryptocurrency asset and have evolved into a predominant trading product in cryptocurrency markets, dating back to 2016.[163] The mechanics of perpetual contracts involve an embedded funding rate mechanism to ensure that the contract price is tethered to the spot price of the underlying asset. Thus, traders pay or receive funding periodically, ensuring that perpetual contracts remain closely pegged to the actual value of the underlying cryptocurrency. The advent of perpetual contracts within the Web3 ecosystem opens up opportunities for traders to capitalize on the price fluctuations of cryptocurrencies in a leveraged manner, often with the potential to take on positions that are many times the trader’s collateral.

A green Web3 perpetual futures contract, could be strategically designed to intertwine with environmentally sustainable endeavors. It would be a green financial derivative on the blockchain with no expiry date, where the underlying asset, trading mechanism, or utilized funds are intrinsically tied to environmentally sustainable or green projects. The contract would derive its value from an asset that is categorically green, e.g. carbon assets, RECs, or green bonds.

Non-Carbon Environmental Process Derivatives

A wide variety of environmental process derivatives are progressively drawing attention, such as biodiversity derivatives, which refer to the financialization of biodiversity metrics such as species conservation, ecosystem services, or biological resources. They are often formulated to fund biodiversity conservation projects, such as habitat formation or endangered species protection. Risks can emanate from failed conservation efforts, and these derivatives serve as a hedge against unfavorable outcomes, enabling investors and stakeholders to manage their financial exposure in biodiversity conservation projects. Thomas Hahn et al. explains that:

“The government might buy a ten-year biodiversity derivative for a species of concern wherein a predefined amount of funds would be released by the seller if a species’ population falls below a threshold. Basically, the seller (issuer or writer of the derivative) is making the bet that the species population will not fall below the threshold, or that it can take measures to prevent such an occurrence whose costs are within the range wherein they can make a profit given their proceeds from issuing the derivative.”[164]

As early as 2009, scholars have proposed “modified derivative contracts to sell species' extinction risk to market investors and stakeholders.” As an example, Mandel et al. proposed a biodiversity derivatives program using the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker in the US, proving that such a financial instrument “could proactively generate new funding, result in more cost-effective conservation, align stakeholders' interests, and create incentives for private conservation efforts.”[165]

Commodity Derivatives

Commodity derivatives are financial instruments derived from commodities, such as agricultural products (e.g. wheat, corn, soybeans), metals (e.g. gold, silver), and energy resources (e.g. crude oil). Their price dynamics are influenced by various factors, including industrial supply and demand, geopolitical events, investor speculation, and, as exemplified below by the case study of coffee futures, climate conditions.

Coffee futures are derivatives predicated on the future price of coffee beans. Coffee futures enable market participants, including coffee growers, distributors, and investors, to mitigate risk by locking in prices for future delivery or sales. Climatic risk, such as temperature, rainfall, and altitude, profoundly affect coffee yields. This sensitivity exposes producers and traders to substantial risk associated with climate change, as prolonged droughts, unexpected frosts, or excessive rainfall cause high price fluctuations. With futures, they hedge against unfavorable weather conditions and corresponding price volatility, thereby safeguarding their financial interests.

Their benefits being acknowledged, futures are nonetheless financial abstractions that durably impact global spot prices through their price discovery. Today, the reference price for coffee, known as the C-price, is primarily quoted from the prices of the ICE exchange in New York and LIFFE exchange in London.[166] As mentioned earlier in this chapter, while these standardized coffee futures products help reduce risk across the supply chain, they also introduce a high level of financialization prone to manipulation that risks mispricing the diversity of coffee vintages while diverting revenues away from commodity producers to intermediaries.[167]

Web3’s fair and transparent pricing mechanisms, such as automated market makers, may end up being more efficient than existing market infrastructure, helping determine a fairer C-price. DeFi’s intrinsic P2P market structure presents an opportunity to enhance inclusivity in the trading and management of commodity derivatives; with it, farmers could directly lock prices in advance without centralized intermediaries, mitigating information asymmetry while expanding market access. Alternatively, multiple C-prices could be established based off of new crypto futures products as determined by vintage certification, ensuring that farmers are rewarded with higher prices for producing high-quality coffee or managing their landholdings in materially sustainable ways.

Power Purchasing Agreements

In the electricity forward market, Power Purchasing Agreements (PPAs) essentially act as long-term electricity forward contracts, helping hedge against the price volatility inherent to energy markets. The buyer, often an electricity supplier or a large-scale electricity consumer, agrees to purchase a specified amount of electricity at a predetermined price, effectively securing a stable and likely competitively priced energy supply. Such agreements enable consumers ranging from large-scale industries to smaller commercial businesses to procure electricity directly from the producer. This ensures energy security and price stability over the term of the contract, which “typically span 8-25 years”.[168]

Academic discourse surrounding PPAs often underscores their pivotal role in mitigating price volatility risk and making renewable energy projects viable by guaranteeing steady revenues. PPAs frequently correlate with renewable energy projects, fostering symbiotic relationships between sustainable energy production and conscientious energy procurement. Today, Google is using PPAs to work towards100% renewable energy utilization, aiming to ensure that consumed electricity is matched with equivalent renewable energy generation.[169] Web3’s foray into tokenized PPAs is still relatively young, but projects like Gigawatt are beginning to explore these types of infrastructure-scale RWAs.[170] PPA tokenization has been previously attempted by WePower (2018), which attempted to build a marketplace to buy, sell and trade long-term PPAs.[171]

Green Liquidity Provider Tokens

In principle, any liquidity provider token (LP token) that contains at least one green crypto-asset is in part green. LP tokens are produced by adding liquidity to constant function market maker decentralized exchange protocols, such as Uniswap pools. LP tokens are similar to dynamically hedging options contracts.[172] Uniswap’s algorithm replicates “the negative delta of long put options on the assets it holds as reserves through dynamic hedging… by incentivizing external traders to adjust the reserve quantities through price discrepancies with other exchanges.”[173] Alternatively, LP tokens can be understood as “perpetual short straddle[s]… swap[s] of gamma risk for a perpetual stream of payments from trading fees.”[174] Holding LP tokens that market make green assets is therefore a green derivative unique to Web3.

While many solutions are being developed to address impermanent loss—the opportunity cost incurred by actively LPing instead of simply holding the assets of a liquidity pool—we highlight the potential of the concept of Impermanent Gain (IG). Sitting contrary to LP tokens, IG is an innovative financial derivative in the context of decentralized finance.[175] IG derivatives are not conventional assets, but aim to hedge the impermanent losses incurred by LP tokens. IG derivatives operate with a predefined time limit and a specified starting price (referred to as the 'strike' price) to determine gains and losses. While their core value proposition pertains to risk management, IG's pertinence as a "green derivative" emerges when considering its potential application to scale liquidity provision for green Web3 liquidity pools.

Green Yield Tokens

Yield refers to the return on an investment (rate payment), expressed as a percentage — i.e. the income generated from that investment over a specified period. Yields can take various forms, such as debt yield (income from lending) or staking yield (income from validating blocks or deposits). When packaged as a transferable unit, yields become assets. For example, yield derivatives, such as future yield contracts, are financial contracts whose value is derived from the expected future yield of an underlying asset or financial instrument. Another illustration are interest rate swaps (IRS): Instruments enabling the exchange of two yields (typically a fixed rate payment against a floating rate payment).

The difference between yield and output rights is subtle. Output rights relate to the rights on the product of an asset — e.g. rights on the revenues of fruits produced by the natural asset tree. Interest, on the contrary, is a utility of an asset. Put differently, yield is not what an asset produces, it is what an asset earns. For debt, yield is a payment for underwriting risk; for staking, yield is a payment for validating blocks.

In traditional finance, participants have used future yield contracts with a notional value exceeding $400 trillion as hedging mechanisms. Those financial instruments may bear a conditional green aspect, as shown by the introduction from Crédit Agricole CIB of a green IRS in Asia-Pacific capital markets, where a “green feature” was introduced to “the hedge wherein the preferential fixed rate paid by the borrower was linked to the underlying facility’s green classification… [which] steps up to non-preferential if the Green Condition fails.”[176]

Within the burgeoning DeFi landscape, projects like Pendle Finance aim to integrate the yield derivatives market.[177] Pendle Finance enables users to tokenize and trade future yields from diverse DeFi protocols. Pendle Finance's innovation centers on creating a market for standardized yield tokens divided into principal and yield components, facilitating their exchange on a dedicated automated market maker.

In this context, green yield tokens emerge as a novel innovation combining yield instruments with environmental sustainability. Green yield tokens provide an opportunity for portfolio diversification by batching assets with potentially different risk-return profiles. Concrete applications of green yield tokens may include the packaging of interests earned from Debt assets, other derivatives such as Carbon Forwards, or green crypto-assets with some sort of staking utility.

Parametric Insurance

At their core, parametric solutions represent a distinct form of insurance coverage.[178] Instead of compensating for actual incurred losses, these solutions focus on the likelihood of a predefined event occurring. Such arrangements involve underwriting payments triggered by specific future events. In 2018, a parametric insurance safeguarding the ecological state of a natural ecosystem (i.e. coral reefs) was used for the first time.[179] The insurance activated a claims payment when hurricane wind speeds crossed a defined threshold, enabling stakeholders to swiftly restore the coral reef in the affected region, preserving both the reef and its dependent local community.

To scale, parametric solutions require meticulous risk score calculation. Risk scores are formulated by harnessing a robust array of data to build risk score maps. Fathom, an example software tool for mapping risk, can calculate flood risk metrics for any location for an expansive spectrum of climate scenarios. Fathom provides a visual and quantitative representation of risk across different geographies and climates, which are assimilated downstream into insurance models and pools.[180]

Essentially, assets within an insurance pool are weighted according to their respective risk scores, ensuring that the collective risk is appropriately balanced and mitigated across the entire asset pool. The potential of such risk-weighted assets in the realm of parametric insurance is immense. They enable insurers to architect asset pools with tailored risk profiles, permitting the creation of bespoke structured insurance products that are inherently customizable for different types of coverage—whether it be for natural ecosystems, infrastructure, or local communities. The amalgamation of precise risk-score calculations and strategically balanced risk-weighted assets/pools offers a novel, data-driven pathway to safeguard against the multifaceted risks posed by our dynamically changing environment.

Despite its open markets and high potential to scale P2P insurance, Web3 parametric insurance remains relatively unexplored. Currently, some Web3 parametric insurance models are being tested, such as the one produced by the collaboration between Shamba Network,[181] DIVA Protocol,[182] and FortuneConnect.[183] The data produced by Shamba “has been utilized… to provide insurance to 150 Kenyan herders who are vulnerable to drought”.[184] These pilots, in tandem with the size of the insurance market and the dearth of natural assets underserved by insurance products today, offer a compelling growth narrative for this asset type.

In the past, the authors have proposed a design for an ecosystem-specific, cryptonative mutual parametric insurance.[185] The design focuses on safeguarding environmental assets within a designated local economy. Risk is underwritten by "shield miners'' participating in a shared insurance staking contract. Governance of the contract and the associated claims processes would be tailored to each local economy, with underwriter capital attracted via global cryptocurrency markets. Notably, the staked insurance contract tokens would grant shield miners periodic prorated rewards, and  insurance tokens—received by stakers—could be freely traded on secondary insurance markets. In this sense, those tokens inherently represent green assets given that they underwrite a desirable state for a particular environmental system—a potent means of conservation and when activated, restoration.

Currency refers to a system of money that, as a unit of account, has the potential to be used as a network means of exchange or store of value.

Green Money

“The Sustainable Finance principle which espouses backing Dai with sustainable and climate-aligned collateral, is a concept which was originally ratified by the Maker community as a part of the 5 Foundation Principles… It’s not a new concept, it’s an old idea whose time has come. But it’s not as simple as just making sure some of the RWA collateral is in Solar and Wind assets. To be serious about putting up a fight against the end of the world as we know it, the Maker community will have to truly adopt the principle of Sustainable Finance at the core of Maker’s culture and entire collateral strategy.”

— Rune Christensen, The Case for Clean Money

Green money (alternatively: “nature-backed currency” or “clean money”) refers to currency minted by leveraging green crypto-assets in a reserve (a.k.a. “vault”). Collateralized tokens are well-established, with prominent examples including dollar-denominated stablecoins such as MakerDAO’s DAI, and Euro-denominated alternatives such as Mento Euro (cEUR).[186] The call for green money has gained traction within Web3, exemplified by the "The Case for Clean Money” manifesto by MakerDAO’s founder outlining how DAI stablecoin issuance could catalyze global sustainable investment.[187]

Green Flatcoins

The stability of low volatility (i.e. stable) crypto-assets hinges on the quality of their collateral. To this end, Mento and MakerDAO's fiat-pegged stablecoins are backed by diversified crypto reserves. The “fiat” aspect of their peg reference introduces risk, however: the governance power to set USD properties, such as supply or interest rates, rests entirely with existing centralized institutions (i.e. the Fed).

To counteract state institutional risk, Coinbase has promoted the concept of inflation-adjusted flatcoins, low-volatility crypto-assets that primarily aim to: (1) preserve purchasing power and (2) hedge against traditional financial system risks.[188] Flatcoins represent an emerging currency subtype where the value of the token, serving as a store of value, adjusts over time to mirror shifts in inflation. The fictional "i-DAI" (Inflation Corrected DAI) proposed by the cryptoeconomic design firm BlockScience illustrates this crypto-asset concept. i-DAI's value would be tethered to a reference time, and its price would dynamically adjust in response to inflation variations, maintaining the purchasing power for i-DAI holders.[189]

To the authors’ knowledge, the possibility of flatcoins pegged to environmental indicators remains relatively unexplored. While an asset-backed green stablecoin would focus on maintaining stability through collateralizing green crypto-assets, a green flatcoin could feasibly go one step further by adjusting value based on real-time environmental indicators. A natural asset-backed flatcoin could, in principle, mitigate inflation concerns by being tethered to a resource whose real-world utility and value is less susceptible to inflation. Beyond inflation-adjustment, green flatcoins could aspire to dynamically adjust their value based on environmental state for some bounded territory. Whether or not these types of green crypto-assets will emerge depends on their overall viability and their resilience to economic shocks, and at this stage in the industry, more research is required.

Green Tracercoins

Similar to flatcoins, a framework proposed by the Cogito Protocol introduces a novel asset subtype termed tracercoins—stable assets characterized by their reliance on artificial intelligence (AI) mechanisms and pegging to non-financial indices.[190] The fundamental premise of tracercoins involves anchoring their value to comprehensive indices encompassing a spectrum of non-financial indicators and metrics. These indices extend beyond the conventional financial realm to encompass dimensions such as social or environmental progress. For instance, Cogito Protocol envisions a Green Coin (GCOIN) that will be expressly designed to trace and mirror the performance of a green index.[191] This index functions as a quantifiable measure of societal advancement toward the ambitious goal of achieving a net-zero economy. The aim of GCOIN is to establish a correlation between its value and this socioecologically beneficial objective.

The operational mechanics of Cogito Protocol’s tracercoins are anchored in algorithmic stabilization techniques, encompassing both AI and conventional mechanism design. To safeguard the stability of its assets under diverse circumstances, Cognito proposes a risk-weighted reserve composed of liquid and illiquid assets. The management of the reserve is overseen by an algorithmic stabilization protocol (ASP), which employs a blend of AI techniques referred to as “autonomous stabilization functions.”[192] The ASP operates according to dynamic rules that adjust the risk-weighted reserve, as well as periodic adjustments such as minting and burning tokens (among other mechanisms). Cognito posits that this orchestrated approach collectively maintains the integrity of the soft peg, ensuring a high degree of tracercoin stabilization. Despite these claims, like flatcoins, the novelty of tracercoins demands additional research at this time.

Cryptoeconomic Systems: Towards Novel Use Cases

As mentioned earlier in this chapter, cryptocurrency’s hyper-composability allows for the production of crypteconomic systems that transcend present-day finance. Here, we introduce three fictional design sketches, where green crypto-assets are used to illustrate overall system synergies.

Carbon-Backed Parametric Insurance

In this design, from left to right, carbon offsets are issued and tokenized as representations of greenhouse gas emissions reductions from two local environmental projects. The carbon tokens are however of different subtypes: one is a counterfactual offset project, and the other is a negative offset. The two projects are bundled in a carbon pool—a cryptoeconomic primitive popularized by projects such as Toucan Protocol that “bundle[s] multiple project-specific tokenized carbon tonnes… into more liquid carbon index tokens.”[193]

A liquidity pool is established with a stablecoin (e.g. USDC) and the now fungible carbon index tokens pairing. The stablecoin ensures that the LP tokens issued by the liquidity pool (not to be mixed up with the carbon pool) will tend to be more stable than another volatile crypto-asset pairing, such as ETH. These Carbon LP tokens in the proposed design, represent ownership in the pool and its underlying assets (the tokenized carbon offsets/stablecoin pair).

Carbon LP token holders may stake their tokens as collateral in a parametric insurance staking contract. The staked Carbon LP tokens act as a form of collateral, underwriting an insurance policy for a third local environmental project (in return for a reward subsidy issued by some institutional provider). The parametric insurance contract triggers a payout when specific environmental conditions are met, say, if a drought occurs according to the report of a climate oracle(s). The insurance was set up due to the co-dependencies between the three projects: should Environmental Project 3 fail, it would invalidate the offsets issued by 1 and 2.

Energy-Backed Stablecoin

From left to right, this design sketch starts by identifying a diverse portfolio of clean energy debt issuances, such as solar or wind power infrastructure, as well as an impact bond issuance that has incentivized the development of nearby social infrastructure as well. It then baskets these various RWA investments in a reserve that backs a “clean energy stablecoin.” The yield earned by the debt basket is used for purposes of forward productivity, and is invested in new clean energy infrastructure investments. Through this system of forward purchases, the system encourages investments in green energy projects, which in turn benefits the environment and promotes renewable energy adoption, while stablecoin users can diversify their fiat holdings by utilizing a currency that aligns with sustainable values.

DAO-Governed Water Tracercoin

This last design sketch starts with a cyberphysical sensor network and manual data collection methods that gather real-time hydrological data for some territory, such as water quality, levels, temperature, and usage. The pooled data is accessed via datatokens, and governed by a DAO. Water datatoken holders have governance rights within the DAO, which makes decisions about the use of the data pool, the distribution of its monetized revenues, and other initiatives. Holders can stake their tokens to receive a pro-rata revenue share based on their quantity of tokens and length of time they've staked, incentivizing long-termism. The overall system aims to enhance water management and incentivize data contribution.

An AI system synthesizes the data pool with external oracles that provide reliable and tamper-proof information to formulate an index that encapsulates various aspects of water quality, scarcity, usage efficiency, and other pivotal metrics. This index offers a panoramic view of the state of water resources. The value of a Water Tracercoin is pegged to this AI-generated water index, reflecting the actual state of water resources. As the index adjusts due to more favorable water conditions, such as improved water quality or decreased scarcity, the Tracercoin’s value concomitantly rises, and vice versa.

The specifics of how this tracercoin peg will work depend on the final design of the protocol,[194] but could involve properties and mechanisms such as:

• An Initial Coin Value: When launched, it may have an initial value that corresponds to a specific value or level on the water index. For example, if the water index has a baseline value of 1000, the water tracercoin may initially be pegged at $1 for every index point. So, if the index is at 1000, one water tracercoin would be valued at $1,000.

• Periodic Reconciliation: To maintain the peg, periodic reconciliation is necessary. This involves assessing the current value of the water index and adjusting the value of the tracercoin accordingly. This adjustment can be automated and may occur at regular intervals, such as daily, weekly, or monthly.

• Buy and Burn Mechanism: To increase the value of the water tracercoin if the water index improves, a "buy and burn" mechanism could be employed. If the index goes up, the protocol may utilize reserves to buy back tracercoins from the market, reducing the supply and increasing the coin's value.

• Minting Mechanism: Conversely, if the index declines, the protocol may mint new tracercoins and release them into the market to maintain the peg. This action increases the supply, which can help keep the coin's value stable.

---

Ecofrontiers is a research and advocacy program to provide theoretical and technical knowledge for better accounting and representation of natural capital using Web3. The team offers new and established Web3 projects consulting and advisory services.

Website | Twitter | One-Pager | Support Our Work

---

Endnotes

[1] Accounting frameworks such as the UN’s System of Environmental and Economic Accounting have been omitted from this section, as they are discussed in the prior chapter and stack layer, the Underlying Material Reality.

[2] Future of Sustainable Data Alliance, “Taxomania! An International Overview”, September 2021, https://futureofsustainabledata.com/taxomania-an-international-overview/

[3] Ibid

[4] People's Bank of China, National Development and Reform Commission, and China Securities Regulatory Commission, “The Green Bond Endorsed Projects Catalogue (2021 Edition)”, April 21, 2021, http://www.pbc.gov.cn/goutongjiaoliu/113456/113469/4342400/2021091617180089879.pdf

[5] European Commission, “EU Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities”, https://finance.ec.europa.eu/sustainable-finance/tools-and-standards/eu-taxonomy-sustainable-activities_en

[6] Future of Sustainable Data Alliance, Ibid

[7] Natural Capital Project Stanford University, “InVEST”, https://naturalcapitalproject.stanford.edu/software/invest

[8] Ibid.

[9] Exploring Natural Capital Opportunities, Risks and Exposure, https://encore.naturalcapital.finance/en

[10] Alkesh Shah & Andrew Moss, Ibid

[11] Wassim Alsindi, “TokenSpace: A Conceptual Framework for Cryptographic Asset Taxonomies”, April 2019, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Wassim-Alsindi/publication/334971750_TokenSpace_A_Conceptual_Framework_for_Cryptographic_Asset_Taxonomies/links/5d48504492851cd046a43024/TokenSpace-A-Conceptual-Framework-for-Cryptographic-Asset-Taxonomies.pdf

[12] Toucan Protocol, “Base Carbon Tonne (BCT): A New Web3 Building Block”, Medium, December 21, 2022, https://medium.com/toucan-nest/base-carbon-tonne-bct-a-new-web3-building-block-cae76bca25fd

[13] Particula, “Presentation”, LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/company/particula-earth/about/

[14] Chen Delton, “The Silver Gun Hypothesis: New Model for a Sustainable Carbon Economy”, MAHB, June 12, 2018,

[15] For an example, see: European Commission and European Blockchain Services Infrastructure, “European Blockchain Regulatory Sandbox for Distributed Ledger Technologies”, https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/wikis/display/EBSI/Sandbox+Project

[16] Kampakis, Stylianos, and Linas Stankevičius, “The Tokenomics Audit Checklist: Presentation and Examples from  the Audit of a DeFi Project, Terra/Luna and Ethereum 2.0.” The Journal of The British Blockchain Association vol. 2, no. 6, 2023, 3, https://jbba.scholasticahq.com/article/77551-the-tokenomics-audit-checklist-presentation-and-examples-from-the-audit-of-a-defi-project-terra-luna-and-ethereum-2-0

[17] Yochai Benkler, “The Wealth of Networks – How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom”, Yale University Press, 2007

[18] Their final asset class is “blockchain-native assets” proper, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Solana. These crypto-assets are generally irrelevant to green asset taxonomies.

[19] Kathleen Olstedt, Twitter, March 9, 2023, https://twitter.com/katolstedt/status/1633788701229875202?s=46&t=-Sy9W4Qrpa-A0sPLqZN7DQ

[20] The tokenization of gold has been under ongoing experimentation since the 20th century, see Stanford, “E-Gold”, https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/2010-11/Bitcoins/e-gold.html

[21] Agrotoken, “Agrotoken Whitepaper”, 2020, https://agrotoken.com/Agrotoken_Whitepaper_ES.pdf

[22] Genuine Origin, “Coffee Prices Explained: A Beginners Guide to Green Coffee Prices”, Medium, September 9, 2021, https://genuine-origin.medium.com/coffee-prices-explained-a-beginners-guide-to-green-coffee-prices-6999089ca599

[23] Financial Times, “Coffee rises on brewing talk of manipulation”, https://www.ft.com/content/76b018c8-8c60-11dc-b887-0000779fd2ac

[24] Rebeca Utrilla-Catalan, Rocío Rodríguez-Rivero, Viviana Narvaez, Virginia Díaz-Barcos, Maria Blanco & Javier Galeano. 2022. "Growing Inequality in the Coffee Global Value Chain: A Complex Network Assessment" Sustainability vol. 14, no. 2: 672. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14020672

[25] Zakai Mill, Twitter, May 15, 2023, https://twitter.com/ZakaiMill/status/1658110131601649668?s=20

[26] “Generative agents — computational software agents that simulate believable human behavior” were invoked in a sandbox environment. In Web3, these agents would not be bound to a single sandbox, but unlimited across many interoperable gameworlds”.

Joon Sung Park, et al. “Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior”, arXiv:2304.03442, August 6, 2023, 25, https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.03442

[27] Ecosapiens, “Frequently Asked Questions”, https://www.ecosapiens.xyz/faq

[28] Sovereign Nature Initiative, “Partnerships”, https://sovereignnature.com/partnerships

[29] Statista, “Games - Wolrdwide”, https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/app/games/worldwide#:\~:text=In%2Dapp%20purchase%20(IAP),US%2479bn%20in%202022.

[30] 1k(x), “Autonomous Worlds: The Case for Fully On-Chain Games”, Mirror, May 4, 2023, https://mirror.xyz/1kx.eth/v6HaPiqRvtC_qIeDnyhiC8ICjwtBdLiNhZh4vbqsW-s

[31] Geo Web, “Open Geospatial Information Network”, https://www.geoweb.network/

[32] 1k(x), “Digiphysical Goods: Bringing Programmable Utility to Physical Products”, Mirror, June 14, 2023, https://mirror.xyz/1kx.eth/k5lbpB155Tz_pH7B-7vbtDTTRKrco3u_y5QYUX1YhZs

[33] Plastiks, “Whale from Europe #55”, https://app.plastiks.io/collections/8f64e621ba0573579a2e6af535d8641a

[34] 1k(x), Ibid

[35] Wikipedia, “Green logistics”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_logistics

[36] Markus Witthaut, Henning Deekenb, Philipp Sprengera, Petyo Gadzhanova, and Marcel Davida, “Smart Objects and Smart Finance for Supply Chain Management”, Logistics Journal, 2017, https://www.logistics-journal.de/not-reviewed/2017/10/4610/witthaut_en_2017.pdf

[37] Xun Xu, Yuqian Lu, Birgit Vogel-Heuser, and Lihui Wang, “Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0—Inception, conception and perception”, Journal of Manufacturing Systems vol. 61, 2021, pp. 530-535, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmsy.2021.10.006.

[38] Markus Witthauta, Henning Deekenb, Philipp Sprengera, Petyo Gadzhanova, and Marcel Davida, Ibid

[39]  1k(x), Ibid

[40] For an imagining of this mechanism, see Jonathan Ledgard, “Interspecies Money”, in: John W. McArthur, Homi Kharas, and Izumi OhnoBreakthrough, “The Promise of Frontier Technologies for Sustainable Development”, 2022, 77-102

[41] Rune Christensen, “The Case for Clean Money”, MakerDAO, October 21, 2021, https://forum.makerdao.com/t/the-case-for-clean-money/10684

[42] Steakhouse, “Real-World Asset Report - 2023-05”, MakerDAO, June 27, 2023, https://forum.makerdao.com/t/real-world-asset-report-2023-05/21225

[43] World Economic Forum, “Renewable Infrastructure Investment Handbook: A Guide for Institutional Investors”, December 2016, https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Renewable_Infrastructure_Investment_Handbook.pdf

[44] For an extended discussion of how to approach these issues, see: Solar Best Practices, “Asset Management Best Practice Guidelines (Version 2.0)”, https://solarbestpractices.com/guidelines/detail/foreword-2

[45]  M A C L Gunarathna, et al., “Opportunities for Using Blockchain in Distributed Solar Projects”, IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science no. 1101 (2022): 1, https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/1101/2/022047/pdf

[46] Binance Academy, “What Is Data Tokenization and Why Is It Important?”, April 27, 2023, https://academy.binance.com/en/articles/what-is-data-tokenization-and-why-is-it-important

[47] Clemens Ortlepp, “Introducing the IP-NFT V2”, December 19, 2022, https://www.molecule.to/blog/introducing-ip-nft-v2

[48] Nature Biotechnology, “The community of the DAO”, Nat Biotechnol vol. 41, n° 1357, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-023-02005-1

[49] Molecule Protocol, “The Future of Medicine Belongs to Everyone”, https://www.molecule.to/

[50] VitaDAO, “We’re Tackling Aging With the Power of A Global Community”, https://www.vitadao.com/

[51] Arnold Verbeek & Maria Lundqvist, “Artificial intelligence, blockchain and the future of Europe: How disruptive technologies create opportunities for a green and digital economy”, Innovation Finance Advisory, June 2021, 56, https://www.eib.org/attachments/thematic/artificial_intelligence_blockchain_and_the_future_of_europe_report_en.pdf

[52] Ben Schiller, Ibid

[53] SimplexDNA, “Franklin by SimplexDNA”, January 2023, https://www.simplexdna.com/\_files/ugd/a0b52e_041e5e80281f46c4a2e5c9203a723a61.pdf

[54] Gordon Gould, “Introducing New Atlantis: Unlocking Marine Biodiversity and Blue Carbon”, ReFiDAO, September 9, 2022, https://blog.refidao.com/introducing-new-atlantis-on-gr15/

[55] Ben Schiller, “How a Bank of All the World's Genetic Codes Hopes to Save Nature”, Space Time Labs, February 28, 2023 https://spacetimelabs.ai/media-and-publications/how-a-bank-of-all-the-worlds-genetic-codes-hopes-to-save-nature#:\~:text=The%20Earth%20Bank%20of%20Codes,than%20selling%20their%20natural%20resources.&text=Traditionally,%20economic%20development%20and%20conservation,odds%20in%20the%20Amazon%20Basin

[56] SpatiaFi, “Connecting Economic Assets to Planetary Data to Propel Action on Climate and Sustainability”, https://www.spatiafi.com/about

[57] Wai Chee Dimock, “AI Can Help Indigenous People Protect Biodiversity”, Scientific American, August 17, 2022, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-can-help-indigenous-people-protect-biodiversity/?amp=true

[58]dClimate, “Unlocking the Power of Climate Data for A Sustainable Future”,  https://www.dclimate.net/

[59] Open Earth, “Collectively Building the Climate Internet”, https://www.openearth.org/projects/openclimate

[60] NYSE, “Natural Asset Companies (NACs)”, https://www.nyse.com/introducing-natural-asset-companies#:\~:text=Natural%20Asset%20Companies%20(NACs)%20are,management%20to%20foster%20healthy%20ecosystems.

[61] Paradigm, “DAO Entity Matrix”, https://daos.paradigm.xyz/

[62] Jonah Busch and Kalifi Ferretti-Gallon, “What Drives Deforestation and What Stops It? A Meta-Analysis”, Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 11, no. 1 (2017): 17, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1093/reep/rew013

[63] Emily Cassidy, “How Nepal Regenerated Its Forests”, NASA Earth Observatory, https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150937/how-nepal-regenerated-its-forests

[64] Wikipedia, “Benefit Corporation”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation

[65] Purpose, “The Patagonia Structure in the Context of Steward-Ownership”, Medium, September 22, 2022, https://www.benjerry.com/about-us/b-corp

[66] Traditional Dream Factory, “Discover the Power of Regenerative Co-Living”, https://www.traditionaldreamfactory.com/

[67]  Natures Vault, “NaturesGold Token and Pistol Lake NFT Litepaper”, GitBook, https://natures-vault.gitbook.io/naturesgold-token-and-pistol-lake-nft-litepaper/naturesgold-token/utility-and-pricing

[68] Ekonavi, “Creating Ecological Values”, https://ekonavi.com/

[69] Janus Rose, “Google’s ‘Democratic AI’ Is Better at Redistributing Wealth Than America”, Vice, July 2022, https://www.vice.com/en/article/z34xvw/googles-democratic-ai-is-better-at-redistributing-wealth-than-america

[70] Digital Gaia, “AI Infrastructure for Planetary-Scale Decision Intelligence”, https://www.digitalgaia.earth/

[71] Terra0, “Terra0: A Model for Nature to Regulate and Control Itself”, Google Arts & Culture, https://artsandculture.google.com/story/zwXh9S7M844vAw

[72] Antonia Zimmermann, “Right to ‘Exist’: The Campaign to Give Nature a Legal Status”, Politico, June 2, 2023, https://www.politico.eu/article/right-to-exist-conservationist-campaign-give-nature-legal-status/

[73] Legal Dictionary, “Profit-à-prendre”, https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Profit+a+prendre

[74]  Coorest, “Benefits of Coorest NFTrees”, https://coorest.io/benefits-of-coorest-nftrees/

[75] Glow, “Glow: A Cryptoeconomic System for High Quality Carbon Credits”, September 10, 2023, https://www.icrg.io/whitepaper.pdf

[76] Cabin, “Cabin's Litepaper: A Network of Neighborhoods”, Mirror, October 18, 2022 https://creators.mirror.xyz/O6bTgNYk1eGBPRtAIM66v_OPWWI4nh8lmGCDT9aWylc

[77] Roxine Kee, “CabinDAO: LARPing as a City State”, December 3rd, 2022, https://www.roxinekee.com/blog/cabindao-larping-as-a-city-state

[78] Isabella Steger, “Startup Tekkon Uses Crypto-Crowdsourcing to Spot Infrastructure Problems”, Bloomberg, May 20, 2023

[79] Wrathofgnon, Twitter, October 5, 2022, https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon/status/1577576345600593920

[80] Cynthia Echave, “Territorial Resilience: Pillars for a Holistic Approach of Resilience for Land Use Planning”, Euro-Mediterranean Economists Association, March 2022, https://euromed-economists.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/EMEA_PP_Territorial_Resilience.pdf

[81] Isabella Steger, Ibid

[82] Mason Nystrom, “DePIN and DeREN: Toward a Better Classification of Decentralized Infrastructure Networks”, Variant Fund, July 20th, 2023, https://variant.fund/articles/depin-deren-toward-better-classification-decentralized-infrastructure-networks/

[83] Uber, “Go Further, Get More, and Save With Uber Pass”, https://www.uber.com/ec/en/ride/how-it-works/uber-pass/?\_csid=2usdpFvxSFAps1s0yv87Uw&state=EFQnj62CzuFermaTMEg3vQbj9bDCxCQae7zdUscprfA%3D&effect=

[84] Alex Rawitz, “Building on Polygon: DIMO’s Vision for Web3 Mobility”, June 1, 2022, https://dimo.zone/news/building-on-polygon-dimos-vision-for-web3-mobility

[85] Industry terminology is pending, however, terms such as “environmental assets” or “ecosystem service assets” could also refer to this primary type. The Ecological Benefits Framework is a community Web3 initiative that uses the term “ecological benefit assets,” see: Ecological Benefits Framework, Ibid

[86] Curve Labs & Kolektivo, “Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification Methodologies in Regenerative Finance”, April 2023, https://docsend.com/view/avd6hzqqhfs2hp2p

[87] Elizabeth Curmi, Jason Channell, Ying Qin, Andrea Fleming, Ibid

[88] Patrick Greenfield, “Revealed: Forest Carbon Offsets Biggest Provider Worthless”, The Guardian, January 18, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-provider-worthless-verra-aoe

[89] Apoorva Sahay,  Shannon Hughes, and Josh Henretig, “Beyond The Buzz: What Can Blockchain Do For Carbon Markets?”, Rocky Mountain Institute, November 1, 2022, https://rmi.org/what-can-blockchain-do-for-carbon-markets/

[90] Nori, “How Nori Works”, August 14th, 2020, https://nori.com/resources/how-nori-works

[91] International Carbon Registry, “Explore all Projects”, https://www.carbonregistry.com/explore/projects

[92] Clean Development Mechanism, “CDM Methodologies”, https://cdm.unfccc.int/methodologies/index.html

[93] InukTeam, “Pourquoi faire de la vraie contribution carbone, c’est compliqué”, Medium, November 5th, 2020, https://medium.com/inuk/pourquoi-faire-de-la-vraie-compensation-carbone-cest-compliqu%C3%A9-d953104457fe

[94] Nori, “Pilot Croplands Methodology”, December 15, 2021, https://nori.com/resources/croplands-methodology

[95] Regen Market, “CarbonPlus Grasslands Methodology”, https://app.regen.network/methodologies/carbonplus-grasslands

[96] PRNewswire, “Worlds First Tradable Carbon Token Is Set to Democratize Access to The Most Important New Asset Class For Generations”, December 1, 2020, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/worlds-first-tradable-carbon-token-is-set-to-democratize-access-to-the-most-important-new-asset-class-for-generations-301182669.html

[97] Toucan Protocol, “Technology to Unlock Climate Action”, https://toucan.earth/

[98] Thallo, “Thallo Two-Way Carbon Bridge - Litepaper”, https://docs.thallo.io/

[99] BetaCarbon, “How It Works”, https://www.betacarbon.com/#How-It-Works

[100] Ela Khodai, “Tokenization of Carbon Credits — An Explainer”, Toucan Medium, December 1, 2022 https://blog.toucan.earth/tokenization-of-carbon-credits-explained/?utm_medium=email&\_hsmi=67635430&\_hsenc=p2ANqtz--fdX_0Q6zaJ_FxgIGJFyi8X7lQH-HmQ7Fk1F8bZ9p2flr4Mc3eo3iqg4SJE5mzvH-F4KV67MsoUKRtiWfqndFa_h9W0Q&utm_content=67635430&utm_source=hs_email

[101] Ela Khodai, Ibid

[102] Marcus.limo, “Methodology Lifecycle Governance for Environmental Assets”, August 9, 2023 https://www.marcus.limo/posts/methodology-lifecycle/

[103] Note that this report’s three subtypes of carbon assets—negative offsets, counterfactual offsets, and credits—follows from the Penn State definition of offsets and credits, where “offsets can be considered a measurement unit to ‘compensate’ a business… [that can] be kept by the company” and credits “are marketable permits that each reflect one metric ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.. that a business is allowed to emit.” This report does not use “offset” as a verb and “credit” as a noun, as is nomenclature in many industry circles. The report also recognizes that asset semantics can vary depending on the stakeholders that use them and their audiences, such as asset issuers targeting market adoption or academics constructing taxonomies. See: Dana Ollendyke, “Understanding Carbon Credits and Offsets”, PennState Extension, February 13th, 2023, https://extension.psu.edu/understanding-carbon-credits-and-offsets

[104] Anders Porsborg-Smith, Jesper Nielsen, Bayo Owolabi, and Carl Clayton, “Why The Voluntary Carbon Market Is Thriving”, Boston Consulting Group, January 19, 2023 https://www.bcg.com/publications/2023/why-the-voluntary-carbon-market-is-thriving

[105] Farzan Kazemifar, “A review of technologies for carbon capture, sequestration, and utilization: Cost, capacity, and technology readiness”, Greenhouse Gases: Science & Technology 1, no. 12 (2022): 200-230, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ghg.2131

[106] BloombergNEF, “The Untapped Power of Carbon Markets in Five Charts”, September 16, 2022 https://about.bnef.com/blog/the-untapped-power-of-carbon-markets-in-five-charts/

[107] Elizabeth Curmi, Jason Channell, Ying Qin, Andrea Fleming, Ibid

[108] Grayson Badgley & Danny Cullenward, “Zombies On The Blockchain”, CarbonPlan, April 7, 2022 https://carbonplan.org/research/toucan-crypto-offsets

[109] Anders Porsborg-Smith, Jesper Nielsen, Bayo Owolabi, and Carl Clayton, Ibid

[110] Anders Porsborg-Smith, Jesper Nielsen, Bayo Owolabi, and Carl Clayton, Ibid

[111] Elizabeth Curmi, Jason Channell, Ying Qin, Andrea Fleming, Ibid

[112] Dr. Soheil Saraji Dr. Mike Borowczak, “A Blockchain-based Carbon Credit Ecosystem”, https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2107/2107.00185.pdf

[113] UNFCC, “The Clean Development Mechanism”, https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-kyoto-protocol/mechanisms-under-the-kyoto-protocol/the-clean-development-mechanism

[114] DAO “Integral Platform for Climate Initiatives”, “DAO IPCI”, https://ipci.io/

[115] Tristan Greene, “UAE Signs Deal to Develop Carbon Credit System Venom Foundation Blockchain”, CoinTelegraph, August 7, 2023 https://cointelegraph.com/news/uae-signs-deal-develop-carbon-credit-system-venom-foundation-blockchain

[116] Chainwire, “Venom Foundation Partners With the UAE Government to Launch National Carbon Credit System”, Decrypt, August 10, 2023 https://decrypt.co/152004/venom-foundation-partners-with-the-uae-government-to-launch-national-carbon-credit-system

[117] Climate Vault, “Carbon Reduction and Removal”, https://climatevault.org/climate-vault-approach/

[118] Biodiversity units are complex to define and different methodologies prioritize vastly different metrics. See “State of Voluntary Biodiversity Credit Markets: A Global Review of Biodiversity Credit Schemes” (2023) for a breakdown.

[119] Stian Reklev, “UPDATE – Swedish bank buys first European biodiversity credits”, CarbonPulse, May 31, 2023, https://carbon-pulse.com/205424/

[120] Verra, “SD VISta Nature Framework Now Open for Public Consultation”, September 18th, 2023, https://verra.org/sd-vista-nature-framework-now-open-for-public-consultation/

[121] Stian Reklev, “Forecasters see rapidly growing biodiversity market as nature crisis forces response”, CarbonPulse, January 10, 2023, https://carbon-pulse.com/186974/

[122] Laura Waterford, Veda FitzSimons & Olivia Back, “State of Voluntary Biodiversity Credit Markets: A Global Review of Biodiversity Credit Schemes”, Pollination, October 2023, 13 https://pollinationgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Global-Review-of-Biodiversity-Credit-Schemes-Pollination-October-2023.pdf

[123] Verra, “Climate, Community, & Biodiversity Standards”, June 21, 2017,  https://verra.org/wp-content/uploads/CCB-Standards-v3.1_ENG.pdf

[124] Regen Market, “Unlock Regenerative Finance with Regen Marketplace”, https://app.regen.network/

[125] Regen Network, “#BuiltonRegen”, Notion, https://regennetwork.notion.site/20318d87b8954cff94debda3b7e7388e?v=979a88621345457b81ee01540ba63e84

[126] ERA, “ERA Keystone Species Biodiversity Methodology”, Notion, 2021, https://www.notion.so/ERA-Keystone-Species-Biodiversity-Methodology-49035a29f21c4b35bce7dcdd469337cd

[127] Fibershed, “Fibershed”, https://fibershed.org/

[128] EthicHub, “Gana hasta un 9%* con inversiones de impacto social* en dólares (stablecoins)”, https://www.ethichub.com/

[129] Yaupon,  https://yaupon.store/

[130] Regen Market, “Grgich Hills Estate Regenerative Sheep Grazing”, https://app.regen.network/project/KSH01-001

[131] Open Earth Foundation, “Advanced Marine Ecosystem Credits”, November 2022, https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/62192ceb9199b3dd08431a6b/6371df5b39109b348b188447_whitepaper.pdf

[132] Wikipedia, “Energy Certificate”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_certificate

[133] European Union Blockchain Observatory and Forum, “Blockchain Applications in the Energy Sector”, https://www.eublockchainforum.eu/sites/default/files/reports/EUBOF-Thematic_Report_Energy_Sector.pdf

[134] Reneum, “Marketplace, Fund the Future”, https://reneum.com/marketplace/

[135] Jasmine Energy, “Overview”, https://app.jasmine.energy/

[136] Energy Web Foundation, “We build digital solutions that help companies navigate the energy transition”, https://www.energyweb.org/

[137] Social Alpha Foundation, “Blockchain for Sustainable Energy and Climate in the Global South: Use Case and Opportunities”, http://www.socialalphafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/saf-blockchain-report-final-2022.pdf

[138] Hedera, “Renewable Energy Credits: How Tokenization Can Help”, https://hedera.com/learning/esg/renewable-energy-credits

[139] BlockScience, “Testing ARMMs in Production: Mitigating Risk in Algorithmic Trading for Semi-Fungible Carbon Assets”, Medium, November 7, 2022, https://medium.com/block-science/testing-armms-in-production-48a08afafdcc

[140] For a deeper discussion of all Web3-native debt markets, see: Mac Naggar, “Real World Assets: The Bridge Between TradFi and DeFi”, Binance Research, March 2023, 14, https://research.binance.com/static/pdf/real-world-asset-report.pdf

[141] Green Climate Fund, “Making Blended Finance Work for Nature-Based Solutions”, March 2023, https://www.greenclimate.fund/sites/default/files/document/making-blended-finance-work-nature-based-solutions.pdf

[142] Troy Segal, “Green Bond: Types, How To Buy, and FAQs”, Investopedia, September 21, 2022, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/green-bond.asp

[143] World Bank Group, “Toolkits for Policymakers to Green the Financial System”, https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/374051622653965991/pdf/Toolkits-for-Policymakers-to-Green-the-Financial-System.pdf

[144] Climate Bonds Initiative, “Climate Bonds Taxonomy”, January 2021, https://www.climatebonds.net/files/files/CBI_Taxonomy_Jan2021.pdf

[145] Reuters, “EU gives nod to “world’s first” green bond standards”, October 5th, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/eu-gives-nod-worlds-first-green-bond-standards-2023-10-05/

[146] Neeti Misra, et al.,  “Role of Blockchain Technology Integration for Green Bonds Issuance with Sustainability Aspect”, International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in Computing and Communication 6, no. 11 (2023): 134-142, https://ijritcc.org/index.php/ijritcc/article/view/7300/6178

[147] Sandali Handagama, “Hong Kong Successfully Offered Inaugural 100m Tokenized Green Bond”, Coindesk, February 16, 2023, https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/02/16/hong-kong-successfully-offered-inaugural-100m-tokenized-green-bond/

[148] Crédit Agricole, “Crédit Agricole CIB and SEB Launch A Sustainable and Open Digital Bond Platform Built On Blockchain Technology”, https://www.ca-cib.com/pressroom/news/credit-agricole-cib-and-seb-launch-sustainable-and-open-digital-bond-platform-built

[149] LCX Team, “Tokenized Bonds Vs Traditional Bonds”, February 20, 2023, https://www.lcx.com/tokenized-bonds-vs-traditional-bonds/#:\~:text=A%20bond%20is%20a%20fixed,blockchain%2C%20governed%20by%20smart%20contracts.

[150] Frigg.eco, “Frigg Whitepaper”, June 2023, https://cms-internal.frigg.eco/assets/01062023_frigg_whitepaper.pdf

[151] See token here: https://etherscan.io/token/0x77BF7983146efAA8A2D67968a2E065bD9ddae570

[152] IEA, “Fossil Fuels Consumption Subsidies 2022”, February 2023, https://www.iea.org/reports/fossil-fuels-consumption-subsidies-2022

[153] GoldFinch Finance, “Almavest Basket #7: Fintech and Carbon Reduction Basket”, https://app.goldfinch.finance/pools/0x759f097f3153f5d62ff1c2d82ba78b6350f223e3

[154] EthicHub, “EthicHub Abstract”, https://docs-ethix.ethichub.com/v/english/

[155] Aave, “Debt Tokens”, https://docs.aave.com/developers/v/2.0/the-core-protocol/debt-tokens

[156] EthicHub, “Stake”, https://ethix.ethichub.com/stake

[157] Karel Lannoo & Apostolos Thomadakis, “Derivatives in Sustainable Finance”, CEPSECMI Study, Centre for European Policy Studies, 2020, 4 https://www.isda.org/a/KOmTE/Derivatives-in-Sustainable-Finance.pdf

[158] Sam Kessler, “The Protocol: The CFTC Is Cracking Down on Crypto”, CoinDesk, September 13, 2023, https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2023/09/13/the-protocol-the-cftc-is-cracking-down-on-crypto/

[159] SolidWorld, “CRISP-M Token Statistics”, https://app.solid.world/pool/CRISP-M?\_gl=1\*vgw10r\*\_ga\*MTA2MjMyNTE5Ni4xNjk3MzEyMzc2\*\_ga_HN5WBNR3GK\*MTY5NzMxMjM3NS4xLjEuMTY5NzMxMjM5MS4wLjAuMA..

[160] GreenTrade, “The first biomass project backed by blockchain”, July 18, 2022, https://greentrade.tech/the-first-biomass-project-backed-by-blockchain/

[161] Tinlake, “ FlowCarbon Nature Offsets Series 1: Overview”, https://legacy.tinlake.centrifuge.io/pool/0xd8486c565098360a24f858088a6d29a380ddf7ec/flowcarbon-1

[162] Boston Consulting Group, “BCG Enters Carbon Removal Credit Agreement With CarbonCapture”, June 21, 2023, https://www.bcg.com/press/21june2023-bcg-enters-carbon-removal-credit-agreement-with-carboncapture

[163] Andrey Sergeenkov, “What Is A Perpetual Swap Contract?”, Coindesk, May 11, 2023, https://www.coindesk.com/learn/what-is-a-perpetual-swap-contract/

[164] Ibid

[165] James T. Mandel, C. Josh Donlan & Jonathan Armstrong, “A derivative approach to endangered species conservation”, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment vol. 8, 2009, pp. 44-49, https://doi.org/10.1890/070170

[166] EFICO, “Insight into the C-Market and its influence on the prize of coffee”, February 6, 2023, https://efico.com/press-efico/insight-into-the-c-market-and-its-influence-on-the-price-of-coffee/

[167] See prior “Natural Asset Ownership” section for more commentary and sources.

[168] Sebnem Rusitschka, October 27th, 2023

[169] Climate Action, “ENGIE and Google Enter Into a Renewable Power Purchase Agreement (CPPA)”, November 25, 2022, https://www.climateaction.org/news/engie-and-google-enter-into-a-renewable-power-purchase-agreement-cppa

[170] GigaWatt, “Global Green Debt Servicing Infrastructure”, https://gigawa.tt/

[171] GreenTech Media, “The Legal Pitfalls of Tokenizing

[172] Niccolò Bardoscia, Alessandro Nodari, “Liquidity Providers Greeks and Impermanent Gain”, February, 23rd, 2023, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2302.11942.pdf

[173] 0xDevinG, Twitter, March 6, 2023, https://twitter.com/0xDevinG/status/1632736369297481728

[174] GammaSwapLabs, Twitter, March 28, 2023, https://twitter.com/GammaSwapLabs/status/1640748150926237696

[175] Niccolò Bardoscia, Alessandro Nodari, Ibid

[176] Dominique Blanchard & Dominique Duval, “Crédit Agricole CIB Innovates, Bringing the First Green Interest Rate Swaps to the Asia-Pacific Capital Markets”, Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, https://www.ca-cib.com/pressroom/news/credit-agricole-cib-innovates-bringing-first-green-interest-rate-swaps-asia-pacific

[177] Steve Obasi, “Yield Tokenization — How Pendle Finance is Revolutionizing DeFi Strategies With Future Yield Trading”, Medium, April 8th, 2023, https://medium.com/@mapongo/yield-tokenization-how-pendle-finance-is-revolutionizing-defi-strategies-with-future-yield-trading-4a439a2be4bc

[178] Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, “What Is Parametric Insurance”, July 7, 2023 https://corporatesolutions.swissre.com/insights/knowledge/what_is_parametric_insurance.html

[179] Green Finance Institute, “Quintana Roo Reef Protection (Parametric Insurance)”, https://www.greenfinanceinstitute.co.uk/gfihive/case-studies/quintana-roo-reef-protection-parametric-insurance/

[180] Fathom, “Risk Scores”, https://www.fathom.global/product/global-flood-map/risk-scores/

[181] Shamba Network, “Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification”, https://shamba.network/

[182] DIVA Protocol, “Powering the World of Derivatives”, https://www.divaprotocol.io/

[183] FortuneConnect, https://fortuneconnectltd.com/

[184] Shambanetwork, Twitter, August 16, 2023, https://twitter.com/shambanetwork/status/1691834245352997017?s=20

[185] CurveLabs & KolektivoLabs, “The Kolektivo Framework”, August 2022, https://assets.website-files.com/5fcaa3a6fcb269f7778d1f87/63297723f700491a0698ab5a_Kolektivo%20Bluepaper.pdf

[186] Roinevirta, Twitter, April 28, 2023, https://twitter.com/roinevirta/status/1651897888748740609?s=20

[187] Rune Christensen, “The Case For Clean Money”, MakerDAO, October 21, 2021 https://forum.makerdao.com/t/the-case-for-clean-money/10684

[188] Base, “Request For Builders”, Mirror, March 23, 2023 https://base.mirror.xyz/lt3JR-mZ51q9eIOtGO36L3ZVzCTXmZVnbIiXz6crqzQ

[189] BlockScience, “Flatcoins: Inflation Adjusted Stablecoins”, Medium, April 14, 2023 https://medium.com/block-science/flatcoins-inflation-adjusted-stablecoins-2f2e220b263e

[190] Cogito Protocol, “Cogito Protocol”, https://cogito-protocol-2.gitbook.io/whitepaper/

[191] Ibid

[192] Ibid

[193] Toucan Protocol, “Introducing Carbon Pools”, GitBook, https://docs.toucan.earth/toucan/pool/pools

[194] For a more detailed proposition of properties and mechanisms, please see: Cogito Protocol, “Price Stabilization Mechanism”, GitBook, https://cogito-protocol-2.gitbook.io/whitepaper/introduction/price-stabilization-mechanisms

---