First I heard about Hedera Hashgraph three years ago. I met Mance Harmon, co-founder, and CEO of Hedera at the World Blockchain Forum in Dubai in April 2018, and since then I have kept an eye on this project. So when I saw Hedera21 - Hello Tokenization Virtual Hackathon, I was happy to join it with my friend and venture partner Boone Bergsma.
CO2 Farmers Market
CO2 Farmers Market is a crowdfunding platform like Kickstarter and WeFunder mixed with a Carbon Credit Marketplace. It offers climate action entrepreneurs a place to raise funding to support their CO2 sequestering startups or activities.
The platform is set up to be a central hub for CO2 sequestering projects to offer carbon credits that businesses and people can buy to offset their CO2 production in addition to supporting CO2 reducing projects and creating green jobs .
This idea has huge potential to have a positive impact on people and the planet. Since businesses are going to be making such big investments into going carbon neutral or negative then why not do it by buying carbon credits that reduce CO2 and generate economic development via entrepreneurship.
Some of the other carbon credits on the market now are not really very impactful, and some are actually sold more than once, blockchain would prevent this double-counting from happening.
Hedera Token Service (HTS)
On February 9th 2021, Hedera Token Service (HTS) went live on the Hedera mainnet.. (You can watch short promo video or 30-minutes presentation which speaks about the vision, use cases, and ecosystem partners.
HTS makes it easy to issue native tokens with scalable performance, configurability, and predictable costs — all on a reliable network governed by the world's leading organizations.
The platform has the following features:
• Scalable Tokens: Token transfers reach speeds of 10,000 TPS, settle in seconds, with predictable low fees - say goodbye to congestion and high gas fees!
• Native Tokens: No need for slow and expensive smart contracts — tokens issued with HTS are native to Hedera; they adopt the same performance, security, and efficiency as hbar.
• Configurable Compliance: Key and token configurations that offer flexibility to meet compliance needs, including account KYC verification and freeze, token supply management, and transfer.
• Enterprise Governance: Hedera's decentralized governing body of global organizations ensures network stability, decentralized decision making, and a no-fork guarantee.
Why Hedera is Good Fit for Carbon Credit Tokenization
HTS is really easy to configure and use. CO2 Farmers Market HTS TCO2E tokens (1 Ton CO2 Equivalent), created on the testnet for the hackathon were easy to issue, and after some deeper thinking on the tokenomics, we can easily launch on the mainnet.
There is a general problem in the blockchain industry right now - the lack of adoption and not so many use-cases. CO2 Farmers Market can become a great example of using DLT and Tokens to benefit society, which goes far beyond the uses of most existing tokens and dApps.
Hedera is governed by the world's leading organizations. The council includes companies such as Google, IBM, LG, Deutsche Telecom, DLA Piper, and some of these companies have made commitments to become carbon-neutral, and some even pledge to go carbon-negative. That’s why we see synergy working with Hedera on CO2 Farmers Market because there seems to be a mutually beneficial and promising partnership to be had.
Please let people know we are looking for CO2 Sequestering Pioneers who want to crowdfund, and those looking to offset using carbon credits. Have them visit CO2 Farmers Market Website:
And if you like what we're doing you could let the hackathon judges know by liking our project here CO2FarmersMarket Devpost Page:
https://devpost.com/software/co2-farmers-market