<aside> 🐻 Concerned about utilizing community spend funds in current market conditions? Check out our tips for joining the Cosmos ZERO initiative in a bear market.
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The following is a template that can be edited for a protocol proposal, which provides details for acquiring carbon credits via Nature Carbon Ton tokens from Osmosis and City Forest Credits from Regen Marketplace. We recommend beginning a community dialogue on Commonwealth and utilizing the polling feature to allow the community to vote on specific aspects of your proposal.
<aside> ⚖️ Proposal: Community Pool spend of (number) $(native currency) to purchase and retire carbon credits to offset (protocol name)’s 2022 carbon emissions, becoming a carbon neutral blockchain.
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The environmental cost of blockchain technology is often cited as a problem that needs to be tackled before widespread adoption. Proof of Work consensus algorithms, such as those in use by Bitcoin and Ethereum, create an arms race of computing power in order for a miner to be the first to create a new block and so obtain the reward.
Cosmos’ Proof of Stake validation system drastically improves on this by making this competition take place over attracting more delegation of stake from users. Validators are not required to perform deliberately complicated calculations and so can run on relatively low power machines. However, these machines are still required to be online 24/7 and perform calculations to confirm each block as it is generated. This results in a carbon footprint for each blockchain in the Cosmos ecosystem.
Regen Network is launching NCT, Nature Carbon Ton, a premium digital carbon basket of nature-based projects in cooperation with the Osmosis decentralized exchange. NCT is a fungible, IBC-compatible carbon basket backed by nature-based carbon credits that have verifiable ecological benefits issued onto the Regen Ledger blockchain. In order to provide sufficient liquidity for any Cosmos chain or validator to choose to offset their project for multiple years, Osmosis and Regen Network will co-own NCT liquidity, establishing NCT:$Regen and NCT:Osmo pools, with rewards. Once the non-custodial bridge from Polygon to Regen Ledger is completed, these pools will launch, offering not only the opportunity for protocol offsetting via NCT on Osmosis, but protocol liquidity rewards mining.
Carbon credits are real world financial assets (commodities) that are rapidly becoming tokenized onto blockchains. Demand for carbon credits is expected to become a $500 billion + industry by 2030, and is already a 6 billion annual industry.
Based on feedback from carbon footprint data reported by validators of Regen Network, (Protocol) is projected to emit at most (#) tons a year in carbon, negatively affecting our climate.
CosmosZERO Program: https://regennetwork.notion.site/Cosmos-ZERO-Achieve-Protocol-Validator-Net-Zero-Carbon-Emissions-ddd441e3ff3d4dbda83265433843ec10
CosmosZERO Carbon Footprint Analysis: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H-w4dBc1Svcmw_fzEKUFRgK_pga1qsGMHCTsUKUmWEA/edit
Osmosis Carbon Market with Regen Network (passed): https://gov.osmosis.zone/discussion/3936-proposal-osmosis-carbon-market-with-regen-network