It's 2030 and veritree have planted 1bn trees
To quantify that impact, if they were 1 billion mangroves it would equate to 1 billion tonnes of carbon sequestered every 3 years.
This year, veritree planted over 15 million trees. So while they’ll need to increase their yearly output to hit the 2030 goal, it’s an incredible achievement considering it’s their first year of operation.
But planting trees is only half the story.
If veritree plant a billion trees and they get cut down the next year, the net carbon consumption is negative... in the bad sense. If trees don’t come to term and continue to survive, then they will release that captured carbon back into the atmosphere.
Veritree: evidence, permanence and incentives
Veritree was created as a model to allow customers, investors and anyone involved in the restorative ecosystem to follow along and make sure a company is making good on their pledges.
Their solution is a response to the traditional model where consumers simply have to trust a brand when they make a claim – a claim that’s never backed up. With Veritree consumers can independently verify the restorative actions they’re supporting.
Veritree publish all the evidence associated with the planting including survivability reports on Arweave. They turn these actions into NFTs on Cardano, which are then referenced as a record of planting and other services done to the trees.
The evidence they collect includes photos from initial planting and later survivability reports from someone on the ground recording of data around the trees health. They are also exploring IOT devices on tree that would provide a constant stream of data and, therefore, a means to establish 'proof of life' at any point.
This is evidence-based restoration – a trustless way to verify that good has been done.
It should be no surprise that veritree found Arweave – both are in the business of permanence and are building the incentives to ensure that.
For veritree, tree planting is all about making sure when trees are planted they stay in the ground. It’s important not only for carbon capture but also for habitat and wildlife restoration.
The veritree model is heavily focused on involving the local community in the restoration process for the ongoing protection and all-round environmental stewardship of the planting sites.
You need to incentivise the local community to support the growth of the forest, so this is stronger than any incentive to cut it down. Arguably, the task of making a tree planting site permanent is more important than the initial planting, and where the focus should be if we’re going to have a meaningful impact in the restorative actions we take.
Figuring out an incentives program is key to supporting veritree's holistic long-term strategy, which looks beyond carbon capture to also encompass restoration of habitats, wildlife, food production, water tables and coastlines.
Veritree x Arweave + Akord
All the data collected from the planting sites as proof of life is published on Arweave as a repository.
All the tokens that are minted afterwards on Cardano are pointing back to that repository, whether through a URL in the metadata or displayed in a wallet.
Arweave is providing veritree with a timestamp, something other solutions like IPFS do not provide. And along with the built-in incentives to ensure perpetual storage of data, it enables veritree to point to an action that may have happened a hundred years ago and be sure it happened.
Veritree are leveraging Akord’s file versioning and access level rights when publishing data to Arweave – something that Arweave doesn’t provide itself.
Without Akord, Arweave is just a data store. With Akord it becomes more like a database. A way to control and publish data in a more meaningful way.
~ Duncan Brown, blockchain engineer, veritree
Veritree are Akord vaults for planting sites or for each partner, depending on how they submit the data. The vault system may also end up being used across other sets of data they are collecting, for example, one vault per IOT device.
We’ll also be working with veritree on token-gated access to vaults – a feature on our roadmap that is particularly useful for scenarios where veritree want to share data in a restricted way. For example, supporters and stakeholders of a project from day one should be entitled to access all data, but this may not necessarily be the case for someone who comes in much later in a project.
