Track, earn, offset carbon, and repeat ad infinitum. KlimaDAO has launched Klima Infinity, a Web3-powered suite of democratized sustainability apps that enable anyone – from global organizations or protocols to everyday people – to make and uphold an enduring climate pledge with both an environmental and financial upside.
Through Klima Infinity, users will be able to seamlessly track, offset, and compound their positive climate action in an inclusive integrated experience that rewards sustainability and transparency. Klima Infinity aims to accelerate toward – and beyond – a carbon-neutral world.
Klima Infinity, a democratized end-to-end sustainability-as-a-service offering, has just launched, empowering and rewarding everyone – including individuals, businesses, and protocols alike – to be good environmental stewards. Klima Infinity will allow anyone to participate and perpetually showcase, invest in, and actualize climate action through blockchain technology on efficient market terms at any scale.
The Klima Infinity platform will primarily consist of three interconnected Web3 decentralized applications (dApps) provided by KlimaDAO:
The Climate Pledge Dashboard;
The Market/Treasury Interface; and
The Carbon Offset Function.
These will be supported by other value-add tools like a carbon footprint-yield calculator and DAO governance portal. The Klima user – or, as we like to say, ‘Klimate’ – will always control their data and tokens via their Web3 digital wallet, which is their passport to the fast blossoming space of regenerative finance (ReFi) on blockchain.
As GitCoin Founder Kevin Owocki explains in his recent book, Greenpilled: How Crypto Can Regenerate The World, which features KlimaDAO as a leading ‘ImpactDAO,’ the ‘Big Idea’ is to build out an “opt-in system [that] could increasingly support non digital public goods” like a healthy climate and decarbonization, which is “how growth compounds, momentum builds, and regenerative cryptoeconomics eventually becomes inevitable.”
Klima Infinity is our Big Idea.
Klima Infinity, like any other climate action or financial commitment, starts with a pledge: in this case, to measure climate positivity.
KlimaDAO is in the process of onboarding preferred carbon accounting partners, like Offsetra, to provide trusted carbon footprint calculators and consulting services, which will offer full-scale coverage from an eco-conscious global citizen to the largest multinational organization or protocol, both in real life and on the blockchain.
Once a Klima Infinity user establishes their carbon footprint, they make the important decision on how much climate action to pledge. This could start with being carbon neutral for the year, or going beyond this (e.g. offsetting 2x or more to be 'climate positive'). They can even choose to have no calendar limits and offset a lifetime of emissions, whether for an individual, legal entity, or blockchain protocol, and be historically climate positive happily ever after.
But what is a pledge without results? We believe this is especially true for climate action: what gets measured, gets mitigated. That’s where the first product under the Klima Infinity triad, our Climate Pledge Dashboard, comes in.
The Dashboard will be the home for any Klima Infinity user’s sustainability journey, featuring their carbon footprint, pledge, and progress toward climate positivity. KlimaDAO’s vision for the Infinity Dashboard is for it to become as commonplace as a social media profile or ‘About us’ web page, intuitively visualizing and celebrating environmental credentials that typically have been such a challenge to locate or understand.
Just as it has become an international pastime to routinely follow your favorite personal finance stocks or crypto, or to monitor progress on health and fitness metrics or milestones, the Infinity Dashboard will be the locus for people and collectives to gauge their environmental responsibility and show off the ultimate social solarpunk ‘flex’ of self-sustainability.
But how then does an aspiring or active Klimate on the road to Infinity actually take the first step to make good on their climate pledge? And, importantly, be confident that they can follow through on keeping a net carbon neutral or negative footprint indefinitely?
Klimates who’ve been with us since the beginning will know this is a perfect fit for the raison d’etre and superpower of KlimaDAO: the creation of a carbon-backed currency – KLIMA – through positive sum cryptoeconomics and yield of more KLIMA to those depositing, or in crypto terms ‘staking’, their KLIMA with KlimaDAO. This process is analogous to a stock split, which can all be done on our refreshed Treasury Interface dApp (soon also a marketplace).
We can summarize KlimaDAO’s tokenomics as being designed to align incentives among bonders, stakers, and the environment in 'win-win-win' long-term mutual benefit to grow the value pie for all.
Of course, in the case of KlimaDAO, what is being acquired by our treasury are carbon credits verified by leading legacy carbon accounting standard registries like Verra or Gold Standard, tokenized onto the highly energy-efficient Polygon blockchain, like a digital carbon capture machine.
As a reminder, each KLIMA is backed by at least one carbon tonne avoided or removed from the atmosphere in its treasury, which means that the daily issuance of new KLIMA to each staker is akin to a carbon annuity in perpetuity. This is something entirely new, natively composable only through Web3 technology and incentives. For the first time, not only can anyone plan for their long-term financial security, as with a normal annuity, but also guarantee their sustainability pledge on a long time horizon, since a single KLIMA will always be worth and exchangeable for at least a single carbon credit token.
To enable this, KlimaDAO manages the KLIMA supply expansion to reflect treasury growth in a sustainable way that likewise is shared with stakers so that dilution is minimized. This compounding effect can be illustrated by examining one KLIMA token purchased and staked at the launch of KlimaDAO in October 2021. At that time, one KLIMA was backed by about four reserve carbon tonnes. While the amount of backing for each KLIMA token has remained relatively steady, the amount of KLIMA tokens has increased exponentially. The one KLIMA token has “rebased” or multiplied to become more than seven tokens, providing a compounding-adjusted backing of over 26 carbon tonnes by February 2022. These KLIMA can be reliably redeemed for offset purposes in the future (think annuity coupons for carbon), potentially without depleting the KLIMA principal, and ensuring a sustainable Klima Infinity pledge.
Klima Infinity users can acquire KLIMA in three ways:
by bonding into KlimaDAO’s treasury;
a market buy on a decentralized exchange; and
a straightforward credit card purchase.
Staking KLIMA tokens signals your commitment to climate action by contributing to growing Klima’s pool of indefinitely custodied carbon tonnes. This has the effect of raising the value of carbon credits and sustainability overall. An Infinity participant is likewise compounding their amount of tokenized carbon credits to help satisfy their climate pledge long into the future.
However, to offset greenhouse gas emissions, carbon offsets must be permanently removed from the market (retired), which brings us to the third function Klima Infinity provides to close the self-sustainability loop.
In order to secure a true undeniable and permanent mitigation of an Infinity user’s carbon footprint, KlimaDAO will be introducing the world’s first curated carbon offset supermarket on blockchain, available to anyone with an internet connection and a Web3 digital wallet, via our Carbon Offset Function dApp.
For the first time, any environmentally conscious consumer can offset their carbon footprint on the same terms as the world’s largest multinationals, without having to pay double. In fact, the highly liquid ‘automated market maker’ (AMM) pools of carbon tokens on blockchain borne out of KlimaDAO not only give efficient value discovery, but also provide sellers with direct access to consumers. This means that gone will be the days of fragmented, opaque, and illiquid legacy carbon markets transacted over-the-counter and behind closed doors for a 50–150% reseller mark-up. This means more finance goes to carbon avoidance or removal projects on-the-ground, and that consumers are getting a better deal for being sustainable.
What makes this an offset ‘supermarket’? It’s because KlimaDAO’s carbon offset function will actually be an aggregator of all the carbon token types and carbon bridge providers. Think of it like an Amazon ‘everything store’ for carbon credits on the blockchain (or a 1inch or ParaSwap DEX aggregator for the crypto native), with Klima Infinity being your ‘Amazon Prime’.
While the Carbon Offset Function will launch with a limited selection of carbon token types, these will expand over time. Eventually, there will be the option to redeem specific carbon projects, depending on which geography or technology you’d like to support, or what is most relevant for your supply chain or client base. But while this is the norm in traditional carbon markets, these will further be automatically populated in your Climate Pledge Dashboard to showcase to your friends or customers.
Alternatively, you can streamline your offsetting decision-making based on type and/or location by simply retiring a certain present or future carbon pool token, like Toucan’s Base Carbon Tonne (BCT) or C3’s Universal Basic Offset (UBO) more for renewable projects, or the Moss Carbon Credit (MCO2) or Flow Carbon’s Goddess Nature Token (GNT) for nature-based projects, among a few examples from different carbon token pools and bridges that retire and tokenize carbon credits.
Before the advent of ReFi, it was impossible for someone to permissionlessly offset their carbon footprint in a manner, time, and for a beneficiary of their preference and be issued an immutable certificate of offset authenticity (via an NFT), without recourse to a registry or broker. Not only that, but also through Klima Infinity, a consumer’s cumulative carbon offsetting will be tallied across token types and time, so that a cohesive record of environmental stewardship can be measured and fed into the user’s Climate Pledge Dashboard. Moreover, and different again from the preceding Web2 era, this chart of a Klimate’s total climate action history cannot be expunged without a subscription renewal or otherwise arbitrarily deleted, due to the decentralized permanence of blockchain.
But why does anyone even need to offset their carbon footprint? Aren’t we trying to cut greenhouse gas emissions? Yes, of course! But this is done both directly and indirectly. Direct decarbonization involves all the things you hear about everyday, like switching from gasoline to electric cars, replacing your electronic appliances to be more energy efficient, installing solar panels or buying renewable energy, insulating your home, and more.
Indirect decarbonization is compensating others to avoid, reduce, or remove carbon emissions, whether through deforestation protection, renewable or waste-to-energy projects, reforestation or afforestation (terrestrial and coastal), and carbon or direct air capture. Buying and consuming carbon offsets is how we finance these environmental projects, with the added benefit that many of these projects are located in rural or under-developed areas and additionally provide a host of positive socioeconomic impacts. We cannot meet our climate goals without both direct and indirect decarbonization.
A movement starts with a first step. In the future, Klima Infinity will be upgraded to be more streamlined and interactive. Planned improvements include features such as automating offset streaming tied to real-time carbon emissions analysis and proof of carbon offset NFTs issued by KlimaDAO for additional composability.
Future contemplated use cases building on top of Klima Infinity could include carbon neutral/negative 'verified green checkmarks' in social media profiles, NFT gaming for decarbonization, climate pledge linked metaverses, consumer environmental reward programs, and whatever ReFi Web3 can think of next.
A sustainable future is one of infinite possibilities. And we are here for it, for the long term. All it takes is a pledge, so we’re all gonna make it. Ready to get started with your Climate Positive pledge? Reach out to our Partnership team via this form.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this blog post pertaining to KlimaDAO (“KlimaDAO”), its crypto-assets, business assets, strategy, and operations, is for general informational purposes only and is not a formal offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, options, futures, or other derivatives related to securities in any jurisdiction and its content is not prescribed by securities laws. Information contained in this blog post should not be relied upon as advice to buy or sell or hold such securities or as an offer to sell such securities. This blog post does not take into account nor does it provide any tax, legal or investment advice or opinion regarding the specific investment objectives or financial situation of any person. KlimaDAO and its agents, advisors, directors, officers, employees and shareholders make no representation or warranties, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy of such information and KlimaDAO expressly disclaims any and all liability that may be based on such information or errors or omissions thereof. KlimaDAO reserves the right to amend or replace the information contained herein, in part or entirely, at any time, and undertakes no obligation to provide the recipient with access to the amended information or to notify the recipient thereof. The information contained in this blog post supersedes any prior blog post or conversation concerning the same, similar or related information. Any information, representations or statements not contained herein shall not be relied upon for any purpose. Neither KlimaDAO nor any of its representatives shall have any liability whatsoever, under contract, tort, trust or otherwise, to you or any person resulting from the use of the information in this blog post by you or any of your representatives or for omissions from the information in this blog post. Additionally, KlimaDAO undertakes no obligation to comment on the expectations of, or statements made by, third parties in respect of the matters discussed in this blog post.