Curious about developments in the world of web3 projects you can earn with but are short on time? Look no further than our Meet a Builder series.

In these short format interviews, we sit down with the teams behind your favourite projects for their insights on what they’re building behind the scenes and what’s next. Join us for an inside look at the projects shaping the future of the web3 earning ecosystem.

In this week’s interview, we’re addressing one of the most pressing issues of our time – climate change. Despite the many efforts that have been launched to address this issue, we still have a long way to go. However, there is hope. One unique solution within web3 is KlimaDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization that’s working to address the flaws of traditional carbon markets and help individuals and businesses offset their carbon emissions by purchasing and retiring carbon credits. 

Transcript:

SARAH, web3earner: Welcome back to our ‘Meet the Builder’ interview series where I have the pleasure of talking to the teams behind your favorite web3 earning projects. 

In this week’s interview, we’re addressing one of the most pressing issues of our time – climate change. Despite the many efforts that have been launched to address this issue, we still have a long way to go. However, there is hope. One unique solution within web3 is KlimaDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization that’s working to address the flaws of traditional carbon markets and help individuals and businesses offset their carbon emissions by purchasing and retiring carbon credits. 

We’re thrilled to have Archimedes, a representative of KlimaDAO with us today, to share more about their organization and how it’s making a difference within web3. 

Thank you for joining me, Archimedes. How are you today?

ARCHIMEDES, KlimaDAO: Thanks, Sarah. I’m great. How are you?

SARAH, web3earner: I’m very good, thank you.

SARAH: Let’s dive in, can you give us a brief explanation as to what KlimaDAO is?

ARCHIMEDES: Sure, KlimaDAO is an on-chain scaling solution for the voluntary carbon market. So, by combining tokenized carbon credits with a blockchain-enabled tech stack, KlimaDAO aims to open up the voluntary carbon market to greater transparency and efficiency. 

KlimaDAO was actually formed to address the problem of climate change caused by human activities, specifically the emissions of greenhouse gases. The founders recognized that one of the most promising tools to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was the voluntary carbon market. However, this market is traditionally inefficient and opaque, plagued with excessive fees and a lack of transparency. So, we established the liquidity rails of the digital carbon market via automated market makers to enable not only capital efficiency but also automated offsetting through smart contracts. This means that users who wish to buy, sell, and ultimately retire carbon credits can do so quickly, reliably, and with minimal fees or slippage.

SARAH: Amazing. Great explanation. It’s such an interesting space that you guys are working in.

SARAH: And how can people earn whilst using KlimaDAO?

ARCHIMEDES: There’s lots of ways. Primarily, it’s centered around the Klima token, which is designed to be the center of the digital carbon market. So, the Klima token itself is our governance token, which is used for stakeholders to vote on important issues like treasury policies, organizational management, carbon credit project financing, and a whole host of other topics in between. I think we’re at KIP-35 now, so we’ve had 35 big decisions as an organization. So, the token itself is backed by tokenized carbon credits, BCT, NCT, UBO, MBO and CO2, which are all locked in the treasury. And so, as previously mentioned, this whole token powers liquidity rails, which allows users to access different forms of tokenized carbon credits from multiple partners at low costs. 

So, users may earn Klima through a number of ways. They can earn them through bonding and staking. Bonding involves basically the deposit of carbon assets in various forms through smart contracts on our platform, and bonding contracts can be fully redeemed after five days and get all your Klima rewards as a rule of doing so. The main benefit of bonding is receiving a discount for KlimaDAO tokens compared to buying them outright on exchange. When this operates, it’s typically about a 5% discount off of the current decentralized exchange. However, bonding is currently paused due to market conditions and roughly just how the whole system is working. But do keep an eye out as we resume it in the near future, so that is something that is coming. 

The other way is staking. Staking is the primary reward distribution mechanism of KlimaDAO. So by staking your claim of tokens, the protocol distributes a proportional amount of tokens at the rate of the expansion of the overall circulating supply. What does that mean in English terms? Basically, it just means it keeps you in line with the size and growth of the whole protocol and makes sure that you remain in the same kind of ecosystem. It should be noted that the staking rate is actually decided by the community through the governance protocol. So by holding Klima, you get to vote on that and decide on those things. And basically, it all comes down to one thing. The whole system and ecosystem grows as the treasury grows, and the whole system kind of evolves into a much bigger one.

There’s also a third way, which is basically working for the DAO. So by doing so, you can basically earn Klima tokens that way. There are lots of contributors, we have almost over 80 active contributors at any given time, so that’s always a place that people can earn as well. 

SARAH: I love it. It’s a beautiful little ecosystem you guys have set up.

SARAH: And finally, can you give us an update on development within the KlimaDAO ecosystem, and what impact will that have on people earning within web3?

ARCHIMEDES: Yeah, definitely. 

So we just launched, today actually, launched Carbonmark, which is a carbon marketplace powered by KlimaDAO infrastructure. So everything we’ve been working on for the last two years is now being powered by this thing, and it will basically enable individuals and organizations to open up virtual carbon storefronts where they can sell carbon credits to buyers easily. This basically breaks down a lot of barriers that typically exist in that market, so it offers a familiar user-friendly marketplace experience with no blockchain or DeFi experience required. But under the hood, the whole thing operates on smart contracts built on blockchain in a public permissionless network that’s built on top of Ethereum, or the Polygon blockchain rather. 

Carbonmark’s contracts will be fully audited and open-source later this year, and they’re also going to be covered on the KlimaDAO bug bounty program, so it’s fully transparent and open. And at its launch, Carbonmark Marketplace will launch with zero fees for buyers or sellers, so those who are carbon project developers can come list their projects. Anybody who’s really interested in the virtual carbon market can now interact with the digital carbon market thanks to a lot of the interoperable standards that KlimaDAO helped establish.

Lastly, the platform basically allows sellers to assign a specific price to their carbon assets and list them for sale until a buyer is found, so very much like an eBay listing or whatever it may be. These listings are displayed side by side with the projects and existing pools, meaning people know what price they’re getting and the best deal, and the sellers also know the prices are fair and competitive as well. 

SARAH: Love it. It sounds like you’ve taken something quite complex and you’ve given it an easy-to-use UI and wrapped it up for the people. It’s very, very innovative.

Thank you for joining me today, Archimedes. It was a pleasure to have you on our series and understand a bit more about this extremely important issue you guys are tackling and gaining some more insight into the fascinating world of carbon credits and carbon markets. Thank you all for tuning in, we will see you next time. 

ARCHIMEDES: Thanks Sarah, thanks for having me.

Learn about KlimaDAO and how you can start participating in their ecosystem here.