In Q1 2022, KlimaDAO presented its high-level vision, mission, and roadmap. KlimaDAO remains committed to achieving this vision, and is proceeding through the Integrations phase of the long-term roadmap. On the journey to fulfilling our vision, KlimaDAO has been uniquely transparent – KlimaDAO lives on the blockchain, where every transaction is auditable, and evolves based on the democratic Klima Improvement Proposal (KIP) process.
We believe that our level of transparency distinguishes us from other organizations in the market, and is aligned with our overall goal to reduce opacity within the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM), leveraging blockchain technology to provide transparency and efficiency for carbon credits and carbon offsetting. We believe that this commitment makes us uniquely positioned to build a deeply liquid, highly efficient on-chain VCM.
Showcasing our Product Roadmap
KlimaDAO is an early-stage business building entirely new-to-market products. Like many other early-stage businesses, we operate in a highly ambiguous and continuously changing environment. As the market evolves, we learn new things that inform our priorities; this can make it difficult to plan too far into the future. For the purpose of sharing a roadmap with our community, it is important that we preface it by saying that things farther than six months out are very likely to change between now and then.
Additionally, we need to present this roadmap at the right level, balancing detail with ease of communication. At the highest level, we have our vision, which describes the overall direction for the business, and which we communicate across our documentation and blog. At the most tactical level, we have our internal backlogs (for product) and CRM (for partnerships), where we write specifications and coordinate the delivery across design, business, and engineering. In the middle, we have the key initiatives that we will publish on a quarterly basis.
We believe that showcasing our roadmap at the initiative level allows us to communicate progress and direction without going into too much detail.
Status of key initiatives
Objectives for the DAO
The objectives for the DAO can be articulated over different time horizons:
Short term (< 3 months)
Gain Klima Infinity traction within Web3 and forward-thinking organizations
Accelerate onboarding of Klima Infinity partners through self-service tooling
Nurture and expand carbon bridging and retirement ecosystem partners
Drive the narrative on tokenized carbon for offsetting
Medium term (3 months – 1 year)
Gain corporate acceptance of tokenized carbon for offsetting (IETA and ICROA)
Increase KLIMA utility within Web3 (C3, NFTs, etc.)
Grow partnerships and integrations for KLIMA and the KlimaDAO platform
Long term (1+ years)
Bring the VCM on-chain
KLIMA is the liquidity provider for the on-chain VCM
KLIMA represents a basket of assets/index of the ReFi space at large
Product and Platform Strategy
This section articulates the key initiatives across our Product and Platform Strategy. By ‘Product’, we refer to the web applications suite (i.e Klima Infinity) that utilizes the core ‘Platform’, which is the bonding, staking and carbon assets liquidity mechanism of KlimaDAO.
Klima Infinity initiatives
Klima Infinity embodies a set of products and features geared toward solving issues that exist in the traditional VCM by making it easy for organizations and individuals to quickly source and retire tokenized carbon to become ‘climate positive’.
1. Retirement Aggregator
Goals
Drive adoption and utilization of tokenized carbon offsets
Own the end-to-end customer experience as part of the Klima Infinity offering
Description
Allow users to retire any tokenized carbon asset in a single trade. We charge a 1% fee against the value of the carbon token retired, and this results in non-dilutive reserves denominated in carbon credits flowing back into the DAO treasury.
Recent releases and updates
The ability to do selective retirements of specific project tokens is now supported.
When a retirement is processed, a shareable receipt/certificate page is generated to complete the user journey.
A retirements summary page (beta) for a wallet address is also now live in Production.
Work on integrating a carbon footprint calculator is in progress.
2. State of Tokenized Carbon Dashboard
Goals
Become the primary source of reference for the tokenized carbon industry
Summarize key market data to inform retail and institutional investors
Description
Build an industry reference dashboard for the overall state of the Tokenized Voluntary Carbon Market (tVCM) with price feeds for on-chain and off-chain markets. The dashboards will provide a top-level summary with the ability to drill down into specifics.
Recent releases and updates
The beta version of the dashboard is live.
A design review process has been completed and a landing/home page with additional visualizations is coming soon.
3. Climate Pledge Dashboard
Goals
Improve the value proposition for Klima Infinity partners by making it easy for them to highlight their direct action to become a climate positive organization
Drive broader consumer awareness of climate positive organizations, KLIMA, and tokenized carbon
Description
A dashboard that allows individuals and organizations to transparently demonstrate compliance with their declared climate positive pledge, total carbon footprint, and methodology versus their total tokenized carbon asset holdings and total retirement activity. The focus is to highlight the ‘on-the-ground’ impact and for organizations to feel ownership of their pledge dashboard so that it is integrated into their site and widely shared.
Recent releases and updates
A beta version of the pledge dashboard is being tested in the internal Staging environment.
Targeting early/mid-June for release of v1 with simple visualizations.
Work on integrating a carbon footprint calculator is in progress.
KlimaDAO platform initiatives
KlimaDAO’s Policy Team aims to facilitate the development of a carbon offset-backed reserve cryptocurrency, which accelerates the growth of ReFi, and to provide transparent and frictionless access to the carbon market. Security (of cryptoassets in the treasury) and facilitation of trading (through robust liquidity rails) is of the utmost importance to the Policy Team. There are two key categories in this regard:
1. Reserve layer
Objective
The reserve layer is responsible for KLIMA’s growth and value stability. This is the foundational act that has been ongoing since inception.
Goals
Utilize levers given to the Policy Team in order to develop a stable, free-floating cryptoasset that the carbon market can use as a store of value and unit of account.
Acquire a variety of carbon- and climate-related assets into the KlimaDAO treasury to back KLIMA. Utilize/develop current and future reserve-generating cryptoassets in order to ensure the protocol continues to grow. This includes bond management, treasury management, Klima Infinity, etc.
Work with other teams (Marketing, Engineering, etc.) to ensure an easy user experience (eg. onboarding, wallet tools, etc.).
Description
KlimaDAO utilizes reserves in order to secure its value across the DeFi and ReFi ecosystems. The focus should be on users seeing KLIMA as a cryptocurrency linked directly to the carbon offset market.
Status
Ongoing
As at March 2022, the KlimaDAO treasury holds liquidity for two carbon credit tokens (BCT and MCO2), as well as three additional tokens as reserves (NCT, UBO, and NBO). Klima Infinity allows protocols to hold KLIMA as a reserve cryptocurrency, maintaining tokenized carbon credit buying power and allowing participation in the governance of the on-chain carbon markets facilitated by the treasury.
2. Liquidity layer
Objective
The liquidity layer is responsible for KLIMA’s tradeability, as well as providing deep liquidity for KLIMA/carbon pairs. This positions KLIMA as the key liquidity pair for the on-chain carbon markets, ensuring minimal fees and concentrated liquidity for each carbon credit token.
Goals
The protocol should incentivize and adopt KLIMA liquidity pairs. Note that it does not nor should enforce protocol owned liquidity.
Integration and acceleration of bootstrapping of carbon projects. Integrating with carbon projects incentivizes them to join the ‘Klimaconomy’, as well as ensuring KLIMA is the central asset of the on-chain carbon ecosystem.
Optimize liquidity by forming partnerships, or by utilizing other protocols in order to deepen liquidity and increase utilization for the treasury. For example, utilizing UniV3 concentrated liquidity or participating in the Curve liquidity wars.
Description
Liquidity facilitates access to the KlimaDAO ecosystem of tokenized carbon credits. Having deep liquidity owned by the protocol itself gives the carbon market confidence to use KLIMA as a trading pair for carbon, or to hold, as participants are able to enter and exit to and from all carbon assets, as well as other major cryptocurrencies (e.g. USDC and OHM).
KlimaDAO market engagement
One of the major recent developments in the crypto-carbon niche was the Verra registry’s recent announcement to suspend the bridging of carbon credits via the ‘retirement’ approach, which requires carbon credits to be retired from the registry prior to being moved onto the blockchain. KlimaDAO has responded by welcoming the move to strengthen the bridging process with buy-in from the registry, which has to date been a somewhat passive bystander. However, more clarity around execution and timelines for the development of new solutions would have been welcomed by the ReFi space.
Moving forwards, KlimaDAO intends to respond to Verra’s consultation on the emergence of ReFi, elucidating key points on why we believe the benefits the blockchain can bring to the carbon market are significant, and that key risks can be effectively addressed by ReFi. However, KlimaDAO also acknowledges that the climate crisis is the most pressing issue of our time, and our work cannot stop. We will be engaging on multiple levels with the ReFi space, the broader DeFi ecosystem, and key market stakeholders to define a path forward that enables the further integration of these markets with as little disruption as possible.
A key element of these discussions will be exploration of how novel sources of high-integrity and robust carbon supply can be integrated into DeFi. Our partners at C3 have issued an encouraging statement that announces ‘live’ pools and further diversification of the carbon that can be bridged onto the blockchain. In addition, there is some availability of crypto-native carbon solutions that could be integrated into the KlimaDAO ecosystem, such as the supply developed by Regen Network.
How you can help drive the DAO forward to achieve its vision
Through our commitment to transparency, we unlock the power of community. As a Klimate, you can play an active role in helping KlimaDAO contributors execute our Product Roadmap. By engaging in constructive debate and discussion on Discord and our social channels, you are able to escalate feedback to KlimaDAO contributors. This feedback plays an important role in the shaping of our roadmap.
By engaging in the KIP governance process on the Forum, and subsequently by voting on Snapshot, you directly impact the direction of the KlimaDAO protocol’s evolution. And by engaging constructively with the broader ReFi community, and key carbon market players and organizations, you are the voice of the DAO. The KlimaDAO protocol is there for you, to build, shape, and drive forwards – enabling you to use carbon as a DeFi lego, in the way Gwami Labs, among others, has already started to do.
Building the on-chain VCM is one of the keys to ensuring a sustainable future for our planet, and both of these outcomes are contingent on us demonstrating coordinated action.
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.