As we come to the closing ceremonies of the first ever POAPathon, which started as an idea (or joke, depending who you talk to) only a few weeks ago, we’re taking a breath to look back at this one of a kind event for creative designers, POAP enthusiasts, and the DEFI community.
If you want a deep dive, you can check out the FAQ on POAPathon, but in short Carbon Utility Token was lucky to be one of the sponsors who offered up bounties to creative designers to build POAP art for their crypto projects.
There were also speakers, head-to-head design competitions, livestream takes of Tap crushing skateboard moves on an indoor halfpipe, and much more — including one of Discord’s busiest servers. :)
The core team was made up of talented champions and volunteers who came together with a shared vision of doing something grand and unique in the ever emerging land of POAPs.
Other sponsors included the likes of: UMA, Balancer DAO, Eco, Volatility Protocol, SushiSwap, POAP, Mythereum, GridPlus, Harvest.finance, and more. All of these projects offered bounties and received an amazing array of unique submissions for POAP designs.
Some sponsors offered bounties for upcoming events to be distributed within their community, commemorative POAPs for past milestones of note, and some related to future ambitions still to come!
Beyond being a Whale sponsor of this event the Carbon Utility Token team wanted to dive deeper and search for more ways to get involved. As an early project in the crypto space we put a huge premium on both:
Our great idea on how to dig deeper? Let’s also offer to retire millions of kilograms of carbon offsets from our supply, to counteract any footprint made from this event. Let’s make POAPathon 2021 green!
What footprint?
Folks are becoming more and more aware, and more research is being performed into the emissions being created from our digital lives. The carbon footprint of mining Bitcoin is massive and well documented. What about the footprint of DEFI protocols and various swaps and gas fees? What about NFT’s and the various marketplaces and auctions? Outside of crypto, what about the Netflix show your bing-watching?
Data has a footprint. And rather than run from scaling technological advances, the exact genesis of the CUT project was to offer other ways to offset these negative impacts with confidence using the blockchain.
For POAPathon there will obviously be lots of POAPs minted, there is lots of live streaming, and other general online activities that will carry a climate impact. Calculating these impacts, and offsetting them immutably on-chain is precisely the task at hand.
We’ve already retired 1 Million kilograms of carbon offsets live on-stage during the closing ceremonies, and have ear marked another 4 Million available as we now circle back to retrace our steps (or footprints!). Through this process we gain more insight and understanding as to where footprints are created, and assurance in how we can work to make them carbon neutral.
“Working with Carbon Utility Token was a fantastic opportunity for POAPathon. We are so grateful that CUT came along early in our endeavor and made not only POAPathon greener, but allowed us to carry this legacy forward as having hosted one of the first crypto events that was carbon neutral. We look forward to offering similar opportunities for future events in partnership with CUT.”
- Tap @ POAPathon
Our vision was to connect footprint activities immutably to real world carbon destruction or removal activities. An on-chain carbon neutral connection that can be trusted and can be understood.
To date, over 540 thousand tonnes of Carbon Offsets have been purchased from Independant power producers in Landfill gas capture and destruction, and biomass energy from waste wood. These are certified under the standard ISO 14064 for greenhouse gas emissions, and represented in our token supply.
Our next frontier is realizing our Utility, by consuming these Offsets and triggering more climate impacts. When someone retires Carbon Tokens, that associated volume of Offsets are locked forever. These assets can never be traded or retired again. And to make the impact multiply, retiring CUT also results in the Carbon Utility Token team having to purchase more Carbon Offsets — to mint more tokens.
For minting new tokens, as a rule we always add a larger factor of Carbon to the pool, than we do of Tokens to the circulating supply. This results in the ongoing appreciation in the Utility of each token. Replacing at a higher ratio of Carbon allows us to continue to connect our growth with the growth in related scientific benefits to the planet.
With the POAPathon, we’re exploring another great use case for enabling growth technologies with climate protections. The architects of POAPs have done fantastic planning to have xDAI for layer 2 scaling, and abstracting gas and costs no to be a hindrance to creating this new type of NFT.
Learning early how we can track the footprint and make it completely carbon neutral helps prepare us to continue to scale into the future. With consumption of fossil fuels able to be recognized and neutralized for whatever forms the future of the technology holds, technology scaling doesn’t need to happen at the expense of positive environmental impacts.
Let’s close by sharing some of the amazing winning artwork CUT received from POAPathon artists. :)
Matthew is an experienced founder in technology and renewables, and was recently part of developing a clean energy data network. Other experiences include founding a startup in finance working with over 100 impact businesses in fundraising and growth. Matthew holds a commerce degree from Dalhousie University.
Carbon Utility Token (CUT) co-founders Matthew Pickup and Ethan Gilmore join Bittrex Global CEO Stephen Stonberg on the Bit Podcast to discuss CUT's vision and how the project helps individuals and organization offset their carbon footprint. Matthew and Ethan also discuss why they chose to take necessary steps to set up in a jurisdiction like Liechtenstein, where there is regulation and a framework for compliance.
As we come to the closing ceremonies of the first ever POAPathon, which started as an idea (or joke, depending who you talk to) only a few weeks ago, we’re taking a breath to look back at this one of a kind event for creative designers, POAP enthusiasts, and the DEFI community.If you want a deep dive, you can check out the FAQ on POAPathon, but in short Carbon Utility Token was lucky to be one of the sponsors who offered up bounties to creative designers to build POAP art for their crypto projects.
We just offset the entire Ethereum blockchain for 1 hour on Earthday. That's now 2,700 tonnes of CO2 not in the atmosphere... This is just the start of the blockchain revolution, helping build a more sustainable future!
