$OPN is a token for the world’s digital carbon reserve. As blockchain protocols become better understood as a financial asset class, and Bitcoin is used in reference to ‘Strategic Reserves’ for nation states, the world is quickly realizing that decentralized protocols can manage incentives and assets more efficiently and securely than ever before - and much more than single institutions or self-interested stakeholders.
Open Forest Protocol (OFP), is the world’s first on-chain carbon issuance platform. It is the single network that holds the promise of migrating the existing voluntary carbon market (VCM) onto a blockchain. Why is it a good time to do this? On OFP, every carbon credit issued is done with full visibility into how the credit was created: From the data uploaded, to how and when the data was validated, to what methodology was used to process the data to issue the credits. When the credit is created, it exists on-chain with an ID tying the specific carbon asset back to a specific project. This means on a blockchain, all carbon credits and other natural assets can never be double counted (burned on-chain), can never be falsely issued (decentralized validation), and can never be misrepresented from the reality on the ground (repeated data uploads every 6 months, validated by a sophisticated network of experts). Our vision for sound carbon is a paradigm shift against how carbon credits and other natural assets have suffered drawbacks to date.
This is the beginning of a century-long movement to onboard the natural world to blockchains. Like many Layer 1 blockchains in the modular stack - Cosmos, Polkadot, L2s on Ethereum - OFP is also modular in its design, but for different types of natural assets and carbon credits. This is referred to as ‘verticals’. When we ‘Open Source’ the Ecosystem, any third party - whether that is a government, corporate, institution, or NGO, will have the power to launch their own carbon credit with the same quality controls of every other natural asset on the protocol.
The Tokenomics however, does not change: Every data upload is validated through staking $OPN tokens on the correct outcome, while every planted $OPN token receives a small fee of the natural assets created on the protocol. That means as more ‘verticals’ connect to OFP, a finite amount of $OPN token will remain to yield multiple different natural assets from the network. Welcome to the world’s first carbon yielding asset, anchoring the on-chain nature economy.
The Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) , currently valued at $3 billion dollars, is slated to grow to over 20 billion USD in the next 20 years. Carbon credits and other natural assets remain one of the best options for combating the destruction of nature, managing corporate social responsibility, and mitigating runaway climate effects from ecosystem destruction. Pledges from governments and corporations combined have have already reached over $1.2 trillion USD annually. We believe that Open Forest Protocol will be the leading source of ‘Sound Carbon’ and ‘On-Chain Nature’ around the world in the future. We believe that most governments, corporations, and native blockchain ecosystems will benefit from creating or yielding sound carbon and other sound natural assets from Open Forest Protocol. Just as Bitcoin has grown into a ‘Strategic Reserve’ built around scarcity and deflationary principles, $OPN is designed to grow into a scarce and limited reserve for managing and yielding carbon assets from the world’s first on-chain carbon credit protocol.
As more assets are created on OFP, less $OPN is rewarded to protocol stakeholders.
In the past 4 years of our development, Open Forest has begun work with multiple governments around the world, from Ghana to Pakistan. Current collaborations with global organizations could bring an estimated 110,000 HA of land on the protocol. We believe that in the near future every government in the world, and a majority of publicly traded corporations, will have an interest in participating in the $OPN token-economy.
If you understand how protocols evolve and capture market share, see a future of financial incentives around natural assets and the conservation of nature, and believe that smart-contract defined rules improve trust and quality of assets, then sign up for our pre-sale to be early to the launch of $OPN.
