Why are you creating your own standard?

Organizations like Verra and the Gold Standard have existed for many years and developed the voluntary carbon offset market into what it is today. Their positive impact on the environment cannot be overstated. They are designed for large landholders (25,000 acres and above) to pledge their land to save the environment. But these standards have a foundation built on outdated principles that make voluntary carbon offset projects uneconomical for smaller forests.

Proimagery takes the strengths from each of these standards, eliminates the parts that do not add value, and automates the parts that do add value.

Keep

• Methodologies for quantifying carbon using forest sample data

• Adequate sampling buffer - This ensures that errors in the sampling process do not result in an overcalculation of Virtualcarbon issued.

• Permanence buffer - This ensures that buyers are protected from the risk that the carbon project suffers from a forest fire, pests, illegal logging, or another event that threatens the forest.

• Proof of Additionality - This ensures that the funds used directly prevent the land from being logged, and that had the project not taken place there would be quantifiably worse carbon emissions from the land.

Improve & Automate

• Third-Party Verification - Other standards require a third party to independently verify that carbon is actively being removed from the atmosphere. In theory, this is excellent. In practice, the incremental cost of the verification amounts to at least $20,000 + expenses. This makes it unfeasible for smaller projects. Proimagery instead will leverage satellite imagery coupled with Machine Learning.

• Project Design & Development - Other standards have project design documents that contain hundreds of pages. Proimagery has reduced the page count, templated it to allow for automation, and will provide a 2-page summary document that contains the most important points (both good and bad) for any potential NFT buyer.

Eliminate

• Leakage - While leakage is an important concept to understand from an academic perspective, it is impossible to quantify. The methodologies chosen by Verra and the Gold Standard to quantify leakage do not add any meaningful information and are subject to manipulation by the project developer.

• Cobenefit sharing - While not mandatory by other standards, many recent projects have shared a portion of the net revenue with local groups which may have been unintentionally impacted by the carbon project (ex. the low wage laborers who would have logged the land for income). Some projects also sponsor local wildlife conservation groups or primary schools. This is particularly important in the developing world. As we intend to launch projects in the developed world, this is less of a concern.

Add

• Blockchain - The blockchain will eliminate the double-counting of carbon credits, provide transparency for the network, and facilitate a secondary market for trading. Carbon credits are a perfect use case for blockchain.

• Built-in marketplace - Forest owners will not need to invest resources to sell carbon credits issued. CarbonHive will carefully vet projects, launch the projects as NFTs, and guarantee the income to forest owners. Because CarbonHive is liable for the income to the forest owners, only projects that are of excellent quality will be partnered with to launch.

• A significantly improved payment structure for forest owners - Forest owners will get paid in full by CarbonHive within 90 days of their project launch, regardless of sales status. Forest owners will not need to focus on sales.