The Centralized vs Decentralized Approach

Centralized approaches to environmental issues are typically expensive, time-consuming, and far too often ineffective.

Governments love grand gestures as a political prop to “demonstrate” they are doing something. Often the projects funded are based on political considerations rather than any likelihood of a successful outcome.

Negative unexpected consequences are sure to arise with massive changes to the ecoSystem. Healthy environments are maintained through a delicate balance of a myriad of interconnected organisms.

Environmental concerns such as algae blooms are an indication that the system is out of balance. The worst thing that can be done when the environment has been severely compromised through large infrastructure projects is to exacerbate the problem with even larger ones.

A Sustainable Approach

The ecoSystem takes a different approach to environmental problems by funding smaller, more diverse projects. We believe that by increasing the number of technologies in the environmental space that better, more efficient, less costly solutions to ecological challenges will be realized.

 The ecoSystem believes that practical solutions can be reached at a fraction of the cost by studying the issues and taking a step-by-step decentralized approach.

 Lake Okeechobee

An excellent example of this is Lake Okeechobee in Florida. The US government plans a $2 Billion reservoir to combat algae outbreaks. A prominent wetlands expert said it is not big enough, not appropriately designed, and could further damage the everglades.

The ecoSystem would have a project page dedicated to Lake Okeechobee and for the funding of Okeechobee-related projects. As these projects are funded and implemented, their effects will become apparent. We could gain valuable information while continuing to fund more projects deemed relevant to the cause. We believe that balance can be restored with results greater than the sum of the parts.

$150 Million raised through the ecoToken could finance over 500 projects with a budget between $100,00 - 500,000. These microprojects working together would help restore the balance to the ecoSystem creating a cascading change in a positive direction.

If the relative effectiveness of the funded projects fall into a typical Pareto distribution, we would expect to find that the top 100 of these projects are having the most significant effect.

Once the best technologies and processes have been identified, they can be expanded for maximum impact. But even the less successful project will contribute some measure of beneficial effect and the overall gain of knowledge within the environmental sciences.

If the budget were $150 Million for a more effective solution, the resulting savings would be 92.5% compared to the proposed centralized government solution.

Funding Challenges for Innovators

When environmental concerns hit the radar, people rise up and demand that the government “do something” about it. After all, what can one person do by themselves?

Governments sensing a political opportunity often look for a solution with the best optics rather than the best outcomes. The potential solutions are filtered through a cadre of special interest groups, insiders and lobbyists.

Negative unexpected consequences are sure to arise with massive changes to the ecoSystem. Healthy environments are maintained through a delicate balance of a myriad of interconnected organisms.

As a result, an innovator without political influence rarely gains access to the funding necessary to develop their technology. This unrealized potential is not only a wasted innovation resource but also an unrealized commercial opportunity.

The ecoSystem seeks to bridge this gap by linking donors to innovators through crowdfunding projects. The donors can choose projects based on the type of return they want for their donation in terms of environmental impacts and bonuses for their support.

This decentralized solution relies on local community support and close relationships with academic institutions in the area.

The Carbon Credit Market

The carbon credit market has been plagued by bureaucracy and fraud. Double and quadruple counting of carbon reductions is extremely common. The existing carbon credit system is vulnerable to abuse and manipulation as the vast sums of money are tempting targets for unscrupulous individuals and nations.

On the other hand, current verification processes can be onerous, expensive and subject to manipulation.

Blockchain solves this problem through NFTs. For example, each project can have a verified NFT associated with the work done and environmental credits issued.

Fungible tokens can be issued backed by that NFT and sold on the open market. With this system, every credit will be fully backed and verifiable on the blockchain.

Credits initially created and stored on the blockchain can’t be double-counted so the user can purchase knowing that they are genuinely offsetting their emissions.

Sustainability is a broad term, but people often take it to mean environmental sustainability. That is a vital part but only one of the main pillars of sustainability. The others are social and economic.

At ecoToken, we emphasize the value of economic sustainability in environmental projects because no business or organization can be sustainable without economic sustainability.

The ecoSystem creates an economically sustainable feedback loop providing a new revenue source through environmental credits that we help generate.

This new revenue source allows money to come back into the ecoSystem as ecoToken and be distributed to the project funders. Once project funders who supported environmental regeneration have received their original contribution plus rewards, they will be more likely to contribute to a new project.

The Feedback Loop is designed to attract new environmental contributors to support ethical projects while generating returns from their initial contributions.

Users can either plant or stake their ecoTokens toward a project. Planting means they are “donating” to a project and will receive a much higher distribution of rewards upon a project’s completion

Staking towards a project will lock ecoToken for a set amount of time. After the lock period, users will be able to unstake their ecoToken and claim any rewards. Staking guarantees the users will get their initial ecoToken back even if the project fails.

Participants are able to use fiat currency (dollars, euros, etc.) to support projects without a Solana wallet. In this scenario, users create an account to fund projects, and any ecoToken that are earned as rewards will be accrued to their account. The rewards can then be taken out of the ecoSystem once the user attaches a Solana wallet.

Each project will have a set amount that can be staked or planted towards it. Once those targets are met, the funds will be transferred to the project’s facilitators, and the project will begin.

Project facilitators are required to give regular updates on their website page. Once the project is in operation, the environmental credit process will begin. The environmental credit process can vary from project to project.

As funds and credits are returned to the ecoSystem, they will be converted into ecoToken, and 1% will be burned in the deflationary protocol. The remaining ecoToken will be distributed to funders according to the ecoSystem’s ratios.