KarbonMap - Scalable, Authenticated, Traceable Carbon Credit & Payment Distribution on Cardano

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Hien Mai - https://www.linkedin.com/in/hien-mai-karbonmap/

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

contact@karbonmap.org

Additional applicants

Mai Thanh Binh - https://www.linkedin.com/in/binh-mai-6b572493/

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

12

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language.

No

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

Yes

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.” .

While Aiken is currently being used as a language stack for developing smart contracts, it is not a strict dependency as the project can also utilize other languages, such as Haskell. Aiken is primarily a language stack supporting smart contract development rather than relying on specific open-source libraries

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

Yes

[GENERAL] If NO, please describe which outputs are not going to be open source. If YES, please write “Project will be fully open source.”

All Smart Contract work and codes for on-chain portions will be open source. Off-chain codes will not be fully open source, as some of features are customised for individual projects under non-disclosure agreements and other contractual agreements.

[METADATA] Category of Proposal

RealFi

[METADATA] SDG rating

SDG Goal 5 - Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

SDG Subgoal 5.a - Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws

Key Performance Indicator (KPI) 5.a.1 - (b) share of women among owners or rights-bearers of agricultural land, by type of tenure

• KarbonMap is built to digitalise every stage of carbon certification process tracking women and youth participations, encouraging and making it easy for projects to continuously engage local indigenous communities at scale. For example, KarbonMap is collaborating with World Bank EnABLE fund to record and verify community participations and decision makings, specifically measuring and verifying how women and youth are benefiting from ERPA projects.
• Women and youths will be the first to benefit from our agenda to democratise ground truth data collection work of the Monitoring & Evaluation process, because they traditionally do not have permanent jobs with stable incomes, KarbonMap provides a respectable jobs that also aligns with the global climate interest. Today, carbon projects pay a large sum of monies to hire third-party experts to fly in to measure trees and collect forest data instead of allowing local communities to take such measurements due to mistrusts.

SDG Goal 8 - Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

SDG Subgoal 8.2 - Achieve higher levels of economic productivity through diversification, technological upgrading and innovation, including through a focus on high-value added and labour-intensive sectors

Key Performance Indicator (KPI) 8.2.1 - Annual growth rate of real GDP per employed person

• Utilising workflow automation and generative AI, KarbonMap enables trustless data collection via photo-taking (of trees, insects and animals, plants and other co-benefits) by the community. KarbonMap automatically integrates collected ground data with ecological theory and formula, merged with satellite image analysis, biomass modelling and other aerial survey data sources to produce reports and evidence meeting existing carbon standards such as Verra and OxCarbon.

SDG13: Climate Action + SDG17 Partnerships for the Goal: Though not directly, KarbonMap reduces cost of Monitoring & Evaluation of nature-based solutions at scale, enables transparent data tracking for carbon accounting and auditing, mitigating risks for investors which encourages and normalises investments into nature-based solutions.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

KarbonMap consists of a mobile app for data collection for local communities and a management dashboard for project developers, investors and other stakeholders to manage data and different stages of carbon credit certification. KarbonMap is currently live for 5 projects in Southeast Asia and Africa, with 20+ projects in the pipeline undergoing feasibility studies and partnership agreements. 2 proposals for on-chain components:

• Local communities earn tokens by verifying carbon projects' progress & biodiversity data through KarbonMap App. Projects use collected data for carbon credit certification. Tokens can be cashed out when projects receive fundings (number of tokens being held represents the respective share of funding), or put on sale on Danogo or other exchanges.
• Projects' fund raising on chain: Each project will issue its own project tokens via a standard templated smart contract representing the revenue share of the project. While we expect majority of issued project tokens to be held by lead accredited investors, a portion of issued tokens can be open for community participation. KarbonMap allows projects to easily and quickly create websites introducing their project details via an existing integration with tempi.vn, with all projects having generative AI autogenerated websites to solve project developers' cold-start problem and allow project developers to focus on fine tuning their websites' content. Projects' websites are connected with MarketPlaces such as ACX for fund-raising, auto-push content to social media channels for public awareness.

[IMPACT] How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

• New accredited investors will enter Cardano, holding the project tokens to represent their share of their investment into the project. 1 project in Southeast Asia have agreed to adopt this option and fund management and funding releases to project developers in milestones.
• Payments for data collectors (residing in developing countries) will be managed and disbursed at scale and transparently via Cardano smart contract. Fund flow are traceable on chain.

[IMPACT] How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

The success of our projects is to have the global community participate in collecting and verifying carbon MRV data.

Quantitative Measures of Success are as follows.

-Number of projects enrolling in on-chain features

-Number of projects publishing carbon data, biodiversity data, and co-benefit data 

• Local indigenous communities collect these data, verified by other data sources or experts, and publish them for auditing and research use.

-A number of families and individuals reselling reward tokens.

Qualitative Measures of Success

-Our project will drive the growth of Cardano's ecosystem by gaining trust and adoption in marginalized communities.

-Foster awareness and adoption of Cardano as a trusted currency in marginalized communities.

-Establish ourselves as a reliable source for Carbon MRV through community auditability and transparent governance.

-Create lasting economic and financial benefits for local communities in marginalised areas.

[IMPACT] Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

• For aggregated statistics such as users and transaction volume, we plan to use Danogo's statistics site to publish a dashboard to track KarbonMap users and transactions. Public reports will be made available on individual projects' sites according to the standards' requirements. Privileged data and continuous monitoring results will only be accessible to token holders, ie project owners.
• Project-specific updates will only be available to the project owners due to privacy agreements.
• Only Wallets with specific project tokens and auditors can log into project.karbonmap.com to access the respective detailed progress, such as milestones, timelines, data, continuous monitoring dashboards and unpublished reports.
• For communication medium: we will set up twitter, discord, telegram to interact with our Cardano community members and receive their feedback and suggestions.
• Bugs raised will be logged on JIRA and tracked till resolved.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

Hien Mai - Founder

• 10+ years working as a data scientist, leading data infrastructure, data engineering and data science teams. Hien possesses extensive knowledge in data infrastructure, enabling her to design how data should be organised and analysed, reported and visualised for accounting, reporting, investor and stakeholder as well as daily operational use in conservation and afforestation/reforestation work. 

Hien has been actively involved in nature-based solutions projects with different NGOs since 2020 and began working on KarbonMap in late 2022 after recognising a need to optimise the current MRV processes. 

In March 2023, Hien partnered KarbonMap with Danogo to enhance support and facilitate the first project onboarding. KarbonMap benefits from Danogo's capable team, which provides technical support for all on-chain operations. With a strong track record in designing and building enterprise-grade software, Danogo boasts a large team with diverse expertise, ensuring the success of the KarbonMap project at every stage.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

• Allow the public to participate in the MRV (Measurement, Reporting and Validations) process, democratising participation compared to the sole reliance on the third party expert verifiers today.
• Allow projects to manage fund and a large number of stakeholders and participants at scale at reasonable cost.
• Publish transparent data and reports to guide the voluntary carbon credit market towards fairer distribution, high quality conservation work and easy access to investors.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

On-chain milestones:

• Q4 2023: smart contract template with parameters for projects to start raising funds and distributing payments for data collectors
• Q1 2024:
• 100,000 ADA will be used to subsidise gas fee when farmers/data contributors opt in to Cardano as the payment option. This scheme is only available for existing carbon projects already paying data contributors off-chain (with clear pathway to carbon credit or already obtained at least 1 issuance) in countries where crypto currency is legalised. This subsidies will not be eligible for investors or projects raising funds on Cardano.
• 320,000 ADA will be used as a grant to sponsor partner NGOs to run city projects on Cardano, to start using KarbonMap to measure trees in their cities. Such projects will not qualify for carbon projects but purely for data transparency and awareness campaigns, so contributors will be paid via grants. The current identified partner will map out Ho Chi Minh city, Ha Noi and Da Nang over a 12-month period.

-For more detail of our detailed breakdown of KarbonMap's milestones, budget allocations and timeline, please refer to the following link

LINK: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uEWal6TD-7DmIWtJB6-nEMv7eqZawws1wactG8hLFdg/edit?usp=sharing

*Note: all funds raised will be distributed to new Cardano users in the 2 categories above. The KarbonMap team is committed to not take any of the grant for ourselves. All evidence will be available for tracing on chain.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

• >2 out of 10 active projects will choose on-chain option by end 2023, bringing in accredited investors, retail investors, project developers and other stakeholders
• >500 farmers will be paid on chain by mid-2024
• monitoring data of >10,000ha of land will be available on chain by mid-2024

-For more detail on KarbonMap's deliverables, outputs, and outcomes, please refer to the following link

LINK: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uEWal6TD-7DmIWtJB6-nEMv7eqZawws1wactG8hLFdg/edit?usp=sharing

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

All funds raised in ADA will be used to subsidise gas fees to onboard new users into the community. Project team members are not paid using this fund.

-For more detail on KarbonMap's budget breakdown, please refer to the following link

LINK: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uEWal6TD-7DmIWtJB6-nEMv7eqZawws1wactG8hLFdg/edit?usp=sharing

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

Cost-effective talent acquisition: Cardano is sponsoring only on-chain components such as Cardano gas fees, which is ultimately returned to the Cardano ecosystem. These sponsorships are also geared towards onboarding new users for Cardano.

Existing MVP delivery: The current team has already released a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that is available and operational on all mobile devices. This demonstrates their capability to deliver a functional product and reduces the risk associated with development efforts. The existing MVP serves as a solid foundation for further development and expansion.

Operational projects in diverse regions: The project has already established operational projects in Asia and Africa. This demonstrates the project's ability to engage and collaborate with different regional communities and stakeholders. The existing operational projects provide evidence of the project's viability and potential for scalability.

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agreed to Fund10 rules and also that data in the Submission Form and other data provided by the project team during the course of the project will be publicly available.

I Accept