Progress Update 2020, Upcoming Plans for 2021

Dear Community,

This is a long overdue update, and from the entire team, we felt the need to share the updates and progress on our end, despite the challenges posed to us during this tough period. It is no question that 2020 has been nothing short of a challenge. When COVID-19 hit us, many of us were at a standstill, especially the green community and businesses that were exploring green initiatives. As the pandemic continues to hold uncertainty and doubt in all of us, we have taken the chance to regroup and reassess our project during this difficult time.

First and foremost, to get this out of the way. One of the most common question brought forth from our community, is the impact of, or any, from the generally positive momentum in the crypto market as of recent. The TLDR answer to this — almost zero direct price movement and value impact, but has revived interest in our project, which we are working to realise its potential value.

The explanation: While the price of BTC and ETH has hit historical high due to more institutional funds entering the market, our native token is considered an alt ICO token and the impact of the market movement has not translated much at all, or very indirectly, to our token.

Nevertheless, we are experiencing a resurgence of interest in our project and this time round, mainly from institutions who are exploring getting their ESG/Sustainability programs on the blockchain. We have engaged reputable stakeholders in the global green community to assist us in our ESG engagements and also to potentially secure another round of fund injection to further extend the lifecycle of this project, and importantly, to withstand the transition of carbon credit scheme to the more lucrative renewable energy certs market. Realistically, the ups and down of the coin market didn’t do good for our project. But we are optimistic not just because there is a resurgence of interest, but also we have a head start in the development of our platform as compared to bigger players who are also exploring/starting to get serious on getting carbon credits/RECs on the blockchain.

Progress Update:

Our beta testing of http://offset.carbongrid.io/ had allowed us to take a hard look at the extensive requirements of real world institutional clients and we have narrowed down on the key improvements features to roll out. An updated version of the platform is in the midst of development and is targetted to roll out in Q2 of 2021.

We had generally positive feedbacks on the beta testing from our clients who participated, but admittedly, we are still a distance from a finished product due to the challenges we have experience in 2020. We had a number of clients in our pipeline that dropped out, and carbon credit projects we were on-boarding had experienced delays due to a global funding gut with the business community shifting their focus and mandate to withstand the impact of COVID-19 instead. We also had a round of restructuring in the team to cushion the impact of the situation.

Upcoming Plans for 2021

With the resurgence of interest in our project due to the momentum of the crypto market and a greater adoption of digitalisation and blockchain worldwide, we are targeting to capitalise with the following plans in mind:

• We will be looking to secure another round of funding to extend the lifeline of the project, and to ensure our development goals are met with the rising challenges of working during the pandemic. Funding will generally come from the start-up community and from institutional funders.
• Fundamentally, we are intending to shift our focus away from the carbon credit scheme and instead, look into the renewable energy certificate scheme.
• Apart from the new features we are working on, we continue to look for partnerships and collaboration in the digital space to further enhance our offering to our clients and our community at large.
• We recognise the lack of liquidity on GBX for our token. Thus, we will also be exploring a possible listing of our token on another exchange.

As the year comes to a close, the storm is not over yet. In 2021, we are working on enhancing our current features and unveiling new ones to create the best ESG and offset solutions for modern businesses and the industry at large. Let us continue to brave the storm without fear of what’s coming next.

Thank you for being a part of our journey. On behalf of the Carbon Grid team, have a wonderful new year ahead!

Best regards,

Carbon Grid Protocol Team