Open Forest Protocol Uses NEAR to Scale Forest-based Climate Solutions

Published in

NEAR Protocol

4 min readOct 7, 2021

Open Forest Protocol (OFP) is using NEAR to bring forth a fully on-chain carbon economy, starting with a data auditing platform to make forestation transparent, accountable, and scalable.

While forestation is one of the most promising nature-based solutions to combat global warming, the industry is currently limited by a lack of a unified, transparent, and affordable measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) system. This hinders the industry from scaling at the level that it must in order for our world to meet the net zero goal by 2050. OFP wants to change that.

The revolutionary product is looking to solve the challenges forestation projects face by providing an easy-to-use blockchain platform to measure, report, and verify environmental data transparently and affordably. Closely collaborating with On a Mission and the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), OFP has built an MRV methodology that is scientifically rigorous and easily implemented at a global scale.

OFP’s community of international forest projects will submit their first data uploads following the beta launch in early November. Mainnet and token launch is expected at the end of Q1 2022. When the protocol is live, it will empower anyone managing trees to start a forest monitoring project, credibly report its progress, and seek funding from global funders and investors.

How does OFP work?

The platform consists of a mobile application for data uploads from the field, a blockchain-based structure for the trustless verification of environmental data, and the resultant open-source database, which enables carbon financing.

When a project operator registers their forest project on OFP, their data is stored on-chain as a non-fungible token (NFT). Field agents use the mobile app to upload data to their project dashboard. From then on, all project data is stored immutably and transparently on the public ledger.

As a data auditing platform, OFP provides on-chain data verification through a network of monitoring experts known as validators. Validators around the world make sure the data is legitimate using satellite, IoT, drone, and AI tech, with all monitoring information stored on-chain for anyone to access and double verify.

OFP allows for a win-win scenario for all stakeholders involved. Project operators benefit from access to inexpensive and transparent MRV, and qualification for carbon financing schemes. Validators benefit by earning fees for their services. Finally, the open and transparent nature of the system ensures quality control, increasing investor confidence in the projects they finance.

In the end, OFP benefits the global community by providing the infrastructure to sequester carbon at the scale we need, and laying the grounds for a truly data-backed carbon economy.

Why OFP Chose NEAR

OFP is building on NEAR Protocol because it is the perfect chain to bridge the climate solutions world with the crypto world.

1. NEAR is a certified climate neutral chain

NEAR’s commitment to sustainability aligns with the mission statement of OFP. As a Proof-of-Stake chain, NEAR is 200,000 times more efficient than Bitcoin, and the CO2 that NEAR does emit is offset by planting trees in Colombia, Zimbabwe, and the United States.

2. Scalability

Through its sharding design, NEAR is able to scale infinitely in theory. NEAR provides the technical capacity to accommodate the data of hundreds of thousands of forest projects that we need in order to combat climate change.

3. Usability and Accessibility

NEAR’s user-friendly design (such as the account model) and fast finality make it the best chain to onboard project operators and organizations unfamiliar with crypto.

4. Affordability

Because transaction costs on NEAR are negligible, OFP is able to reduce the costs of MRV for forest projects, and furthermore, open the doors to small to midsize forest projects who would otherwise be excluded from accessing costly MRV services.