Introducing Nori’s Web3 Marketplace
Nori Product Lead Patrick Tsao unpacks how the launch of the Web3 marketplace benefits carbon removal suppliers, climate-conscious businesses, and more.
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Nori’s Web3 Marketplace — an upgrade for our ecosystem and a pivotal step for our mission of scaling carbon removal to reverse climate change. We became the first company to natively originate carbon removals on-chain in 2019, using Ethereum to mint Nori Carbon Removal Tonnes (NRTs) and laying the foundation for more transparent carbon markets. Today’s launch marks the completion of our migration to Polygon, a tightening of the connection between carbon removal suppliers and buyers, and the beginning of a new era of integrations and collaborations for Nori.
In this Q&A, our Product Lead Patrick Tsao explains what this launch means for Nori, carbon removal suppliers, and the businesses and entrepreneurs that are looking to incorporate carbon removal into their offerings. Read on to understand how the Web3 marketplace will empower suppliers with faster and safer payouts, enable builders and businesses to integrate climate action into their dApps, and more.
Q: What does the Web3 marketplace launch mean for Nori?
A: One of Nori’s primary hypotheses is that blockchain technology can solve inherent problems within the carbon removal industry and help scale carbon removal. This launch represents a major step toward realizing our vision;
A migration from Ethereum to Polygon: Now that our migration from Ethereum to Polygon is complete, we’re immediately realizing the benefits of lower gas fees. Our marketplace transacts much more efficiently than before, and we are equipped to begin growing our platform toward commodity-scale carbon removal. Perhaps more importantly though, we’re excited to join their value-aligned ecosystem. With NRT origination, sales, and retirement all happening natively on-chain, Polygon is now our source of truth.
Building trust through transparency: Bringing transparency to voluntary carbon markets has been one of Nori’s driving goals since it was founded in 2017. Our team led the way with native on-chain origination and we are excited to continue enhancing the much-needed transparency in our industry. Every Nori Carbon Removal Tonne (NRT) we create contains detailed information about the underlying carbon, including our science-backed methodology and the supplier from which it came.
We have always been proud of the provenance of our carbon removals and the marketplace launch takes this further. Now, not only do you know which supplier you’re buying from, you buy from them directly — each purchase deposits USDC into their wallet while retiring the NRT.
One of Nori’s core values as a company is to always place “honesty above all else,” and we’ve designed our product to live up to this spirit.
Carbon retirements enforced by code: Since Nori’s mission is to reverse climate change, we want as much of the money spent on carbon removals to go toward actual carbon sequestration as possible. Our smart contracts enforce immediate retirement, prohibiting secondary sales of our carbon removal offsets. Furthermore, the blockchain publishes all of our code and transactions, and we invite anyone to examine our work and provide feedback so we can continuously improve.
Web3 integrations: In line with the Web3 ethos of “permissionless,” our smart contracts feature a public endpoint for anyone to programmatically swap USDC with NRTs. Over the last few months, we’ve had many inspiring discussions with partners about how they might use this capability to offer carbon removal within their products.
Q: How does the marketplace impact carbon removal suppliers, like the regenerative farmers who sell NRTs via Nori?
A: Our blockchain-powered marketplace benefits suppliers by giving them true ownership of their carbon removal offsets, enabling safer and faster payouts, and ensuring fair treatment within our marketplace.
In the past, Nori issued the NRTs into our own database, collected funds from buyers, retired NRTs, and paid suppliers via check or ACH. Now, once NRTs are issued they are listed for sale on our marketplace under the custody of the suppliers. When a purchase is made, we retire the suppliers’ NRTs and deposit USDC directly into their wallet. In other words,they get paid immediately for every sale, no matter how large or small.
This launch also empowers suppliers to self-custody their funds, removing the possibility of Nori ever blocking withdrawals.
On top of that, we’ve updated our NRT allocation algorithm to give all suppliers a fair shot at selling regardless of their size, which is especially relevant as we’re expecting a large batch of NRTs to come online soon from our Bayer partnership.
Q: How can businesses and builders leverage the marketplace?
A: Industry leaders acknowledge a global need for gigaton-scale carbon removal by mid-century in order to avoid disastrous tipping points. To achieve this level of impact, carbon removal needs mainstream adoption among businesses as well as consumers. Our marketplace was designed to enable easy, public access to our carbon removal offsets so that anyone looking to drive climate action can build on top of it. We publish detailed, contextual information about our carbon removals and allow them to be used to enhance products or build businesses in an infinitely wide range of ways — purchases can be triggered by any action in the product, and can be fractional, allowing for microtransactions.
We’re essentially launching our own app store of sorts; for example, anyone can now use Nori to incorporate carbon removal into their checkout flow, automate their own carbon removal purchases based on the benchmarks of their choosing, launch an affiliate program to sell NRTs, etc.
Our Web3 integration is specifically for companies and developers building on Polygon. Beyond this though, we’re also on track to deliver a REST API soon. The REST API is an extension to our blockchain infrastructure that will allow folks using traditional web technologies to participate, too.
Between the smart contract and REST API, you’ll be able to integrate carbon removal into essentially anything. It’s an opportunity for businesses and builders to get creative with their climate impact and we can’t wait to see what people do with it.
We know that collaboration is key to reversing climate change. That’s why we’re inviting companies of all sizes to integrate Nori into their offerings and join us on this journey. Whether you’re looking to integrate carbon removal into your current business or build something entirely new, the possibilities are endless.
Learn more about our Web3 integration and how to get started here.
(If you’re looking to integrate carbon removal into your brand but aren’t building on Polygon’s blockchain, or on the blockchain at all, our REST API has you covered. Learn more about it here.)
