Why Zero Carbon Project needs its own utility tokens to tackle climate change

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Zero Carbon Project

3 min readSep 3, 2018

Utility token economy designs are under the spotlight to ensure they add value to their business model, customers and community. Zero Carbon Project has a well-designed reward token to provide a potent catalyst for change, underpinned by tokenising the potential utility received by customers from its Market service.

Zero Carbon Project’s utility token economy provides a more potent consumer reward than traditional alternative rewards such as rebates in the form of cash (or ether); loyalty points; or just lower prices.

Token’s utility underpinnings

Our token’s utility is underpinned by the requirement of energy suppliers to use them to pay their transaction fees. Energy suppliers are charged these fees for winning consumer business across our Zero Carbon Market. The transaction fee is paid with tokens but is calculated based on USD0.01 per kWh.

Recycling of tokens to top up reward pool

The transaction fees are paid into a smart contract which then recycles 70% off these transaction fees into our consumer rewards pool. These payments top up the reward pool in addition to its substantial initial allocation of tokens.

Token reward for early adopters

Early energy consumers earn tokens from the reward pool which are much higher volumes than the transaction fees received. These rewards are calculated using a different metric to the transaction fee, and are based on one token for every 100kWh consumed. This rate is then multiplied based on a generous referrals reward programme in which consumers can earn much higher token rewards by referring new consumers. The new referred consumer also earns the same reward as the introducer.

The rewards are intended to be substantial to provide a catalyst for early adoption and for spreading the word. Consumers deserve to be well rewarded for contributing to climate change; and for contributing to the growth of our initial customer base.

Classical utility token

Zero Carbon Project tokens have been designed to effectively capture the future utility that our potential future customers could receive from the Zero Carbon Market services in the future.

A rational owner of utility tokens may sell their tokens at a price which factors in the value of the future utility that customers could receive from the underlying services. This would require a probability-based forecast of the future consumer base which is highly uncertain, resulting in high volatility.

Built on anti-pump and dump properties

In addition, our utility token economy has been designed with ballast to counter this potential volatility. This same mechanism can also defend against damaging pump-and-dump operations. This is because when token prices fall, more tokens are required to pay transaction fees, which are then temporarily recycled out of circulation into the reward pool, thereby constraining supply.

Why the blockchain is required to tackle climate change

To provide a potent catalyst to tackle climate change, our utility token economy needs to work effectively. In order to achieve this, we need to utilise the blockchain, smart contracts, ERC-20 standards, crypto exchanges and the crypto community. Without the blockchain our utility token economy could not be created.