How it Works
Before we dive into the precise technology the CEoT ecosystem will require in order to happen, it’s important we be clear from the offset of our technical mandate, what we know and don’t know how to do, what we have solutions for and what we need to figure out solutions for. This paper has already portrayed a vision for the technology and a non-technical mandate. We’ve already established that:
The owner of the Thing in question will need a corresponding key to authenticate edits to the CEoT’s while the Thing is in their lawful custody
The owner will need to use their corresponding key to authenticate transfer of ownership of the Things CEoT
But their corresponding key should not expire, but instead its privileges should reduce so that they may continue to edit the destination address of where their royalties should be sent in the event of future resales of the Thing (a feature of NFT’s which allows previous owners, from the manufacturer(s), retailer(s) and previous owner(s) to receive a predetermined royalty from each future resale)
All corresponding keys are subject to reduced privileges on the same date as the estimated expiration date of the Thing. Thereafter the CEoT remains on the blockchain and visible, and in the possession of the last owner, but is no longer editable. Except maybe by the CEoT team who’ll maintain a master key, for purposes of correcting or transferring the CEoT tokens out of the CEoT’s ledger.
There is no ability for a current owner to edit previous owners‘ entries
The wallet address of the owner is held in the CEoT when they claim ownership as part of the transfer of ownership/ chain of custody. The field the custodian can edit is the pseudonym of their wallet address e.g. Amazon.com, Inc.
The roles and privileges of the keys are as follows:
Table 1.0 - Role and Privileges of Keys
Roles |
Privileges |
Allodium |
Ultimate Control/ Master Key - Held by ceot.org |
Vestee |
Can edit their segments ‘destination wallet address’ for royalties |
Beneficiary |
Current Holder/ Custodian - Active editing of the active segment |
Trustee |
Ownership reverts to beneficiary and key is non-vestee after a period |
The NFT and blockchain technology used would need to be as green as possible to avoid hypocrisy. Even with the advent of Etherium 2.0 which is 95% more energy efficient than Etherium 1.0 and undergoes its merge to transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake in the first half of 2022 . Phase two, called the surge, plans to give Ethereum increased scalability, massive bandwidth and throughput, particularly on zk-Rollups.
Subsequently CEoT would not begin to be able to calculate its Ecosystems offset of carbon emissions starting at zero. It would need to begin its calculation at a deficit based on its own carbon footprint of the production of the CEoT
An NFT sale entitled Beeple may have racked up $69.3m, but it also generated 78.5Mg of CO₂ emissions—the same amount of electricity used by more than 13 homes in an entire year
One NFT (minted on Super Rare) is equal to around 211 kg of CO₂. That means the launch of the Palm NFT platform (which uses a centralised, with a promise to become decentralised, Proof of Authority algorithm, even more energy efficient than proof-of-stake) would have generated more than 2m kg of CO₂, the equivalent of 432 cars being driven for a year
To put this into perspective, the Oatly carbon label solution says that the carbon footprint of each carton of oat milk is 0.41kg CO2e/kg
where CO2e/kg is the greenhouse gas emissions per kilogramme of product, converted to an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide (carbon dioxide equivalents or CO2e
This is the standard unit for measuring carbon footprints so that they can be compared. But how many shoppers would know this and, more to the point, is 0.41kg CO2e/kg a high or low figure
Here is where the emergence of CEoT becomes interesting. Because only in 2022 is an NFT able to be created with a minimal carbon footprint. And with the rise of trends like laser engraving and other technological advantages which could see CEoT go mainstream, a cruiciendo is reached where CEoT-enabling a pint of milk, becomes fathomly feasible to do.
Each NFT generated by the CEoT Ecosystem will have generated a corresponding authentication key to make edits. When a manufacturer ships to a wholesaler or retailer, or end-user directly (internet long tail), the privileges of the manufacturer’s corresponding key will be reduced to, say, only editing their address for any future royalties. And the new owner will have a new key generated for them upon handover/takeover in order they be able to manage the NFT, but only where it concerns their phase of the chain of custody.
If owner 1 sells or transfers a CEoT-enabled Thing to a new owner, owner 1’s key will be the one authorising the generation of a new owner key, and in such an even the previous owners key reduces in privileges. This is a core feature of the smart contract of the NFT and what makes CEoT what it is. Furthermore a new owner entry is made in the NFT to represent the new custodian and it is only this owner entry the custodian can amend.
CEoT (the NFT the QR-Code refers to) will contain a ledger, a kind of wallet of its own, which will be able to hold a number of cryptocurrency tokens equal in volume to the carbon label reading/scoring of the Thing:
The ledger on the CEoT will always be an inversion of the carbon label reading/scoring. And will always be divisible by 1,000 CEoTT’s (Tokens):
So if a pint of milk has a carbon label of 0.41kg CO2e/kg and a pint weighs 0.49 kg, the pint of milk has a carbon footprint of 0.2kg. Or in the case of the corresponding CEoT’s built in ledger, its balance will be set at negative 0.2 CEoTT.
In carbon neutral products and carbon absorbing ones, the carbon scoring will be a 0 or minus. Say a 0.49g pack of grass seeds with a Carbon Score of -0.2kg CO2e/kg ( a minus since it’s a carbon absorbing Thing). The CEoT ledger will begin with a positive balance of 0.2 CEoTT.
The CEoTT ledger is actually a sum total of two ledgers. A CEoTT positive ledger, which can only hold CEoT positive Tokens (CEoTT+) and a CEoTT negative ledger, which can only hold CEoT negative Tokens (CEoTT+). In essence this allows for supply of a negative balance token as well as a positive one.
Another point to mention is that a zero balance in CEoT is actually not true zero. In much the way zero celcius and farenheit vary. The reason for this is that there must be some reward for a carbon zero Thing. This variant is also logarithmic so that it eventually corrects in both directions. The logarithm itself is still being determined, so the below table is only an illustration. And to simplify the examples in this whitepaper all references to the CEoT ledger will use true zero.
Table 1.1 - CEoT Logarithmic (Illustration Only)
Carbon Score |
-11 |
-1 |
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
11 |
||
CEoT Ledger |
11 |
2.5 |
1.7 |
0 |
-2.5 |
3.7 |
4.9 |
-11 |
The fee charged when making entries and changes to a CEoT with a ledger balance of 0.2 CEoT Tokens, will be 0.2 CEoT Tokens. The custodian’s wallet is what is charged.
The only thing able to adjust the ledgers on the CEoT’s will be the CEoT’s Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO). Adjustments may be proposed, voted on and executed, such as “tolerance” e.g. +/- 10%. In much the same way the countdown clock was just adjusted by almost 9%, so too could the carbon labelling value of everything in the ECoT ecosystem be corrected by a small percentage. Say if the carbon calculation formula is updated.
When a CEoT’s ledger balance is -0.2 CEoT Tokens and the owner gains lawful possession of the corresponding, carbon absorbing Thing, their wallet is rewarded with 0.2 CEoT Tokens. The CEoT can store many fields of information, such as the weight of a Thing. And applications interacting with the CEoT can perform calculations such as converting the CO2e/kg unit of measure to a more easily readable format that makes more sense e.g. Carbon Footprint = 0.2kg (of Carbon into the atmosphere, during lifespan of the Thing).
- The CEoT Tokens contained “in each Thing” are not redeemable but if
they are made redeemable it should not be before the climate goals are met and/or the carbon countdown clock reaches zero. In which case they will serve as collectibles and/or memorabilia and hold information about participants in the fulfilment of the goals.