• General
  • Request for Comment - C3 <> KlimaDAO: Support C3 as a branch of KlimaDAO

TL;DR: Support the launch of C3 as an ally of KlimaDAO, supporting each other to develop the new Carbon-economy with KlimaDAO as the Carbons’ decentralised bank and currency.

C3 aims to integrate the existing Voluntary Carbon Market with the emerging Web3-enabled ReFi economy in tandem with KlimaDAO.

From Day 1, we have been aligned with KlimaDAO's goals of accelerating climate action by catalysing deep on-chain carbon liquidity and developing a reserve currency backed by carbon assets. We want to lend a helping hand in developing this market through the development of our permissionless and automated carbon bridge.

What is C3?
C3 is a company that is guided by its core vision to leverage the power of Web3 to dramatically increase the throughput of capital toward high-impact carbon mitigation and removal projects globally. Web3 offers the potential to rebuild the Voluntary Carbon Market as an open, disintermediated, and transparent market with data-rich access for all stakeholders along the carbon value chain.
At launch, we will have two tokenised carbon credit pools, and a bridge with native support for offset retirements:

1. UBO (Universal Basic Offsets) Pool:

  • Criteria:
    i.Vintage 2014+, increasing +1 each calendar year.
    ii. Accepts all GS and VCS credits except the following blacklisted methodologies: (to be released before launch)

  • Rationale: a pool accepting all carbon credit types, aggregated across VCS and GS can be leveraged to develop deep liquidity, and a robust supply of carbon for the foundation of ReFi.

2.NBO (Nature Based Offsets) Pool:

-Criteria:
i. Vintage: 2014+, increasing +1 each calendar year.
ii. VCS AFOLU projects.
iii. GS A/R and Blue Carbon projects

  • Rationale: Agriculture, Forestry, and Land Use offsets are ranked first and second amongst the types of offsets purchased in 2019 by European and North American buyers, respectively. Increasing the quality of carbon tonnes bridged onto the blockchain will help maximise the impact of ReFi, and expose the top end of the carbon market to new demand pressures.

The criteria were chosen to best align with CBL Market's GEO and N-GEO contracts while allowing 2014 and 2015 vintages in to ensure adequate on-chain liquidity. These may change towards launch.

C3 is partnered with Aither, the largest carbon brokerage in Europe, with an annual revenue of €1.1b. Aither will assist C3 with collaborative efforts to utilise the offset tool as their main source of retirement, as well as sourcing carbon tonnage on chain. This collaboration will bring significant credibility and exposure to the role that blockchain has to play in the Voluntary Carbon Market.

On day 1, we will also release the C3 token, a governance and utility token of the C3 ecosystem. This will mainly be an ecosystem growth and bootstrapping system, with 75% of total supply going towards ecosystem rewards over 4 years. Behaviour that benefits the ReFi space, like bridging, staking, and providing liquidity will be rewarded C3 tokens. A vote-escrow model will be used (veC3) and gauges will be used to determine emissions to the various carbon tokens. Revenue generated from current and future C3 products will flow back to the protocol, either by distribution or growth in the ecosystem; this created value will ultimately be passed back to C3 users.

10% will be given to KlimaDAO, as our thanks for igniting the new wave of ReFi. Much of the core and significant contributors of KlimaDAO are advising C3 on how our organisations can most empower the DeFi climate finance ecosystem and create high performing liquidity rails between legacy and DeFi markets.

At launch, we will incentivize these specific pools:
UBO/KLIMA SLP
NBO/KLIMA SLP
C3/FRAX SLP
USDC/KLIMA SLP

3 single staking vaults:
UBO Single Sided Staking
NBO Single Sided Staking
wsKLIMA Single Sided Staking

And 2 Bridging Incentives:
UBO Bridging
NBO Bridging

More Klima pairs will be added, as time goes on. We encourage non-C3 carbon tokens to create a proposal for their liquidity to be added for incentives. We heavily believe in collaboration, and will not restrict any carbon asset to be listed on the gauges.

What we require from KlimaDAO:
Nothing. No initial liquidity, no initial partnerships, no initial bonding. We simply want to be viewed as a friendly ally to the Klima Ecosystem. Our goals are the same: to accelerate climate action and drive demand for carbon credits.

What do we offer?

  • 10% of total supply, vested over 3 years.
  • Additional support in bootstrapping carbon liquidity.
  • An external carbon bootstrapping mechanism outside of KlimaDAO.
  • Increased utility to the KLIMA token by making it the main pair for all current and future carbon tokens.

We in C3 are all Klimates. We truly want this to be a collaborative effort with KlimaDAO. We look forward to discussing and embarking on this journey together!

We will be having an LBP for those who want to buy UBO and NBO before the C3 token launches, in order to provide liquidity on day 1. C3 will be given to those participating in the LBP. More information can be found on twitter and discord!
C3 Twitter
C3 Discord

    Being able to pull from GS is pretty cool, and I like the UI you've sneak-peeked on twitter. I do have some questions:

    1)Let's say not all 2014 vintages are retired on-chain by the start of 2023, what happens to the remaining 2014 vintage in the pool? Are they just left there as a legacy until they are redeemed?

    2)Does your collaboration with Aither has specific language as to preference or just intent?

    3)This is a question I ask all nature-based pool product proposals since they place a higher value on narrative than a base carbon credit: What's your plan when leakage/project failure forces Verra/GS to pull credits from their buffer pool but your corresponding on-chain offset hasn't been retired? (GS will retroactively adjust the number of credits as well).

    Looks like a very promising project and proposal is very well written.

      letsss goooooo

      Laplace Fantastic proposal ! I was wondering if you could a)further expand on how these permissionless and automated carbon bridges would work and b) give a rough estimate of how much tonnage we could expect on chain when you launch.

      You have my support Xx

      Laplace excellent RfC! Easily in favor of progressing this rapidly to a KIP and really appreciate C3's well-designed protocol org and alliance offer with KlimaDAO. Would be proud to partner with such a forward thinking & positive sum partner 😊🀝.

      Only questions I have for clarity are:

      • So in the single staking vaults, we would be earning C3 token rewards for staking our wsKLIMA for example?
      • Why do you think to incentivize a C3/FRAX SLP and not C3/KLIMA? In principle, I'd be more keen on the latter (granted from USDC it'd mean trading through 2 pools of USDC/KLIMA & KLIMA/C3).
        [Edit: answers from Discord -- no more questions from me!
        "1:Yes, you will be getting C3 from staking your wsKLIMA, as a 'risk free method' for those who aren't interested in staking carbon assets.
        2: We do want to move it towards C3/KLIMA in the future, but to isolate the initial volatility onto us and not push it onto the Klima token, we decided to pair it with frax."]

      I'd be keen assuming community endorsement of this partnership, Policy soon drawing up a KIP to introduce naked NBO and NBO/KLIMA SLP for bonding to diversify/increase the quality of our treasury. I'd also introduce naked UBO and UBO/KLIMA SLP as a second priority, for exposure to GS, and reduce capacity for naked BCT.

      Lastly, I encourage other Klimates to appreciate the generous alignment of interests from C3's grant of their DAO token to KlimaDAO. This is strategic for us as seen recently with Toucan that we are meaningfully represented in governance of carbon bridges we invest/promote so much to bootstrap. You can compare with the proposal of Flow 1 month ago offering 2.5% in liquidity mining incentives between 2 LP pairs, only 1 of which with KLIMA, so could be closer to 1.25%. C3 has raised the bar for what it means to be an ally of KlimaDAO and all Klimates πŸ’š

      This is highly needed, a perfect progression of not only the space but also the utility of KLIMA in Web3.

      Super!
      Interesting to create two new pools aligned with GEO and NGEO.

      Can anyone explain to me why it's better to have different vintage based tokens rather than align on for example Toucan's methodology? Toucan developed their vintage cut offs based on the market and quality. C3 bases it off existing indices. Is this correct?
      We then have 4 pairs which partially overlap (plus Moss and GNT).
      Would an alternative be that C3 incentivises bridging to BCT/NCT?

      Not a criticism, trying to understand the benefits / drawbacks.