The Importance of Being Earnest (About Web3 and Climate Solutions)

“What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise…”

― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Crypto and NFTs present a unique opportunity to reassess how and what we value while simultaneously creating new value propositions and innovative infrastructure to build on and sustain these new sources of value. In a space hyper-focused on immediate returns and yield generation for individual investors and market participants, the scope of utility made possible by the progressive tools available through cryptocurrency and blockchain technology is being massively underappreciated.

At Project Ark, we mean to stand out from the crypto crowd and bring something a little different to the table. Producing a different result than has been achieved before requires a different or altered process, perspective, and focus, and we’re focused squarely on the climate crisis. So far, this has proven to be a difficult path as protecting and preserving life on Earth is not “profitable” in the traditional sense, where profit typically requires extraction and exploitation of resources and benefits very few people. Legacy incentive structures encourage (require, really) growth at all costs and have pushed our climate situation to the brink. Unless this perspective changes, the effects will be devastating and predictable, and the Earth and its ecosystems will be irreversibly ravaged. Many ecosystems are already broken beyond repair.

So, why and how are we fighting climate change? And how can we reimagine how profit is made?

The Climate Crisis Affects All of Us

From the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report Summary for Policymakers: “Climate change has caused substantial damages, and increasingly irreversible losses, in terrestrial, freshwater and coastal and open ocean marine ecosystems (high confidence). The extent and magnitude of climate change impacts are larger than estimated in previous assessments (high confidence).”

Each and every team member at Project Ark has internalized this reality and sees it as the danger that it truly is. We recognize that many have not come to terms with this scenario, dismiss it, or believe that there’s either nothing they can do or that it’s unrelated to their life and work at this juncture. Unfortunately, none of those things will stop this not-yet-inevitable catastrophe. Indeed, denial, dismissal, and discounting will only serve to secure its inevitability.

Our commitment to impact is borne out in part through investing part of our revenue into conservation projects (Ultramarine Ocean Action Summit and Lonely Whale) with a mission to clean up our oceans. We see this as an important and necessary start, but a healthy future for us and our planet requires innovation that leverages the technology available to revolutionize what generating profit can mean for both people and the environment.

Impact Validators

Project Ark is creating a natural capital endowment fund that will help conservation efforts and climate change solutions to benefit from funding on a continuous basis. In the Web3 space, many projects have emerged using NFT proceeds — ranging from 5% to 10% or more for dedicated projects — to donate to impact projects or charities. This results in money only being given once a sale occurs, requiring substantial marketing and sales efforts and making the final impact effort unsustainable. We want to formulate a novel solution to impact financing, creating the concept of “impact validators”.

A natural capital endowment will be generated by the sales of NFTs as well as people staking their Solana tokens, where fees are lowered to a bare minimum and the staked SOL is split between the SOL owner and the organization that is supported through the fund.

The results will be two-fold: this model grants funds continuously to conservation efforts that protect life underwater and life on land. It also provides the necessary tools to help decentralize the Solana network (network of choice for Project Ark’s flagship NFT project, the Arkanauts).

Leveraging Blockchain to Avoid the Sixth Mass Extinction by Building the World’s First Wildlife and Biodiversity Credit Registry

Project Ark is poised to become the first project to build a conservation registry on the blockchain, utilizing the Solana network due to its minuscule emissions, low gas fees, and easy interface.

The Wildlife and Biodiversity Credit Registry will issue conservation bonds, allowing developers to register initiatives that are meant to protect and increase the populations of our planet’s endangered species. Using satellite imaging, impact validators, and NFTs to engage projects, the registry has the potential to become the biggest contributor to mitigating the sixth mass extinction event by rewarding project backers for their environmentally-friendly efforts while creating the incentives necessary for more wildlife conservation.

The registry will be created in collaboration with Gainforest, a project backed by Coinbase and Filecoin, as well as with members from World Bank who participated in the creation of the first successful Rhino Bond.

All Arkanauts holders will be eligible to get involved and be rewarded for contributing to the creation of the most promising tools to help turn the tide on climate change and save our planet.

Greenverse

Greenverse is an innovative green metaverse being developed with a “preserve-to-earn” model of tokenizing natural capital to prevent the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels and mitigate carbon emissions while generating value for participants. Holding an Arkanaut NFT will grant a “shuttle pass” (special admission) to this digital world upon its rollout.

The Greenverse team has been fleshing out the tokenomics and fundraising to bring this project to fruition. Greenverse will be constructed on a robust framework to ensure maximum value and conservation of natural capital. From Greenverse.World: “[b]y associating blockchain tokenization to geological data, government policy support, and corporate/user involvement, we will create a digital register of subsurface natural resources which are kept in the ground, permanently through a preserve-to-earn (PTE) model. Preserving the resources underground, instead of developing them, will earn the holders of the tokens additional value, changing the game for man’s relationship with nature.”

The rapid innovation occurring in Web3 has energized our team and expanded both our imaginative and practical sides to develop new sources of value in the digital space while protecting the natural value offered by our planet’s environment, organic life, and resources.

Project Ark is always thinking ahead and will bring further disruptive products to the crypto space as we continue to grow.

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Check our website for more info and be part of the change:www.project-ark.co and www.arkanauts.io**