Flowcarbon Partners With First Carbon-Negative Blockchain Celo to Develop Open On-chain Carbon Market Infrastructure

Flowcarbon, the pioneering climate technology company building on-chain carbon market infrastructure and bringing carbon offsets to the blockchain, and the Celo Foundation today announced the launch of a carbon-market ecosystem that will enable carbon credits to be traded on the Celo network in the form of Flowcarbon’s Goddess Nature Token (GNT). Celo is the first carbon-negative blockchain. The partnership includes the purchase of at least $10 million of GNT, currently in presale, by the Celo Foundation and the Climate Collective. Flowcarbon’s launch on Celo will create the first liquid market for carbon credits on-chain that is designed to make carbon offsetting widely accessible and transparent.

“We had a lot of choices for where our first token, GNT, could initially launch. Building this ecosystem with mission-aligned partners is just as critical to success as having liquidity support behind GNT,” said Phil Fogel, Chief Blockchain Strategist and Co-founder of Flowcarbon. “Celo is carbon-negative, and the value of natural resources is built into its ethos, making it the most natural foundation for building solutions to climate change on-chain. Celo’s founders, Sep, Marek, and Rene live and breathe this mission in a way that no other layer-1 ecosystem does.”

The partnership will catalyze the budding regenerative finance (ReFi) ecosystem on Celo, using Flowcarbon’s infrastructure to drive demand for environmental assets by creating the essential foundation for an on-chain carbon market. The commitment includes support for liquidity on platforms like Uniswap v3, for which governance recently passed to deploy on Celo. The addition of GNT on Celo will help set a standard price for carbon credits on the blockchain and lay the foundation for an on-chain market where other functions can be built-out with additional ecosystem partners.

The global carbon offset market provides essential financing for developers whose projects reduce and remove atmospheric carbon. The carbon market ecosystem being created by Flowcarbon and Celo will make it possible for project developers to have immediate access to an active marketplace to sell their credits. Project developers will first tokenize the carbon credits issued to their projects and then sell the tokens at the GNT market price, thereby bringing existing live credits on chain. Flowcarbon’s protocol is based on a “two-way bridge,” allowing any GNT holder to redeem their token for an underlying credit.

“From the start, we designed Celo to bring natural assets on-chain in a meaningful way to enable a regenerative financial system,” said Celo co-founder Rene Reinsberg. “Flowcarbon’s solution is creating market maturity by helping to solve the real-world challenges faced by the off-line carbon markets. And with their experience in traditional carbon markets, Flowcarbon is uniquely positioned to do this work. By bridging the two, the established carbon sector is brought on-chain in a transparent and responsible way.”

Flowcarbon has been building its ReFi infrastructure to align with existing standards and best practices for ESG, carbon offsets and the entities that govern them off-chain. The company’s first token, GNT, is backed one-for-one by live, unretired credits from the global carbon offset market, with a rolling five-year vintage age limit.