You're listening to the reversing climate change, podcast by the team at Nori. The carbon removal Marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change. Now, I keep forgetting to start these things. Introducing ourselves Siobhan so I'm going to cool it on the warm intro again, warm open and just say hi. I'm Ross, Kenny and I'm the creative editor of nori.
I can't even see my own title one of the co-founders that Nori. Where carbon removal marketplace with me is shabaan, Montoya lavender, who is a co-founder of, thanks a ton and also works on memes podcasting and other things with Nori. I should. Hey hello, hey, and Jeremy, Epstein had a growth open forced protocol coming to you live from Portugal and Jeremy. Hey guys, thanks for having me great to be here. Thank you for making it work, even with the jet lag and
everything. Saying earlier, this will be my last Act of the day and that I'm turning in. I was saying we get him, we get a nice and groggy so it is like a happy hour podcast. Yeah. Are you got some like meat on Verde and buckle over there? What have you got handy? All that pistache, whatever they are. I'm going to eat it all for dinner. That's cool. Yeah, we haven't done too many blockchain shows recently and or just refine General regenerative Finance if you're not hip to
that term. ERM and why not feel like we should and good before even introducing blockchain stuff. Even coming covering carbon removal itself is quite difficult. So introducing something traditional like this is maybe, maybe tough for us or tougher others to cover in depth or maybe that shave your head says, can you really cover one without the other? I don't know. Why, don't you tell us what
you're working on though? Sure. So, open Forest protocol is using a Tech stack to solve what we see to be the key bottleneck in delivering enough high-quality nature based solutions to the voluntary market. And that bottleneck is mrv the current process to measure report and verify claims of what's happening on the ground. Of course, with with CDR, right? You're trying to create a commodity and that commodity is not like something that you actually deliver.
Over to the End customer. You're not making, you're not growing corn to bring corn to the End, customer to make corn flakes, you're actually trying to deliver proof that that commodity has been stored somewhere, right? And to do that. You need this, this mrv piece measurement, reporting and verification. It's different for whatever methodology of recover removal. Your undertaking in nature based Solutions.
There's number of bottlenecks and just a number of difficulties and sort of scaling and creating A trusted proof of impact that this ton of carbon or ultimately this unit of biodiversity. If we're going to go there these things have actually happened and we are creating the digital asset record to represent that thing so that people can then transact with that record and trusted.
So you need that connection between the the credit which is the asset record which I am referring to and the actual thing. In, in the real, the real world and to deliver between those two things. That's, that's the mrv, that's the piece where we are. Bringing a web three Tech stack to make it decentralised accessible to all and very, very data back to create that trust or to go one step further that trust listen assess.
As we say, in the web, three world how to make one small observation, which is the idea of a unit of biodiversity is very Honey, and I imagine would make some people just howl but okay, I will see the floor. There, I'll go ahead and I don't know what that unit is. It's a lizard or several monkeys or something. But we're aware that biodiversity is like that's the Hot Topic at the coming, cop. I mean that everyone sort of talking about it. I have yet to wrap my arms around.
Exactly. How do you measure a how do you measure on biodiversity right? Like what is that thing? Let's break it down a little bit because I feel like when you say, like the web, three Tech component, I feel like, there's so much, talk about web three going on, and what's really, as pertains to the climate and specifically.
And even though I've delved into a lot of this, I don't know that we're doing a good job as a community communicating, this accurately to like the average person likes like that which person is like okay I've heard of like Bitcoin. It's like what do you what do you tell them? Like how do you pitch this? Like what is the virtue? What is the value add of putting carbon into this like web three platform? Yeah, that is often times the jumping off point is well, is this Bitcoin?
Okay, I think we're both so traumatized shiv like I never hesitate to come. I didn't you should have. You should give me a trigger warning for this one. Okay, good luck. Jeremy, good luck. All right. Bitcoin is a digital currency and One of the things that makes it super cool and has all this uptake and people love it is the fact that it is based on the blockchain which essentially is a is a digital Ledger. It's just a more perfect system of accounting.
If you will if you really want to break it down that's how I think about it is like okay this is a way to do accounting on a global distributed level. So that we don't lose records, we don't have questions about what is where, which acid is wearing, particularly when you're trying to Transfer digital value multiple times through multiple jurisdictions all over the place. It is nice to have a system that that you feel like you can trust because the data can't be
destroyed. It can't go anywhere and it always gets added to this block J. Now, that's like probably a terrible over simplification of what that is and how do you we want, oversimplifications? We want to make this is blockchain for dummies people. Okay, so there's that, you have a great system of accounting now, Now let's like Turn the Page and we're going to go look at, look at the voluntary carbon market and look at some of the headlines that have. All right?
Let's let's talk about the John Oliver piece, right? There's there's a timely and I think pretty, pretty on topic critique of some of the issues going on in the system. Now, he has a few different critiques, I believe, but one of them being there's double counting, there are companies that buy these credits claim them as an offset. Then go ahead and resell them and we know that companies do
this. We've had CEOs or former CEOs come forward and say this kind of monkey business has happened and likely it is still happening, right? Anytime you have an opaque system or process with sort of self-interest with the ability for people to self enriched to some extent. This is Mike my cynical world view on Humanity but I think it's holds up there will be
monkey business. If given the opportunity people will act in a self-interested way, I'm sure there's some Famous economist, who agrees with me. And so that has happened in the voluntary carbon Market because it's fragmented, you can buy a credit from here from there. Hold it, sell it claim that you've offset with it, sort of whatever you want to do. I speak with investors regularly
and the one. I last one, I spoke to, at the end of our colleagues said, well, now, all this has to go through some sort of regulatory body or a government, right? No, no, really. Anybody can? Create these things and it is voluntary and I will not say Wild West that's been stricken from my vocabulary but during that been applied here, also help you to find defecting from the prisoner's dilemma is now known as Monkey Business.
Just a heads up. Yeah, so yeah, so you take this sort of perfect system of accounting and you apply it to the voluntary carbon market and I think that's a lot of what has been done in re5 with projects that have been able to spin up. Up get off the ground and do things around credits on a blockchain so far and many of those. But most of those projects pretty much all of them to date. Perhaps Nori being one exception have been bridging tokens.
Have been taking tokens that were created through the Machinery of a legacy system through sort of Legacy. Actors, such as Farrah, such as gold standard, putting them on a blockchain and accounting for them in that way with that block chain, based accounting system. So that There isn't a question of who owns the credit who bought it who sold it at what price was? It retired?
Was it not retired? Those questions do get solved when you bridge carbon onto a block chain and I think that that's fantastic and to me that is solving sort of the second half of the problem. It doesn't fix the supply problem but it fixes. What do you do when the supply exists and we no one has a clue where it's going or who owns it? And you know, if we miss a count carbon the result is terrible. The result is we end up essentially with more emissions
in the air rather than less. So you got to fix the accounting thing first. I think the blockchain is a great place to do that. That's kind of how a lot of refi projects to date, have tackled, the game, we're doing something different. So I like to sort of create that separation. And I can tell you more about sort of how we solve a problem that starts earlier that process. But I'll stop there for a moment. I Ways to spot that out. Especially with regard to supply me at my least.
Charitable at Nori will see projects within the refi space, and all things like cool. You have found a new demand Pipeline, and that's great. But also supplies the bottleneck and carbon removal and much of the supply, not in carbon removal. Is not that good. And if your funding, it aren't you? Just going to get more low quality projects. If you're willing to buy anything without regard to the quality? Yes. I'm not sure we actually I just passed my five year anniversary.
Since Nori was founded that was exciting for the founders of nori. I was fun all that time. Has been on mrv methodology. Just getting soil right? It's still very difficult. We're so it like this lots of conceptual challenges and trade-offs watching applications and token. Economics, almost feels relatively trivial in comparison to just dealing with the carbon.
And I'm not sure that that has fully sunk into a lot of the refi movement just yet, but you're much closer to it than I am. So I very well could be mistaken on that, but that's my superficial take on it. That's just how men before we even talk about that. Let's define refi for our audience for our listeners. Again, this is this is for the refined blockchain for dummies. So, either one of you jump out with this one, if I was just like, hey, Define refine a sentence, what would you say?
Hey, the start with defy, to even get to refi, right? Sure. It stands for regenerative. Finances has nothing to do with your mortgage. So So we'll get that out of the way to me, refi is a system that creates value with positive externalities. In other words, something good happens with the climate with the biosphere and value is created and so you were sort of aligning incentives. You're aligning value and positive outcomes. Okay, I like that.
Ross went to go stab. So make that defy connection, which came together a couple Years ago, decentralized Finance. But basically a way of one application of it, one might say is loaning ones crypto without some Central intermediary. Like you're loaning it to an algorithm and people are borrowing it and using it and you're being paid interest and there are many other applications of staking tokens or other things that don't require a bank that you're putting leaving money in a bank
in the same kind of way. So I feel like rebuy is kind of a little bit of like a using the conventional. Of the naming convention and kind of being like, Hey, we're even cooler. This is this other thing, they're all so deep, I applications within refund. So that's like a heard you like, we apply onion here. Yeah, there's definitely that component of access. I think Russ that you're getting at that's important that, that, that people can participate in things that perhaps they
couldn't. Otherwise because there is an, a central regulatory Authority standing between them and creating a And getting that accredited putting it on blockchain, or of, or many other things that they could be doing.
There are a lot of hurdles right now, as we know, we've talked about this before, I think, to getting credits verified on various platforms on the one hand, it's like, yes, we want to really lean into verification and robust measurements and authenticity, you know, I talked to project developers are like why can't afford to get my project on gold standard? Like that's, you know, thousands of dollars that I don't have right now. You know, these are these are
small projects, they're trying. Get off the ground. So I think there needs to be a space somewhere in the ecosystem for small projects to have some sort of verification that maybe isn't yet at the super expensive industry standard level sort of the the Legacy system has been very much one per like the one
percenters of carbon projects. Like those that are big enough connected enough, and well-heeled enough to afford to get through that system leaving the rest of the projects, kind of out in the cold with Access to mrv which leads to accreditation which ultimately is how you get a results-based credit based financing to scale and rinse lather, repeat the
process. So there's an internal debate that's been going on at Nori for a super long time about Dows and to what degree things can be can and should be decentralized because on the one hand you think I've seen Community like like opener, click is a great example.
I think that Community is so strong that I think they could probably write some methodologies that can and should be. Incorporated into some carbon removal marketplaces but and they're also communities that work despite the fact that you don't, it's like hard to imagine that they even would like Linux. The fact that Linux Works in much of the world runs on Linux based operating systems is magical and hurts my brain to even think about.
And I wonder like we have full-timers devoted to thinking about the difficulties of mrb and soil, and carbon markets. And the Dynamics that all have to play out to actually work. I have a hard time thinking someone with Stake in it, who sort of a part-time hobbyist could solve it in a way that I could not even if there were hundreds or thousands of people all decentralized, and collaborating, and I sort of like GitHub repository for it. Am I mistaken?
Should I trust that decentralized process more? And trust myself less, or is there a part of me that is correct? I wish I had the answers for you deserted. Those are tough questions? Yeah, I don't know that. I don't know that. I would know the answer to that either when I think of And realized I certainly think of, you know, peer to peer accountability which I think of in a positive way.
But then I also think race to the bottom sometimes you know like as you were talking about, let's bring back the Monkey Business, you know, the Monkey Business race to the bottom. So it's like, where is that sweet spot between like having the authenticity? And you know, the backing of some of these major verifiers and then having it on this peer-to-peer decentralization that Is more accessible is easy. To validate, is easy to corroborate and check.
But where is the, where is The Sweet Spot? And are you trying to find that open Forest protocol? Are you trying to find that Inori? Like, how do how do we get there? Yeah, I think on the decentralization and I mean, you can't make the rapid-fire decisions and build quickly and all the things you need to do in a start-up environment with a decentralized dow based governance process.
Right. So, that's where sort of this idea of progressive decentralization comes in where you do start off centralized and we you know if p is definitely
on this trajectory right? And the goal being ultimately that myself, the co-founders, all of us could go away and the system lives on because it has sort of it's grown, its wings in its flown out, it's fully decentralized but it takes a long time to get there and I think maybe What you're getting at is is a little bit of like that in that interim period. You do, have you still have those same problems of centralization which is, I think somewhat counteracted by just
transparency. I think that's probably the best thing that we can do is just try to be as transparent as possible at these early stages until the point, where sort of decentralized and transparent mechanisms, take over, because you can't start from there. You have to that has to be more of an endpoint. Aunt. I'd love to read, I've been reading them. Balaji sreenivasan has Network State recently and I'm sure we'll get deeper into this and I bet there's I look at the
bibliography. I could probably find a good thing to read about this, but which kinds of problems are best suited to a sort of decentralized Open Source, ethos and which ones do not are not well. Served by that model, looked like sometimes in the crypto
space and interact. There's an ideological pre-commitment to Dowing things or making this a community-based kind of Tori model and I mean like big white on the start, right is sort of like anti centralization anti Federal Reserve anti-v at centralized money. And so it's sort of Concordia, kryptos quarter cryptos culture, but I don't want to do it just because that's the default
within the space. I want to make sure it's a wise use of it. I've definitely been in groups of four like I was in an occupied group in college and that was pretty decentralised and participatory and I think the failure of my leadership and a failure of many people. Participate didn't work, it didn't work, dang it. So I don't know, I think I've been indefinitely doing groups from like, okay, strong leader here, and less of a consensus model might be nice. Anyways, I'm just rambling.
Now, you were also in the middle of telling your Open Force protocol story. Like we stopped and then digressed and it was a fun digression but maybe want to steer us back to what problems you're solving and what you're thinking about right now. Sure. Yeah yeah. We got a fun tangent. Like to make this, I don't know. I always feel like it's a crap statement, but the ultimate goal for me with open Forest protocol is that anyone anywhere in the world has access to the
following value proposition. Here's here's where it gets crafts and start Crossing all actually, it's just blunt it, spin plant, trees, get paid, and that's like an oversized. There's like major caveats behind because you have to do it the right way, and it has to qualify, it has to be verified, but but I don't like a very simple statement it, it's like
that. That's what I always imagined the utopian vision of like a functional voluntary Global carbon Market to be like, like, oh yeah, I can just plant a beautiful forest and, you know, the market will provide, right? And it better so far from the way that things operate right now, there's a strong saying, you know, you've got to pay tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to accredit a forest project. If your project is less than say 3,000 Acres or 1,200 hectares, forget about it.
It doesn't pencil because unique its high fixed transaction costs. Require large transactions to be profitable and it's the same thing with Forest projects. There's so much expense involved that you just needed to develop a very large project to make it profitable and there's not a lot of land that's owned and really large tracks, like that. And if you require 3,000 acres and above you're leaving out, I would say 99% of potential projects from accessing.
Value from the carbon Market which we know would value. These potentially more more, bespoke, more homegrown Forest practitioners that are looking to restore nature and simply receive value for something that they're doing to provide, you know, for common good and restore the Global Commons. That's what I think we are trying to do. I think it's the answer May slightly vary from one ofp member to the next. But that's how I think about it.
And you know, if we get to where I hope to get to then then suddenly it becomes the new the new oil and gas. If if you will where right when suddenly the world realized that that fossil fuels had tons of value and there they were always going to be purchased if they could be extracted. Then you have this global economy that sprung up and you know with go prospecting and knocking on your door and West Texas. And say, you sir are sitting on a gold mine. Let us help you.
Bring these assets to I get will get you paid for it, right? Like those are the types of entrepreneurs that I want to see building forests not pulling gas out of the ground, right? And and putting their entrepreneurial Firepower to finding all of the little pocket forests in and around the, the Atlantic coast of the Amazon or wherever you are on planet Earth. And using our platform to essentially bring these assets to Market. So that's maybe another take on what it is that we're building.
And analogy, which I like to kind of be analogy of the oil and gas company going out and saying, hey, we're in extract this and we're going to get profit on this morning to add value to life. How does that work? The analogy of standing Forest? I think about this and CD are all the time. I think about how do you communicate to people. The monetary value of an act of removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it
lithosphere. They are a biosphere wherever you're storing it. How do you communicate that after value in the sense that if I'm burning? Fossil fuels in my home I get an immediate value received right? Like I'm turning on my stove or my electricity, whatever it is that I'm immediately experiencing that value and with CDR. The value is happening where I can't see it, right? Like an action that's being taken. That I'm paying for that.
I don't see. And as you say, you know, sometimes is poorly documented, so we're not even positive. It happened. But let's pretend we have the perfect robust system. We've Commander, we know what happened? Still, how do you communicate that value like? Okay, this is going to help you because I mean, in my case, like well, we need to solve climate change, right? Like that's the talking point is like, well, it's too hot in California right now.
I don't know how you're doing Ross up North, but you know, all of my friends in l.a. heirs are just scalding, you know? So there's that sense of immediacy as climate crisis he's increase in extreme weather increases but still there's not the same relationship to saying I'm turning on my power now, as opposed to, like, I'm paying to remove carbons. Like, Hey, where's the selling point?
Do you think for, for customers? And I want to hear Ron here Ross's, take on this and then I'm happy to respond as well. What a, what a BS here's pun. I think that's a pretty huge problem. We got a piece of advice early on in Nori that no one wants to buy barcode, which is a really important day time for us to think about.
Because so much of nori is To build a commodity Market that's more like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange more than Indiegogo or eBay or Airbnb where your individually choosing. We want people to care about years of carbon stored, not choose what's the warmest philia? Stew thing I can buy. That's gonna like it. That's a nice to have but not the main thing that we're trying to maximize for. So there's one of the reasons why I think creative has long been such a big part of Nori's
that given that this is an act. Barcode kind of thing that one might be buying, how do you compensate with storytelling or other means to substitute for that? So people do the thing that we think matters most but also don't deny them, the warm feel he's that they often are motivated by I would say yeah and I think I'm trying to probably walk the same Razors Edge.
I'm glad to hear you kind of talked about that, it sort of a tension between an efficient commodity style market and something that tells a story at the same time, right? How do you digitize that, how do you program that into a fungible or not fungible asset and have that data backing the credit, so that you can mix this credit up with 10 million of its brothers and sisters. And yet the purchaser who pulls that credit out of the pile and goes home with it.
Can look at it and say, oh this came from this project with these lovely people who planted these trees. And there's these wonderful sdg goals that were also met and that is a challenge and that is how we're looking at things and And want to sort of tread that fine line between a, I mean, I think probably gets a little technical like if it is fungible or not fungible, essentially, if it is a completely unique digital asset. That is unlike any others, or if
it's a commodity, right? If it's just like all the other ones that we create, and I think that there's a technical Pathway to do both that does go back to, like, what, what are you trying to deliver it? Kind of depends on who's buying it. You know, I think corporates are trying to I like PR some extent and maybe like more reacted more and more reactive PR, which we're seeing now over 40% of the S&P 500 has made a net zero goals.
I mean, goals are different than action, but it's a step in the right direction. And why are they doing that? Part of it is probably to appease shareholders or appease customers. So it's a bit of an talent to I think people. Yeah. So there's that. There's that reason why they buy and then ultimately, I like to think of a carbon credit essentially, is it it's a currency, right?
It's just it's just a thing that has value and can be exchanged and and because of that it's not always so much about the end user like, oh okay, we're going to make this that someone can buy it and then retire it. I do think there is value kind of going back to the beginning, the conversation with the marketplaces and Of these marketplaces that without naming names, I think are looking to create, sort of derivative, and sort of secondary products out of these credits to appease sort
of Niche investors, who want to invest in this space and essentially play the space as an investment opportunity. Yeah. Used to cringe at this like, no, that's not what you do with these because I don't know it just didn't feel right to me but I've come around on that and I do think ultimately, Mately. Think about what happens if you can just create something from a carbon credit that people want to throw money at the net result.
If all goes well is that you get more investment flowing down to projects to begin with and you create a virtuous cycle of more Capital flowing, into developing more carbon removal projects. And if that is the end result, then I'm all for it. Create whatever. Kind of financial wizard. You want to bring to the to the game. Bringing it fade is assuming that one. It doesn't get retired or it does. This is the tradable sector is sort of a non-retirement
situation. So, I mean there's a lot of people were like no. Credit should be retired.
That's all that should happen. And I used to be in that camp but I think I've switched to saying know if we want to create new products out of that new Financial type products as we've done with with mortgages and other Securities and things like that great with the caveat that if the net result is that more Capital flows, ultimately back to two projects because now we've seen That there's a market for this stuff and there's an
appetite and you know, we need we need we need more projects to be developed. So we can put more of these credits on the market. So that more people can play in this silly, you're going to have to convince me Jeremy. I think I'm still in the camp of let's just retire. The damn credits already, but I know that there's lots of people to talk about using carbon credits. As a financial tool has something interchangeable.
I don't fully get that. Maybe it's because I'm not part of like the whole defy refined movement. Yet, I I'm not integrated on that exposed enough perhaps. But if we don't retire the credit and the credit keeps getting treated, isn't there the risk than that? There isn't a new carbon credit than being purchased because not the whole problem that if we don't retire them, then another one won't be purchased and so another ton of CO2 won't be removed. Am I over simplifying?
This in my mind that's basically Nori's position is why we have a Nori token and then nrt that are separated. So one thing is retired immediately and the other is the tradable asset. But yeah, feel free Jeremy Siobhan. You doing my job. For me. Thank you.
Yeah. Listen, again, I think I was in your guys's camp and I've come around because the way I think about it is you take a bunch of these credits and you spin something up. Ultimately, if they're in certain vehicles that are not being retired, like you need your kids to say that that's bad. But if those vehicles are sort of creating value flow from financial markets, into creating more projects, I do feel like that could have a negative Positive effect.
Ultimately that's the same goal as you know, let's just retire them. We're just trying to get more money into the system to get more projects to scale, CDR to the you know, 10 Giga, tons per year by the end of the decade that we know. We need to be very recently. I had some friend asked me because I call obstacle, this is how it works. Like the credit gets retired and they're like says who and I was like really good point.
Dude like says, who Like we're dealing with these intangible credits and I guess is maybe we're watching him then more or less religion comes in because it because ostensibly I know at least the way that we're designing it and open Force protocol, there's essentially a retirement button, right? Like you have a credit in a wall, a digital wallet, you hit
the retire button, right? And it's burned, like, it's still there, it's you can see that at that was done, but the credit is stuck there forever, right? And no longer moves. And so that's like the says who, it's like, well, let me give you a Address. You can see that this happened you can see how many of these were retired and that kind of puts that question to rest learning something new. I didn't know you could like burn them on the Chain. So they couldn't be transacted
again that they could. They were visible that Frozen. I think I've takers will like that feature, right? It puts that one arrest. It's a oh yeah, okay. Well it says me because look at this thing. I can tell you exactly when this happened and you know, how many of these were retired, I'm really interested in your point. About derivatives and to what degree this on net. Good for carbon credits or carbon removals.
What happens when there's hundreds of millions of dollars moving around and its derivatives are weird, synthetic assets that are not merely representations of a ton of carbon dioxide or a certain ton years of carbon dioxide being stored. Is that good? I mean I've had a financial Wizardry as a lot of complexity to the system but also brings a lot of resources to Bear. But if it's not done, right, it's not like more money is necessarily flow. Enter projects being developed,
which is are concerned. Why we originally split those out, but you seem to think that it would on that be good to have Financial Wizardry. One might say a derivative layer. If we want to talk crypto about it on top of the rest of the market, why do you? What do you think that while I unpack a little bit for us partially because I like stirring the pot being contrarian, it's good, it's good. I want to, I want to hear the answer for you and Ross both
contrary to the poor. And like I said, I've sort of flip flops. On this, but that's the camp that I'm in today, I guess, no one knows how these things play out. Long-term. I think you could, you could imagine a future where it's like, all of these unretired credits are spinning around in this derivatives market and suddenly they get flooded and not purchased and now no one's actually buying new credits to retire like that scenario. And I think I don't know.
Could that be the case? Could it not? I don't know, or will the way I am thinking about it is you're creating an appetite from people who wouldn't otherwise Want to buy and retire a credit, they want to buy something of value and basically create more value off of it being Financial sort of Wall Street. Wizard has like this, this stuff is, you know, I can't tell you how it gets done.
It's over, it's over my head and my skill set but the way that I imagined happened the net result being right. You have investors that don't want to mess with with carbon credits but they see that, you know, they can throw some money into this machine and a little bit. More comes out and the result being that the market now needs to create more of these because everyone wants to play in this game. So I think we all want the same
thing. I think we're sort of we're telling different Futures about what happens, right? That we all want more money to come into the system, to develop more projects. What happens with these unretired credits that I think is something we can only try to predict because you're a read. Fashions of a stock operator.
Do know that bug and what it's like a Traders Memoir from like a hundred and something years ago, I think it read it when I was trying to learn more about how, like, equities and commodities, markets work. But there used to be a thing called bucket, shops, back in the day, where you would basically just bet on whether the price of something would go up or down, but you wouldn't actually own the underlying asset or claim to it. So it's the derivative, yeah. Yeah. There's one more.
One more product was that actually adding anything to the system in a meaningful way. Like, did it lead to more of them to the assets that were underlying, this betting game was just, like, early stocks. This was an ox. So then you had, and then you may have had lots of, you know, entrepreneurs spinning up penny stock companies simply feed into
the system, right? And that's the analog to, you're going to have lots of project developers to be going out and like we need to, we need to plant a bunch of forest to feed into the I mean, their underlying motive is greed, not regen, but does it matter in the end? I don't know. I guess was like the person the person who is running the bucket shop would cover the other end of the bet I'm fairly would pool with others, but I'm sure.
I think that money just went between the Bettors and the house, I'm not sure if there was a feedback loop that even included the underlying equities or Commodities. Like, I'm not sure if that would have been erected at all, I recognized as someone listening might be like, that's not how derivatives work now. And they actually do interact in
a more meaningful way. If you're listening that cetera because reach out and tell me how derivatives actually forward, I'm gonna get painted as the Jordan Belfort of refi now. So we should, we should probably switch topics. No. I think the guy has no concept Earth as so you both of you are in advance of me. I didn't I've got the series 3, licensure years ago for like mostly the way to train myself to think more about how Commodities and derivatives
actually traitor. So I could be better at my job at Nori, but a lot of that stuff is like when you described it as Wizardry entirely by that. It's a, it's almost a different kind of mind that thinks in this way.
And I don't think it's mine but let's talk a little bit more about like the whole supply-demand stuff because I feel like that's a Hot Topic. And in creating, you know, with whether it's open for spreadable or Norway, you know the idea is to provide a supply to authenticate that supply and we What about how Demand right now? Outstrip Supply. But honestly like if you look at like gigaton stays Gail, we are still demand constrained in the sense that we still don't have.
Like, if you had 20 Giga, tons to offload, how easy would that be to offload, not very right, I don't think there's a lot of people asking for, like, 20 Giga, tons worth of carbon, but we need to get there right, Jeremy. How do you see, like the like, how do you factor open for spread? Call into like the future of like the supply demand curve at was a will be in maybe 10 years or 20 years like or you kind of dialed into the moment right now like getting the customers you need now.
Yeah, so I'm sure someone's done a study of right? All of the Net Zero pledges and if and when all those come to fruition 2030 or whether that's 20 40 or 50 like what does demand look like at that point probably Trover or McKinsey or silveira has done a study? Like that. But, you know, the macro picture is, we are looking to the Future. And we don't see a way to supply the market given the current process.
And that is a bullish case for for Open Force protocol that aims to be a new supplier to the market, right? That that is sort of issuing, its own its own potential credits at a future date. And, you know, I think that as time moves on and hopefully these, you know, these Trends pan out, And that we will be able to fill gaps that. The current system simply isn't isn't feeling today and walk
into the future. So, we talked about tree humor, I really haven't hit on any of our meetings yet, but we do always try to make guests evaluate some of our memes or especially ones they're in their wheelhouse. So we act like Jason Hoffman to rate our like, death names. And I feel like when it comes to humor and CD, are we kind of do one of two things with, with three Forest, And first of all, I love reforestation, and I generally think, is it as an individual? I'm agnostic as a thing as
thanks, a ton. We certainly try to be agnostic, like, I really do believe we needed an all-of-the-above approach. I feel like trees are really easy, Wildfire joke, so I go for that a lot. I also feel like there's the just plant trees kind of cohort. And that's an easy job to do too because it's like, well, not enough land and etcetera, Etc. But then I also feel like Like trees. I they become like the hero of
the joke. A lot of times when it's like, cost comparing for popularity comparing or understanding, I like, I use trees as the analogy to communicate, all the other, all the other methods to people. And like, I use trees to communicate, like, vintages of CDR, right? Because sometimes there's a CDR vintage that you're paying for now that won't, you know, that it gets in the queue and that credit actually won't be removed. That ton will be removed from the atmosphere.
For a year maybe or something. And so I tell people and explain that by saying, well, it's like planting a tree, like you plant the tree on day one, that doesn't mean the ton is removed on day one, you know, like and so I feel like I always come back to trees as like this foundational explainer for carbon removal and maybe that's because they're by far the most widely known and accepted method I would say.
And now you know now I feel like there's like all this kind of controversy within Academia about Durability. And we do. Where should we be investing? Most resources that I'm like, I don't know. Are we really are? We really fighting over the scraps? Let's just invest in everything, guys, I don't know. What do you think of like the do you think trees are an easy story to tell? Do you think trees are good? Fodder for climate humor?
I think they're both. I think there's very few people who are opposed to trees right there. The pretty easy thing to at least be agnostic about, if not to say, I love trees like what there's nothing wrong with trees. And that's kind of like that's the case study for photosynthesis that we all learn back in sixth grade biology or whatever. Is like yeah these trees pull carbon out of the air and that's
what they're made of like, okay? So like harkening back to that like original lesson on nature-based drawdown. Yeah, it is sort of that's, that's the tree example that gets drilled into our heads or at least got get rolled into mind and I actually moved away from nature based solutions, kind of just thought, okay, this isn't This isn't it?
You can tell I mean, obviously I flip-flop on a lot of things because I'm open to new ideas and and I take in a lot of ideas and ultimately I did come back to trees for a number of reasons. And I think one of them is sort of analogous to like this whole wall would have. Climate change is a hoax. Well. Okay, fine. Then we at least will have clean clean water and very clean air, right? And and you have all these co-benefits, right? So even if the trees are Terrible climate solution.
They're not. You still have these massive co-benefits and those those markets are. We talked about, biodiversity briefly beginning like those those types of markets are I think maybe going to a Clips carbon at some point and then in the coming decades. But yeah, it's a meme for sure. I mean, particularly in the, in the CDR nerd world, I've been kind of moved away from using the term CDR when it comes to reforestation.
Maybe it's more sequestration because maybe there has to be a certain length of durability to qualify for the term removal. Maybe it's a sequestration, right? And I get it right. We've got to suss out our terminology as a, as an industry. But we also have to do that without getting to tribal and fighting but with tribalism and inviting come really fun memes. So there's a trade-off there. That's that's our father there
now but I'm with you. I feel like you know, the inciting isn't super helpful and You know, photosynthesis at the end of the day, whether it's in planting trees and we call that the, the complete cycle, the complete method of carbon removal and storage or if it's in one of the plethora of other solutions that require photosynthesis. Like I recently made a tick tock because I wanted to explain photosynthesis but then I realized like, oh wow.
But like biochar and Bio-Oil and tell them like leaves all relying on photosynthesis. There's so many solutions that actually the mechanism for where you're moving, the molecule is via photosynthesis and then it becomes As the storage mechanism is kind of where the humans get more involved. Anyways rest you want to pull up some of our forest names and maybe we can have Jeremy right? Them minutes here. I mean yeah I just have like one.
I pulled it from a tree memes page, ourselves only to share it and we were going to recapture it for our own purposes. But yeah, here's a, here's a tree. When I don't even know, I fully understood it but hey can you see this? Oh, you can help us. We've been working on this one, we've been workshopping this.
So we want to convert this into Pure CDR meme using this format, it's a picture of Luke Wilson, doing the like a tiny blip to like kind of Grimace face that he's known for and this is Luke Wilson's. Always looks like you just told them and insert your own caption but this one is his tree. Wasn't struck by lightning. It just fell apart because of codominant stems with included Bart. This is way too deep for instructors. I don't know, that's what is with this deep forest.
It took me a really long time to think it through and then and then I lap so I like it might need to simplify the language a little bit. But oh yeah, I just pulled this. I'm going to. I'm ditching that entire capturing. We thought of some options being like Luke Wilson. Always looks like you just told him. We can figure out the mrv later. Just told him I got the energy requirements of direct are capture. It's just sitting there. So, I don't know, we have to figure it out.
Be well, if you were to put a tree when I'm here, let's live meme this. But we say like look, well son looks like he just told him that dbh is not sufficient to measure a tree. Luke Wilson. Always looks like you just told him that Forest project operators should collect and Report their own data, okay? Okay, operational joke, I like it. All right, you guys like just measuring like, throwing measuring tape around the base of it or something.
I get what I explained? Our RFP process before I get to the second part of it, where I'm like, well, yeah, no. We're letting the, the Project's collect their own data. And I get this face, then I get to the part where it's where it's validated, you know, dozens to hundreds of times in a public blockchain and the Improvement that, that provides over the Legacy process. But again, that's I've seen this
look before I will say that. Together on, we gotta keep working that Workshop in that one, but it seems like a pretty good place to conclude for today. Jeremy as we wrap up our their resources, you want to direct people towards. I'll put links to this in the show notes to whatever you'd like, people to see. I would say, open Forest protocol. Dot-org would be the place to go to get some information. There's some opportunities there to get involved in the
community. If you're interested, we're building a validator network, which Which we didn't talk about much but essentially that is Forest expert organizations who lend credibility to the verification of the data. So essentially we're taking the best thing from web to which I would say, is a network, right? The ability to build networks and we're creating a network of verification bodies that
coordinate to review. All of that self-reported data from from the forest, the reason I mention this is, if you feel like you are one of those forests expert organizations. We'd love to hear from And potentially add you to the network and you can help us build the future of DMR. Be distributed Mr. P. Wow. That's the first time I've heard that initialism but certainly won't be the last. Well, thanks for being here, Jeremy. I was a lot of fun. Thanks guys. Good rap with a nice.
Nice talking with you is. I'm glad I got to get a little, a little education in Webster and whatnots and carbon Finance of which, I am sorely lacking. That's um Boy I think Siobhan like all right, enough derivative stuff. I'm taking control of this conversations. Jana get far away from this. Sorry. Siobhan thanks so much for listening.
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