Coorest: Seeing the trees for the forest

Decentralized platform Coorest is using blockchain tech & gaming culture to offset carbon emissions

Although Nick Zwaneveld is Chief Technology Officer at Coorest, an Estonia-based decentralized platform for offsetting emissions and CO2 trading, he doesn’t come from a highly technical background.

Instead, after a 17-year career in the Dutch army, Zwaneveld wanted to do something different. He met William ten Zijthoff, Coorest CEO. Ten Zijthoff had a law degree but was always fascinated by crypto and blockchain technology. He had started a company called Rooted https://www.becomerooted.eu/which sold bonds that represent trees.

With climate change posing an urgent global challenge, and the decentralized technology world growing, Zwaneveld and William ten Zijthoff saw an innovative way that blockchain technology could help in the global effort to offset carbon and decided to evolve Rooted so that they were not just selling trees but tokenizing trees.

Carbon offsetting is a method for companies and individuals to compensate for their emissions by funding or undertaking efforts that either reduce CO2 or increase CO2 capture, like building wind farms to replace traditional energy generation and planting forests to boost the earth’s carbon capture capacity. Voluntary carbon offset markets, which facilitate these transactions for the public, have grown rapidly in the last 5-10 years, reaching a value of more than $300 million last year, according to Market Reports World.??

However, Zwaneveld and ten Zijthoff recognized that there wasn’t a lot of transparency in the carbon offset market. As it stands, sellers can potentially forge documents and sell the same trees or tree “credits” two and three times over.?

“With blockchain technology, we saw there could be no double credits,” says Zwaneveld, since blockchain transactions are fully transparent and immutable. “And in the market here in Europe, the prices for carbon credit are very high.”?

Along with co-founders Charlotte Schroots, CCO, Jeroen Meertens, CMO and Peter ten Zijthoff, CFO, Zwaneveld and William ten Zijthoff created the Coorest platform in 2021 to host on-chain sustainability projects. One of the first is its “NFTree” project, through which Coorest publicly sells NFTree tokens on the blockchain. The NFTree tokens represent real world trees which Coorest sponsors to be planted in areas all over the world.?

Coorest hosted its first private NFTree sale in February and sold all of its limited inventory of NFTrees, at a total value of almost $500,000, in a span of 14 days. The NFTrees were sold for $100 each, with each one representing a fig tree that will be planted in the real world. The tokens will contain a GPS location for the individual tree, in case the token holder wants to visit and certify their purchase.

“We chose a type of tree that could produce marketable fruit so that the NFTree could also be a yield-producing asset, and in fact the NFTree holder will be compensated once the trees produce fruit,” said Zwaneveld.?

The real-world trees will be planted in May on land that Coorest purchased in Caspe, Spain, between Barcelona and Zaragosta. The climate and soil in this region are optimal for fig trees, which are considered a keystone species environmentally because they feed many of the seed-dispersing animals that help them propagate.?

Coorest sold the NFTrees through their website and used the BullaNetwork app https://www.bulla.network/, a tokenized credit web3 protocol, to process the transactions, keeping the entire process on-chain.?

“Doing transactions on-chain, you realize a lot can go wrong, so you need a protocol that can handle everything on-chain,” says Zwaneveld.?

To create community, increase user engagement and get people involved in the activity of farming, Coorest is also developing its own proprietary online metaverse game called NovaTerra. The game, set in a post-apocalyptic future, rewards participants who work together to rebuild society with successful farms and communities. Buyers that participate in NFTree sales receive a token, or digital asset, that can then be used in-game.

"The main idea behind Coorest is bridging the gap between the real and digital word with sustainable initiatives that have financial incentives," says ten Zijthoff.

Coorest has a team of 40 full- and part-time employees located around the globe and plans to expand by selling NFTrees to retail and B2B industries. Zwaneveld enjoys the diversity of his current role and the exciting pace of innovation in the crypto world.

“I get to be in contact with lots of different projects, which is very interesting,” he says, noting that the company has a lot of momentum and has already bought additional farmland in upstate New York for future NFTree sales.

In addition to the environmental benefits of carbon offsetting, Zwaneveld says that the project is helping individual and small farmers by giving them an additional revenue stream. And because they are helping people and businesses make a positive impact, Zwaneveld says the feedback has been very encouraging.?

“People like to see a real-world use case for blockchain technology,” Zwaneveld says.?