Technology that doesn’t interoperate
Systems that cannot exchange a claim without losing the thing that made it verifiable in the first place.
An environmental claim is only worth what its infrastructure can prove.
We design and build the systems that issue, track, transfer and retire environmental attributes and commodities. We leverage blockchain where it makes sense, and not where it doesn’t.
We’ve spent seven years doing this in the carbon market: integrating registries, tokenizing credits, surfacing the data, and running a marketplace in production.
We work with programmes applying the same problem to energy, and to any market where a claim has to hold up under scrutiny.
The problem we work on
Strip the labels off and most environmental markets share one accounting problem.
A claim is issued against a measurement. It has to be unique. It has to be traceable back to its source. It has to move between parties without losing that provenance. And it has to be consumed exactly once, by one beneficiary, with everyone able to verify that it was.
That is a carbon credit. It is also a guarantee of origin, a granular certificate, a biodiversity or water credit, and the book-and-claim accounting behind low-carbon fuels, hydrogen and steel. Same primitive, different underlying asset.
Where this breaks, it breaks in the same places every time.
Custody nobody can audit
Ownership that cannot be independently checked at each point it changes hands.
Retirement that can’t be proven
Consumption of the claim that no third party can confirm happened once, and only once, for one beneficiary.
Matching that no longer satisfies the claim
Mass balance and annual matching, adopted because tracing the real thing was too hard, and now under pressure from buyers and regulators who want the granular version.
What we’ve built
Four projects tackling different challenges in environmental markets, and what each one taught us.
Offsetra
Emissions analysis, carbon trading and demand generation. We started on the buyer’s side of the market, which is where we learned what a claim actually has to substantiate, and to whom.
KlimaDAO
We took an onchain carbon market from zero to live at speed, and learned hard lessons about how incentive design can outrun market integrity. It is why we ask hard questions about mechanism design before anyone writes code.
Klima 2.0
We took key learnings from KlimaDAO to refine the product and value proposition and enable a more robust market making function for automated carbon retirements.
Carbonmark
Registry integration, tokenized credits, transparent pricing and retirement data, operating as a working marketplace. Not a pilot. It runs.
Where this applies
Carbon is where we have the deepest track record and the widest network — including registries and national registry operators. The same architecture applies to:
Energy attribute certificates
Granular and hourly-matched tracking, where annual or mass-balance matching no longer satisfies the claim being made.
Book-and-claim systems
Sustainable fuels, hydrogen and low-carbon materials.
Nature and water
Biodiversity units, water credits, and other thinly traded, highly heterogeneous instruments.
MRV and measurement data
Getting provenance and auditability into the data layer before anyone tries to build a market on top of it.
We’re explicit about the boundary
In carbon we bring both the domain knowledge and the relationships. Outside it, we bring the architecture and work alongside the people who hold the domain expertise. That has been a productive arrangement, and we’d rather say so than overclaim.
How we work
Market Architecture Review
A fixed-scope engagement, three to four weeks. We take what you’re trying to prove and work out whether it can be built, how, and whether it’s worth it.
Pilot
We can stand up a working attribute registry and marketplace for your pilot in weeks rather than quarters, because we already operate one. You get production infrastructure to test against, not a prototype to throw away.
Operate
We run it, or we hand it over with the documentation and support for your team to run it. Both are fine. We’ll tell you which we think is right.
What we don’t do
- Token-economic design from first principles. We’re market infrastructure engineers, not monetary economists. If your project needs a novel incentive mechanism designed from scratch, we’ll say so and point you elsewhere.
- Work that makes a weak claim look strong. If the underlying measurement doesn’t support the assertion, better infrastructure makes the problem worse, not better — it makes it scale.
- Blockchain for its own sake. Several of our recommendations have been “this is a database.”
How we engage
We work with funded programmes, registries, standards bodies, public bodies and institutions — as a named partner or as a subcontractor, whichever fits the structure you’re working in. We’re happy to be named on grant and consortium applications, and we’d rather be involved before the scope is written than after.
Key facts
- Carbonmark designs and builds the infrastructure that issues, tracks, transfers and retires environmental attributes and commodities, applying blockchain only where it adds value.
- The team has seven years of experience in the carbon market, spanning registry integration, credit tokenization, data transparency and running a marketplace in production.
- Most environmental markets share one accounting problem: a claim must be unique, traceable to its source, transferable without losing provenance, and consumed exactly once by one beneficiary.
- The same primitive underlies carbon credits, guarantees of origin, granular certificates, biodiversity and water credits, and book-and-claim accounting for low-carbon fuels, hydrogen and steel.
- The entry engagement is a Market Architecture Review: a fixed-scope project of three to four weeks that establishes whether what you are trying to prove can be built, how, and whether it is worth it.
- Carbonmark works in three steps: a Market Architecture Review, a Pilot (standing up a working attribute registry and marketplace in weeks), and Operate (Carbonmark runs it, or hands it over with documentation and support).
- Carbonmark’s prior work includes Offsetra (emissions analysis and carbon trading), KlimaDAO and Klima 2.0 (onchain carbon market infrastructure and automated carbon retirements), and Carbonmark itself (a live marketplace).
- Carbonmark does not take on token-economic design from first principles, work that makes a weak claim look strong, or blockchain for its own sake.
Tell us what you’re trying to prove.
We’ll tell you whether we’re the right people for it. If we’re not, we usually know who is.