Building with Blockchain in the Carbon Markets — Part 3
In the first two parts of this series, we explored how blockchain technology is reshaping the carbon market — creating the conditions for its exponential growth by building infrastructure that enables levels of transparency and liquidity once unthinkable.
We also showed how Klima Protocol laid the foundation for an open, interoperable infrastructure for climate finance.
Now, we’d like to tell you Carbonmark’s story — the platform designed to make blockchain-enabled carbon markets usable, accessible, and trusted by the world’s climate and finance communities.
The Genesis of Tokenized Carbon: Klima’s Early Lessons
When KlimaDAO launched in 2021, it marked a watershed moment for the intersection of climate action and blockchain — or as the community called it then, ReFi (Regenerative Finance).
Millions of tonnes of carbon credits were tokenized via Toucan Protocol, and the project captured the imagination of both DeFi enthusiasts and environmental innovators. For the first time, liquidity for real-world climate assets existed on a public blockchain. KlimaDAO had proven that decentralized finance could be harnessed for planetary benefit.
However, in its early stages, it had a vision bigger than its infrastructure.
The idea of bringing the carbon market onchain was revolutionary — but the tools to make it functional were incomplete. Key features like carbon retirements, which allow users to claim the environmental benefit of their credits, had to be added quickly after launch. Furthermore, friction remained for many market stakeholders to interact with the blockchain-enabled tooling that Klima developed. This left many market stakeholders unable, or perhaps unwilling, to leverage the tokenized carbon that Klima was facilitating.
Aligning with Other Market Players
While early turbulence slowed adoption, it also taught vital lessons. Our team recognized that widespread adoption of blockchain infrastructure in carbon markets required more than technology — it required trust, usability, and institutional alignment.
Over the next two years, that bridge began to take shape.
Ethereum’s transition to proof of stake alleviated environmental concerns about blockchain energy use. New registries, including several endorsed by ICROA, the leading industry body, began collaborating on tokenization frameworks. And organizations such as the World Bank launched blockchain-based systems like the Climate Action Data Trust (CADT), further validating the technology’s role in market transparency.
By the end of 2023, Carbonmark was live.
Carbonmark: The Interface for Onchain Climate Action
Born from the lessons of Klima’s early experiments, Carbonmark was designed to solve one central problem: access.
Klima had proven that tokenized carbon markets could work — but most potential participants still found Web3 tools too complex. Many companies lacked wallets, didn’t understand gas fees, or were simply hesitant to engage with new systems.
Carbonmark’s interface abstracts away that complexity, providing a seamless, user-friendly experience that allows anyone to interact with blockchain-powered carbon assets — without needing to delve into Web3 logic and infrastructure.
Built as both an open marketplace and a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, Carbonmark delivers all the advantages of blockchain — transparency, automation, and traceability — through a familiar interface that enables carbon credits to be purchased with credit cards or bank transfers.
Building the Bridge Between Demand and Supply
By providing intuitive access to Klima’s underlying liquidity, Carbonmark became the missing piece of the ecosystem — the bridge between onchain infrastructure and mainstream expectations.
For demand-side participants — corporates, apps, and individuals — Carbonmark offers automated, verifiable carbon credit purchases and retirements. Its API powers programmatic offsetting at scale, enabling fintech, logistics, booking, and other platforms to integrate carbon actions directly into their products. One example: Ascend Bit Corp, part of Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand Group, integrated Carbonmark’s API into TrueMoney Wallet, allowing 20 million users to offset emissions instantly. Within the first month, more than 27,000 users purchased offsets equivalent to planting 180,000 trees.
For supply-side stakeholders — project developers — Carbonmark provides direct access to buyers through registry integrations and tools like Carbonmark Direct, which enable transparent issuance, sale, and tracking of carbon credits. Unlike traditional intermediated systems, through Carbonmark’s marketplace and API, revenue flows directly to the projects generating impact.
Together, these components transform a fragmented market into an open, interoperable, and composable digital ecosystem.
A New Market Infrastructure
At its core, Carbonmark represents a re-engineering of carbon market infrastructure around principles of openness and automation.
Every credit listed is verifiable. Every transaction is traceable. Every retirement is recorded immutably onchain.
Its features include:
A transparent marketplace for buying and selling carbon credits with real-time price visibility.
Automated retirement mechanisms using smart contracts that prevent double counting and deliver verifiable climate impact.
API integrations to embed carbon actions directly into financial systems and business workflows.
Direct credit issuance for developers implementing novel methodologies or operating small-scale projects that don’t fit within traditional registries.
The result is a system that delivers speed, trust, liquidity, and efficiency.
From Tokenization to Deep Transformation
Carbonmark’s mission is not just to trade carbon credits — but to transform how climate finance flows.
Traditional carbon markets remain plagued by opacity, fragmentation, and gatekeeping. Deals can take months to close, and middlemen often capture outsized margins.
Carbonmark challenges this paradigm with radical transparency, open access, and frictionless engagement.
By reducing overhead, shortening settlement times, and connecting verified supply with demand, Carbonmark channels more capital directly to high-impact projects — accelerating the very purpose of the carbon market: financing climate solutions.
Where the Infrastructure Meets the Vision
As Klima 2.0 takes off, Carbonmark remains its public-facing engine — the interface through which global users experience the next generation of blockchain-enabled carbon markets.
Our vision is to bring the majority of carbon market activity onchain and make decentralized infrastructure the default system of record for climate finance.
It’s an ambitious goal, but one increasingly within reach. With multiple ICROA-endorsed registries adopting blockchain frameworks, the World Bank’s CADT initiative, and strategic partners like the International Carbon Registry (ICR) running natively on the Polygon blockchain, the tide has already turned. The onchain carbon market is no longer just a concept — it’s a real solution being implemented by multiple players, with the potential to become core market infrastructure sooner than we think.
Looking back at Klima’s first launch, few could have imagined how far the ecosystem would evolve in just a few years. What began as a radical experiment is now maturing into a multi-stakeholder system that connects institutions, innovators, and individuals through open, verifiable data.
Ready to Scale
Carbonmark represents the first end-to-end solution connecting buyers directly with sellers of carbon credits — grounded in the practical realities of building market infrastructure for the planet’s most urgent challenge.
Carbonmark’s early use cases are laying the foundation for a functional, transparent, and scalable carbon economy — one built not on speculation, but on collaboration, credibility, and climate impact.
The climate crisis demands speed, trust, and scale. Carbonmark delivers all three by combining blockchain transparency, market accessibility, and real-world integration.
By bridging the gap between experimental innovation and institutional adoption, Carbonmark is demonstrating how blockchain can power the new era of carbon markets — turning it into lasting infrastructure for global decarbonization.
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Check the previous two parts of our “Building with Blockchain in Carbon Markets” series:
