Zero Carbon Ecosystem ($ZCARB Token and Carbon Pay)

A Decentralized Revolution for Environmental Change

Comment

Inspiration

Zero Carbon Ecosystem ($ZCARB token and Carbon Pay) was an answer to a simple question.

What would happen if a cryptocurrency project was 100% run by its community and used to do good for humanity and save the environment?

In a world ruled by the commodification of time, community-based projects that use the power of decentralization are more than just a change of pace; they are a way to practice the radical acceptance of a world without a governmental structure. When success depends on the shared strength of the individual who makes up a collective to do good for the world and save the environment from hazardous effects of greenhouse gases and climate change, we are forced to shift our perspectives to align with those around us.

The number of offshore oil rigs in the US has doubled over the last year. The Paris Climate Accord, the source of so much optimism in years past, seems incapable of holding nations to account. While change is happening, it is too slow, marred by private interests and an influential conservative majority that continues to deny the truth: we are on the edge of disaster.

Is this the fault of governments? Yes. These are democracies created to implement our wants and care for our needs. In falling short of this, they have failed in their mandate to serve and uphold the majority will – instead of succumbing to the pressure of profit-driven corporations and fringe stakeholders. Beyond the crime of neglecting climate change, governments are failing to safeguard the integrity of democratic life.

Currently, the world exceeds and even double the 1.5 degrees temperature threshold in this lifetime. At this rate, even a 99% commitment to tackling climate change is not enough, and history already taught us that centralized systems incentivized by capitalist ambitions would not help us. Therefore, we believe that solution lies in decentralization. As the Zero Carbon Ecosystem founders, we are here to change the status quo and drive humanity towards progress in reducing carbon emissions.

With that thought bright in our minds, we began developing the Zero Carbon Ecosystem in earnest.

What it does

The AR6 WG1 report was released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in August 2021. The residual global carbon budget to remain within 1.5° global warming with 66% probability is given as 400 billion tonnes CO2 from the start of 2020. Zero Carbon Ecosystem with a supply of 400.000.000.000 $ZCARB token, each token worth 1000kg (1 ton) of CO2, aiming to be an approximate measurement of world’s carbon budget.

We believe that a decentralized payment system that charges households and firms for their carbon emissions can make them disincentivize to spend the world’s carbon budget unnecessarily, creating an incentive to emit zero-carbon.

Therefore, we developed a payment system called Carbon Pay as an addition to our ZCARB token. Created as a Chrome Extension, Carbon Pay will make payment of carbon emission fees easier, accessible, and scalable for people. Through the extension, people will be able to buy ZCARB token created in MATIC network, calculating their individual carbon emissions, and learning its value in terms of ZCARB coin, and pay their carbon fees using their ZCARB tokens.

Each payment made using Carbon Pay will send ZCARB tokens to a burn address with an unknown private key, and take them out of the total supply.

Carbon Pay system will cause ZCARB token to be deflationary over time by decreasing the overall supply after each payment (carbon emission) and increasing the value of ZCARB token corresponding to US dollars, and disincentivize household and companies to emit more greenhouse gases as carbon budget of the world decreases over time.

Total supply of 400 billion $ZCARB token will be distributed as written below:

  • 10% of total supply = 40 billion $ZCARB token will be sold to the early investors for a price of 0.001 USDT (Tether) for each coin providing us with a liquidity of 40.000.000 USD to back up the value of ZCARB Token initially.
  • 20% of total supply = 80 billion $ZCARB token will be reserved for the team members and will be added to the market supply at a slow pace to not cause devaluation of the token price. Earnings from these reserved tokens will be used to support Zero-Carbon Companies all around the world, incentivizing reduction of carbon emissions (explained in the next section).
  • 70% of total supply = 280 billion $ZCARB token will be distributed to the community after being listed in various exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase, KuCoin, and Gate.io.

How we built it

We chose MATIC network to create our ZCARB token since it is one of the most eco-friendly, efficient and scalable blockchains with near to zero carbon emissions using Proof of Stake (PoS) to verify transactions. After writing the source code for the ZCARB token, we deployed all of the supply of tokens to our owner’s wallet.

Thereafter, we created the MATIC smart contract that is used to separate the supply for the early investors (%10 of total supply; 40 billion ZCARB Token) for our seeding stage sales. After working for hours on the smart contract source code, we achieved to verify it and run it in an accurate and a secure way to distribute the ZCARB tokens to our early investors for a price of $0.001 worth of MATIC coin.

After that, we started to build the website that would capture the essence of what $ZCARB is and our vision for its future. We divided the site into a number of categories that capture our main goal for the cryptocurrency and its future. We added features to the site such as a pop-up to buy ZCARB tokens directly through smart contract. The website was built using HTML, CSS, and a bit of JavaScript coding, which truly made the website come to life! To bring the UI/UX to the next level we used logos, gifs, and a color scheme that is visually appealing to all audiences.

Lastly, building the Carbon Pay system as a chrome extension, we first created an interface in which people can either pay their carbon fees buy self-reporting their carbon emissions or buy ZCARB. Then, we improved the interface to make the carbon emission calculations for the people by asking them about information in three different sections: house, transportation, and custom emissions. We calculate these values according to the measurement values given by IPCC, and Carbon Footprint Calculator websites which are previously used, reliable resources.

After completing the UI and UX design of Carbon Pay extension, we focused on connecting crypto wallets to our extension to realize transactions from other wallets. We achieved to connect a MetaMask wallet (one of the most popular crypto wallets) to our Carbon Pay and display the amount of ZCARB tokens in it by reading the wallet address. We completed couple of transactions to buy ZCARB tokens and pay carbon emission fees using our Carbon Pay system which burned the created test-ZCARB tokens successfully after the payment.

Challenges we ran into

During the website development process, our computers crashed multiple times, leading to a loss of progress. Also from the minimal front-end experience that most of us had, running into errors at times meant hours of searching for the solution.

The fact that most of us were inexperienced in web development was a challenge to overcome. All of us had to learn a lot of material quickly and mobilize what we know to reach the goals of our project.

The whole idea of cryptocurrencies was vague for us at first, we needed to do the calculations and come up with a new cryptocurrency and make a token which was a new experience for all of the group members.

In conclusion, the whole experience was a big challenge for us and as we would go forward, we had to learn new things all the time, and code for long hours which was a big challenge for us considering that we are first-year students.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

In the end our website has a UI/UX that we were proud of. It performed all the goals we set out for it to accomplish and more, with the success link to the smart contract.

We were able to make our tokens, this was something that we are proud of and, although took an overwhelming challenge to overcome, made us all proud. We were able to divide the work fairly and help each other whenever needed. We were able to be inclusive of each member’s ideas and make something that we can all be proud of.

We were able to build a website, chrome extension, a smart contract for our early investor crowd sale, and a eco-friendly token in a MATIC network in 24 hours, which seemed impossible to do it, but with our collaboration and chemistry as a team, we were able to increase our productivity and bring the project to a point beyond what we thought we could do at first.

What we learned

Every step of this project was new for us, so we were able to embrace this situation as a chance for learning. We were able to learn how to develop a website using tools such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. We were able to learn how Chrome extensions work. We learned a lot about cryptocurrencies, how they are created, how to create a smart contract, how to make a crowd sale for your own token and how to achieve fast and secure transactions between two different wallets.

We also learned a lot about what is needed to reduce carbon emissions, we discussed the issue from an economics perspective and analyze the scale of this problem, and capacity of our solution.

What's next for Zero Carbon Ecosystem ($ZCARB Token and Carbon Pay)

We are aware of the fact that as we initialize our token and Carbon Pay extension, most of the households and companies still won’t be paying for their carbon emissions since it is accepted as free to emit greenhouse gases in most of the countries in the world.

However, in a world equipped and managed by decentralized and autonomous technologies, people are the ones that should be responsible for themselves and their environment.

Using Network Effect, with the efficient use of marketing using Environmental NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) such as Greenpeace, Global Footprint Network, and Earth Justice etc. we believe that we can be recognized in the media as the beginning of a worldwide revolution of humanity to save the earth from irreversible effects of climate change. Therefore, marketing and activism is a huge part of our Zero Carbon Ecosystem.

As more and more people use Carbon Pay and ZCARB token to pay for their carbon emission fees, we are certain that every person will begin to feel responsible to pay for their carbon fees and disincentivized to emit more while watching the world’s carbon budget running out via our total supply statistics.

Moreover, to initiate the spread of this environmental responsibility challenge we aim to collaborate with various companies such as airlines, natural gas companies, car companies etc. to make using Carbon Pay mandatory for their customers so that they would have to pay the price for their carbon emissions.

20% of total supply of ZCARB tokens will also be added to the total supply at a slow pace to not cause devaluation of the token. This will be realized by selling ZCARB tokens for its market value using crypto exchange marketplaces. 75% of the earnings from these sales will be used to subsidize Zero-Carbon emission technologies and support eco-friendly companies financially, and the rest 25 % of the earnings will be used to increase the quality of our web services, to provide security of our platform, to afford salaries of our employees and marketing expenses to incentivize people to be part of this decentralized environmental revolution. We will always aim to make our services available, accessible, and useful for more people all around the world.

Delayed efforts to mitigate either carbon dioxide or short-lived climate pollutant emissions will have negative, and potentially irreversible, consequences for global warming, rising sea levels, food security, and public health.

“We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.” - Stephen Hawking

With Zero Carbon Ecosystem, we aim to create a decentralized revolution for environmental change.

Take the responsibility, and be part of it, before it is too late!

Share this project:

Updates