How an NFT book can remove carbon with every purchase

Transcript

GM GM welcome to another episode of web 3 Academy your one trusted source to capitalize on the next big phase of the internet don't get caught in the hype cycle I'm jbird and I believe that the ERC cool smart contract standard is going to change the world that's why I'm covering a path for doers to confidently build and invest in web 3 now you might have notied that was a bit of a melt that I gave you there the ERC cool smart contract standard what the heck is that well today we have three incredible guests joining us to talk about how we can use blockchain for good specifically to impact climate change in a positive

way we have with us Stefan from polygon Labs he's the head of sustainability there we have Ben the one of the founders of book. and we have Leanne the founder of pray cool now these three stakeholders came together recently for a partnership where you can buy a nft book on book. the book is called climate optimism and when you buy that book there is carbon removed automatically with your purchase you don't have to click a button you don't opt in you don't do anything this all happens automatically and it all happens on chain which means you can track it you

can trust it you can see that it is legitimate and it happened and you can see the impact that you've made and feel really good about it this is an incredible Innovation because it's simple in its nature we're just talking about buying a book super simple buying a digital book people do that all the time that's nothing new but when you take that book and you make it an nft and you put it on chain there's lots of benefits to that that we're going to to talk about but what all else can happen is in the background you can use the ERC cool smart contract and you can remove carbon automatically this episode is really

inspirational the type of episode I love to see where we bring together three incredible leaders in the web 3 space who are all really focused on not just building great products and trying to build a sustainable business they also want to do it by having a positive impact at the same time they want to make the world a better place and they don't want to burn the world down while they're building their products which really is the unfortunate situation that we're in right now with our current world and we need more leaders that are focused on positive impact and it's really incredible to see how simple that can be when you use onchain when you

sell products on chain in this web three way it just flips what is possible and changes efficiencies and solves a lot of problems that a lot of Brands face when they're trying to do good and a lot of users face when they're trying to understand the good that is being done for them by a brand just so exciting to see Stefan Leanne and Ben work together come together and sell this book and make an positive impact on climate and this is just the start there is so much more that's going to come down the road so super excited for you all to listen to this episode before we jump in just

want to make sure if you're not subscribed to our newsletter you're going to want to subscribe this is our newsletter we send out three days a week that gets you everything you need to know to stay on top of web 3 our podcast very much focuses on the larger picture but the newsletter is every it's it's the daily in your inbox everything you need to feel confident in this space to learn to stay on top of things in only five minutes it's going to take you to read the newsletter so click the link in the show notes if you're not already subscribed to newsletter make sure you subscribe let's take a minute to hear from our sponsor before we jump in to today's episode modern newsletters are built on

paragraph that's right paragraph is a brand new newsletter platform that combines the best parts of web 2 and web 3 to supercharge newsletters for both writers and readers build a community not just an audience paragraph uses blockchain Tech to allow readers to collect and own the words that matter to them this takes reading a newsletter to the next level with paragraph readers can mint collect and show off quotes from their favorite newsletters this opens new possibilities like creators sharing Revenue with with fans I also love their new feature paragraph AI this integrates gp4 natively in paragraph create edit and improve your writing

effortlessly with one click and guess what we at web3 Academy are on board and have already moved our content over to paragraph We believe this is the future of newsletters because of profound engagement it creates between creators and fans so whether you're Creator writer or an Avid Reader it's time to check out paragraph and capitalize on the opportunity of being early GM GM welcome to another episode of web 3 Academy this is an exciting episode this is an episode with three guests doesn't happen often enough and it's very interesting to have these three guests because this is a great example of what

is possible onchain with different partners today we have a blockchain in polygon lab ABS we have a smart contract layer in Trey cool and then we have an app layer in book. which really represents we talk a lot about layers in blockchain layer one layer two that's not the layers I'm talking about here here this represents the different layers that we experience daytoday when we are using onchain apps and we haven't really done an episode like this so really excited welcome to the show Leanne Ben and Stefan great to have you all thanks for having us it's good to be here hey everyone okay we're gonna get into each of you and what you're each doing but I want to start off at the top

because you all recently partnered on a book launch and it launched in end of October you can buy a digital book and as a result of that you can remove CO2 that is just an incredible accomplishment and something that really uses onchain in a new way that we haven't seen before I don't know Leanne Ben one of you want to just start off by telling us a bit about the background on this partnership I actually think it started with polygon Labs I think polygon Labs had hit us up and said hey we have this really cool smart contract layer with just cool and kind of wondered if you guys are interested and I was like well yeah we're super interested right like mostly in publishing where the publishing world is been known to like chop down trees for

the last 400 years right the the question mostly in publishing has always been like how do we curb this a little bit and also you know for us it's also the digital book ownership so it was a very cool partnership than we were just like yeah let's do it so I got together with these two a couple of times and we started just putting it together so it's always really interesting and who you meet in web 3 and then when you come together and start sharing ideas how how exciting it can get very very quickly yeah and I'll add to that that from our perspective obviously your polygon Labs was you know they were the Matchmaker here this Stefan is our Cupid if you will but you know for us really what we wanted to do is show that you could put climate action into into everyday things

right that our we want our lifestyles to be able to help support good things as opposed to feeling bad about them and having them feeling like they're part of the problem they need to be part of the solution so it felt like this first use case was perfect you know like reading a book and obviously what the guys a booko are doing around book ownership is already Frontier and already pioneering but then to program these books with gbon removal sort of just took it to that next level so it felt like the perfect place to get going and show the world what what's possible and Ben can you just explain from a user experience perspective so what is somebody going through they're going to book. they're buying this book what's

the process just so a user can understand how they would purchase a book and then as a result of that have carbon removed yeah you know it's not super difficult right like we're obviously aimed at like Mass adoption there's over 1.1 billion digital readers in the world right and we were want to like make sure that that process is as seamless as possible just as if you're going to any web 2 service to buy a book right so once you hit book iio you know you could purchase claim in optimism which is the book that we chose for this one you could use madic or or your credit card right so you can either use your own wallet or we create that bookshelf for you on the back end is what we call a self dripping wallet so you could take

that that bookshelf with you anytime you want so and then it was just you know our Tech teamworking with TR cool and their team to make sure that that smart contract actually did what it said right so again I think what lean said was really perfect is let's have social impact in like the everyday items that we have and the end user doesn't really have to know that right and so but they can also see it in a trustless manner using the chain to to identify that like you know what we said we were going to do we actually did and so you know it's a really easy simple process you know poly on obviously is lightning fast so you buy that book and you get that book

couple seconds later right we can dive into the unit economics of why polygon it's a very fast chain we can deliver things for pennies right and then again in the publishing world there's always a split normally it's 7030 70 goes back to the publisher so that 30% allows us a a wide margin to to invest in social impact and then the secondary royalty can continue to give back for forever and ever so awesome you know again awesome first use case when we're talking about like millions and millions of book titles that we're trying to get yeah it's amazing I purchased the book in prep for this show and I must say purchasing an NF using a credit card is just that is the future it's so exciting

when I see any app that is abstracting blockchain and enabling the purchase in such an easy way so Lov to see that it was great very exciting to use my credit card and not have to use my m I like to hold my madic it's well right now so that was was really great and then also obviously the choice of a book that focuses on climate change makes a ton of sense Cupid Stefan I want to go over to you here quickly so tell us from your end H how did you make this partnership and maybe that might actually lead a little bit into your role at polygon you might want to get us a little bit of context there because I think that'll help explain why you set up lean and Ben yeah absolutely I mean maybe maybe

starting with that some context so I I lead sustainability of polygon Labs that started out as uh something quite straightforward which was you know how do we ensure and communicate uh that blockchain as a whole using different consensus mechanisms can be sustainable and is maybe even more efficient than existing standards for how we transact in today's economy and so with that said that's how the the role began and it kind of evoled D into well actually maybe there's some really great applications for blockchain to improve how we actually scale impact you know we're in dire need of accelerating things like climate Finance you know we need to see uh more inclusive economy and it turns out that not only is

blockchain a more sustainable method to transacting in this economy it can actually help other Industries evolve and essentially allow us to reach our goals that we're we're looking to to achieve by 20 and so that's part of my my role now is is really spending a lot of time with organizations and identifying you know what use cases make sense and which ones can scale quickly uh and which ones are fun and engaging too right because we have to get people involved and and the topic can sometimes be a little bit cringey to people so we have to figure out you know new ways of of getting people engaged and lean and I have have had many conversations for a good period of time now I consider us friends at this point and we've just been talking about you know what use cases make sense and and how can we

integrate ERC cool into everyday products and it was actually a colleague of mine that had suggested you know speaking to book iio and and we got into conversation and and everyone was on board pretty much from the first moment and and that's kind of how things began and that's always a win for me uh that's where we're looking to do everything from you know consumer products through to uh corporate Supply chains I think there's there's so many applications that you can utilize for blockchain at the best way to see it is you know Global coordination tools from everyone from the the end user you know all the way down to the original developer manufacturer well I'm glad that you made this connection because it's great to see Partnerships like this happening we've mentioned ERC cool a few times but we haven't yet explained it so lean I

want to go over to you let's talk about on your end when somebody buys this book how does programmed carbon removal happen how does that work yeah so really what it is is without trying to get too technical but kind of take people through the Journey is what is is a smart contract interface so what this means is a piece of code that can actually plug into any smart contract for this example obviously it's book ao's smart contract that is behind the book climate op optimism what the interface does is acts similar to a royalty so what it does is actually directs funds so book AO inherit this interface they plug in the percentage of carbon removal that they want to do we call this a technically a cool down rate

so they can choose you know one half a percent 10% 100% but what it will do is as that transacts what that does then is flow the funds that hits our delegate smart contract and from there it splits it out at this stage what we're doing is what TR call is really all about is actually pushing forward the nent kind of end of the spectrum of carbon removal which are these engineered based Solutions right so we're not talking about nature based Solutions which is often What's um focused on so these things are like direct air capture there's Solutions called biochar mineralization I'm happy to go into these two cuz they are conflicts themselves but what happens is that this is a very expensive end of the voluntary carbon Market these tons of carbon cost

a lot more than say planting a tree but what they are is really permanent Solutions and they also need scaling so what happens is these kinds of get left on the Shelf so traal comes in hopefully to kind of push that market forward that's what we want to do and at this stage that carbon is not yet on chain right it it will be coming there are people working on solving that problem right now but what we actually have to do is that delegate smart contct cont then pings out via an API to purchase that carbon offchain so at this point we go off we purchase the carbon to the amount of money that was supplied to us through the delegate smart contract and then what we do is tokenize that impact so say this book removed I think it's like 2.14 kgs of carbon each book will

do we then tokenize that as what we call cool Factor one cool Factor equals 1 kg of carbon removed so you'll get 2.14 cool Factor back in your wallet is the end consumer and the reason to do that is close this Loop right because often if you're thinking about a traditional kind of e-commerce solution today or experience today for a consumer what we see is like these little tags that go it's sustainable and I go cool cuz I really want to buy that I I want to do that but when I click that I go I have no idea what actually happened then I've got from every end of the spectrum that that could possibly just be a complete lie I wouldn't have a clue so I really hope they're doing it but what what we have to have is trust and I don't think that should be part of the

equation I think we're now in a world that we actually don't have to have trust here we can actually program these things this is where blockchain comes in and solves that problem so basically the the delegate smart contract is the thing that automates the purchase we then tokenize that and close the loop for the consumer at the end it's amazing you mentioned several words there that get me excited and that we talk a lot about on the show trust or how blockchain is you know trustless trustless is a difficult word to wrap your head around but it means that you know it is guaranteed trust you don't have to worry about it it's going to happen as it said you talked about automatic transactions as a result of you know I purchased this

book the other day I believe it was 20 Matic or about $17 and I don't have to to do anything I just know that in the back end as a result of that I removed two 2.5 kgs of carbon I'm not a carbon removal expert so I'm not exactly sure what 2.5 kg carbon is but sounds great I just know that it happens and it happens automatically we talk a lot about uh embedded transactions that that is happening in the background you don't necessarily know that and that's very different than the web 2 way of doing things and then you also mentioned this transparency of the cool Factor token gets that transparency so the the user knows and can see the impact that

they're making and I know you can even go to your website and put in your wallet and connect your wallet and see how many how much carbon you've removed as a result of whatever actions you've taken on chain this is very different than we do things in the web 2 world you know I think we've all probably purchased a plane ticket and maybe purchase a little bit of carbon offsetting or in some way I feel like we have opportunities as users to do carbon removal but when you click that button as you said you know it might say it's doing something but you don't know what it's doing you don't know who's involved you don't know what the fees are you don't even know how much of my money went to the end user what is different how is this different on chain than it

is in the web 2 world and what is what is really exciting for you at Trey cool and the way you're building this yeah it's interesting right like that that classic kind of experience that you laid out then was really got what got me going on this right so what started my climate Journey was becoming a mother and I knew that one day my son would ask me during this kind of crucial decade you know if you knew about this why the hell weren't you doing anything about it so I was like oh my god I've got to do something about it but I started like everyone else you know I started going through trying to do those little things in our everyday lives you click that button and you go I'm just not sure what happens and then the bad thing is is when you dig into it there is a lot

extra going on that's not actually happening right there are a lot of people that are just greenwashing if you will and it's not really that it isn't that efficient but what happens is that puts in doubt and then that makes people inactive because we're like you know if I don't I think that that offset button that you go through when when you buy a flight there's a a stat out there that 1% of people will do that right because we just don't trust it but we also go I mean it's 50 cents can't you just hide that in the ticket price and I'd pay the ticket price happily and you can call it carbon neutral if you're really committed to this you would do this as a company and so I think that's a problem that that I really wanted to solve and at the same time this was when really

web through was exploding in my mind and it really like I'm pretty cliche but it came along with the nft kind of Doom but Stefan touched on this before what that showed us is that how you could coordinate a movement essentially like even if you look at board 8 that is a coordinated movement of Internet strangers become rich and wealthy like that they knew what they were doing and they did it really well when you think about how they executed that and that's when I saw this and I I knew there was a bit way possible I knew that we could actually start to program over promise and actually then get that radically transparent experience and give back to the consumer something that is down to the gr exactly what you've just done whether 2.14 kgs or whatever it be you

don't even have to know that's my one coffee or whatever that is it doesn't matter you've got something now tangible to go okay I know what I did at least and then we can actually open up to have fun with that token too right so we can actually kind of change the way we look at climate action into something that's quite a chore and this kind of burden and responsibility into something that's actually quite pleasure and H saying I'm going about my life I'm having a positive impact I can have fun with that this is a a bit way for me to approach this problem I think stepan on your end you mentioned you know your job sounds incredible by the way that you speak to organizations and help them try to understand how to use blockchain for sustainability so deep bow and respect to you for doing that I wish more people

were doing that I'm curious this concept of like embedded I don't know what the word is embedded transactions is that a concept what are the concepts that you find yourself explaining to these corporations in the way that the models that they need to understand in order to see how blockchain can be used to improve sustainability that's a huge question yeah I mean there's there's a lot of layers to it I think something the M was touching on is is really critical to think about and even you touched on it yourself in these fight transactions right it's purely a voluntary action for you to decide to offset your carbon related to your air travel for example the same goes for these entities these corporations you know there there is some level of

compliance when it comes to meeting sustainability targets but a large portion of of what happens today is is completely voluntary and unfortunately the people who are acting voluntarily in this regard are generally actually being vilified or receiving the most backlash in relation to this right so as an example the guardian released an article a couple of months ago that came out and said you know 90 plus percent of the carbon credits that people are purchasing and retiring Airlines they they name a number of companies are ineffective or are not achieving what they're setting out to do and the danger that that has is these sustainability teams in tying with their their marketing and other teams and these organizations suddenly step back and say

okay we have to be really careful about how we engage with these markets and and often that leads them to a complete standstill where they they freeze and they don't take any action or they reduce the action they're taking because of how that's generally received so with tools like this right it it brings that transparency and it's key to build trust like we can talk about trust list but you have to get that to that state of trust first so you know when someone's doing this transaction they also need to be go be able to go and verify that that's occurring right and you can do that now and lean talked about how we're really at a version zero of this where in the future we'll be bringing all of these pieces on chain uh and that and that's key for the future of of this

entire climate Finance movement it's it's not just about the end user and the corporation you can also tie you know all the way back to the project developer the person that's saying hey we're removing this amount of carbon it doesn't need to be a statement made by them it can be a statement that is proven with uh remote sense data high resolution satellites that is then delivered directly to the blockchain and proves the statement they're making without anyone able to interact with that data and manipulate the information so we can really get to a state of trust that can actually almost guarantee that that these uh activities are occurring and that's key for these organizations they need to be able to to be able to prove these statements for their own benefit you know in in in the market

that we're in today and this is a delicate industry and and something that desperately need support and we're just trying to facilitate that with technology that brings that transparency and Trust that's necessary oh I would love to jump in on this too because like just yesterday I had this very conversation right like talking to a very large publisher and the first thing out of their mouth is like isn't blockchain super dirty right and so because they they read headlines and it's like you know Bitcoin uses more energy than whatever main or whatever the the latest headline is right so in the everyday American's mind it's like there is one blockchain like there's one internet right so it really gives us an

opportunity to say like no here are the chains that we develop on here is polygon right and here is their website and like they are very focused on carbon neutral making sure that that chain is as clean as possible right and then it gives me an opportunity to say but we can take another step right and we can actually remove carbon with every with every purchase right again A lot of times in web 3 there's a lot of companies that are trying they're building but they don't really solve a problem and now it's like no this is an immediate problem right so when you look at it through a Publisher's mindset right like if they wanted to do this right like Digital Book ownership is cool we're growing at a lightning lightning Pace they have a lot of

questions right but not only are we showing up with answers we're we're coming in and we're saying we can also do this you just have to click this button you just have to tell me what percentage do you want to go to carbon removal right now this is where it gets really really interesting too because now we're getting into a space where it can actually be way better than web 2 right because if you were to buy on Kindle that publisher all they get in return is like here's your data like here's the number of people who bought and here's your check right but with us it's like here's all the people that own climate optimism right and now we know that these people are interested in this type of book and we can retarget them right and we can retarget them and say

like hey this next book is going to be this percentage off because you own this book right or then we can even go as as far as going to tr cool and their token and saying we're going to airdrop everybody who has this amount of their token we're going to aird drop this book or we're going to airdrop something else right so it really does solve problems but it opens up this merchandising cycle that did not exist before like where the data stopped where they didn't get any data at all right where now we come in and be like I couldn't lie to you about Book Sales if I wanted to it's on the blockchain and what's more is like I can deliver to you all of this data to develop community of like-minded individuals who care about the

environment who want to learn about this so it's like it's really awesome that we've gotten to this period so quickly where it's like now I can consume knowledge I can resell my book I can have a positive impact and now I'm entering in and finding other like-minded individuals that I can grow in community with all of that was impossible a year ago right so it's not even you know comparing ourselves to web to it's like this is the next giant Le bit Innovation it makes everything better right and it gives us so much data to people who didn't have it before I mean again all the major Publishers don't get any of this data and it frustrates the hell out of them because as marketers it's like how are you

making decisions if you don't have data so when you compare it to web 2 it's like man this will be the norn it is inevitable because it is so much easier and again if I was to go to that publisher and like I have this idea about carbon removal it's like no man like they're slow moving and then we'd have to get so many legal teams involved instead it's just like click this button to get started that is the path we have to develop these solutions to fix problems and people they they're excited about it right they want to learn more and again it's great to have Partners like polygon like Trace cool so that we can go back and just say if you want to learn more here here it is but we can get started tomorrow business does not change at all like we can sell your book

starting tomorrow right it's that easy you mentioned so many things there Ben but first i'm going to say if you ever want to side hustle you would be a great podcast host very very well said and you know I'd I'd love to bring you on to the show more often so you let me know hey man I I have zero time okay I have zero extra time I guarantee you everybody on this call works like a 100 hours a week right it is fun but in in the web three world right if you're not building every day you're dying right and so mostly in the bare market right like everybody says it's like I think this is the interesting thing is utility when you look at the last year is what is winning right all the hype and all that stuff you can't continue to be the cool kid

forever right it just it's impossible right but utility lasts forever right and again like what we talk about is utility to day and then maybe added utility tomorrow like a book might have certain utility that we promis today but it might be something else tomorrow right like it might give you access some to something else tomorrow so it's an endless amount of merchandising and again this is super cool way to look at at the world and once you get it into your brain right like hey you don't own your digital books right your Kindle shelf doesn't have any value the second you hear that right you can't unhear it and it's really crazy to watch like the way people in their minds it works where they finally get to the point where it's like I should own the stuff I buy as a pretty foundational thing and again it's

like without we kind of covered some of these things really quickly which is even when I look at like what polygon Labs is doing and like these Partnerships like it really does come into like unit economics right like if for example some of the tech that we're building if I want to go give away 50,000 units of books right it's like that's super depending on what chain you use that could get super super expensive right so that's why it is important to know some of these chains and for the listeners out there who are interested in web 3 you have to know these things because you have to look at as like transactions like how how much is does it take for you to move a digital good from here to there right is it pennies or is it $40 gas fees on eth right like

people are going to buy books if cost them $40 to move them around well well and every everybody that's active right now I'm sure is seeing gas fees are increasing this past month you know gas fees are back on the rise we've had a nice bare Market of low gas fees for a while now and all of a sudden you know yesterday I went to a transaction I was like are you kidding me that's the gas Fe like no way now I was doing it on ethereum so like obviously it's gone a high gas I wasn't doing it on polygon I wish I could have done it on polygon but I couldn't but so there's a lot of scaling Solutions and you mentioned before and I just want to go back quickly because my two favorite myths in the space are that crypto is is bad for

the environment proof of stake blockchains like polygon use 85,000 times less energy than the traditional banking system uses so don't even like that that is a dead yes proof of work and Bitcoin does use a lot of energy but most of those miners are trying to do it in renewable ways and they don't get enough credit for that and then the second is that crypto is all for terrorism and for malicious acting and there's been multiple studies that have shown that's less than a percent of blockchain usage is used for that reason I can't even imagine how much is used in traditional banking as well so those myths need to disappear but as you said Ben the media loves those headlines they're going to

continue to do that Ben I want to come back quickly do you for this book and this partnership can you just explain who's taking less of a cut and putting that cut towards the carbon removal is that coming from the user is that coming from the publisher is it coming from your end and is that a decision that who makes that decision like what is the exact setup this actually a fun story because I think we're about a week out and my CTO was like hey who's whose cut is this coming out of and I was like oh man I didn't even think of that right so it's definitely came out of book io's end right but again it's like we have healthy margins right and we have an endless amount of Supply like there's always going to be new books right and I

think this is when you compare you know unfairly to other nft projects mostly like pfp projects it's like you there's usually five or 10,000 units for us it's like man there's we're trying to invest like 20 million titles next year right so like there is an you know in in our use case billions of nfts in the future right like to the point where this is why it is important to have conversations with like-minded individuals in web 3 even at you know the l2s with because we're going to run into a scalability issue at some point right all that to being said is you know this allows us to do that right and even again once that that individual has that unit right that book and they decide to

resell it right then it can trigger that smart contract so even if I decided to give away you know 100,000 some books right because that's what we chose to do because we want people to understand the chain we want people to have an opportunity to see that like blockchain is not bad right then once they sell those books then it can trigger that smart contract so there's so many different ways that you can cut it right and again it's like that's just a portion of what we did we could have done more we could have put more back to something else we could have split up that smart contract a hundred different ways right so the publisher gets paid every time the book sells and we put some towards carbon removal also so in this case it was out of book io's end I

I don't think we have a problem with that moving forward at even at like a grand scale our conversations now are not only in the digital world but also in the print World also in the bundling world of as books are moving off of like the print on demand line are we going to stamp them with carbon removal as they come off right and do it at a much larger scale because you know digal right like if I'm moving a book around on polygon it's not it doesn't have the carbon footprint of a book that is printed is shipped is you know delivered that has a much larger carbon footprint so when you talk about competing at the very highest levels against the Amazon of the world you have to have a

sustainable competitive Advantage ours just happens to be that we want to be sustainable we want the world to be sustainable we want to work and again Publishers are very interested in this idea because they've just never had it before and to implement something like that at a grand scale at some of these large publishing houses would take years right they need solutions that they can come in and just sign and it doesn't affect Revenue at all it actually increases Revenue because it builds community and gives them more data yeah well said lean I want to go over to you so I really want people to understand how simple and easy it is to integrate the ERC cool smart contract standard and

I want people to understand how I think one thing with three stakeholders on this show polygon providing the blockchain the consensus layer and then you're providing the smart contract and then Ben is providing the app layer to sell the book it can get very easy to everyone understands the app layer I think we all can grasp that but the blockchain a smart contract layer can get a bit confusing can you try to explain sort of your role in this partnership and then maybe use that to explain how how others could use ERC cool as well yeah for sure so like we said before that we've created this interface this is actually open source code right so the idea was to make this permissionless too right as in you don't

even need like what we need in web you know if we would do this in web too if we take that back to what what we were trying to achieve before you would need to integrate you would need someone to come in you would need teams to talk to one another but what you have these standard smart contracts and so what we've developed is this interface that can plug into any one of those standard smart contracts and they can do that that can be done without even a conversation it can be done without asking us permission you can simply go and pick it up off the GitHub and inherit it like that you still have to have a developer you still have to be developing a smart contract you can't be using one that is I guess off the shelf from somewhere El so there are some

nuances to that right you still have to have for example we walked with you know the CTO from B had to go in there and he actually did have some questions you know because this was sort of the first time of implementing it there were some questions around it that we we worked to make simpler but the thing is that one it's open source two it's permissionless no that doesn't mean everyone's going to come in and use it because you know just because you build something they don't find it so the challenge is really to make sure that you still make this super easy right like how do we then put this into places where we talk about creatives that listen to this show are not necessarily developers I'm not a coder if I want to create an nft I have to go to a launch P to do that and that

means using someone else's kind of preset smart contract and so what we want to do is actually weave ERC Co into these places so it's a choice when you're a Creator and you're creating any nft we want that to be a choice that's given just like you get the choice of do you want the 721 or an 1155 smart contract you should actually be able to choose do you want this to be made cool effectively so we're working in the background to try and get things like launch pads interested but obviously you know that's at working with other application layers essentially and that I mean it's a challenge right to to make people go because again they go well blockchain's not so bad anymore we're not the ethereum of the past but that really isn't the point the point is is

that one consumers want this they want you to take a stance here and they want you to lead if you do so that's really good for your business but two we're actually about trying to regenerate we're actually going to a space where we're not just trying to go well we're not so bad so it's okay it's like we actually can do this and if we do a little bit at scale imagine the positive impact we can have and and the kind of good we can do uh and I think Ben what he said you know he's talked about billions of nfts he only has to put 0. one of a percentage on that into carbon removal and we're talking one of the biggest impacts anyone's everever had in this space so it's that simple like it really isn't that hard to create massive

change uh and that's what I think hopefully people's eyes start to see like we don't even have to be that hard on it just slight intention here and programming it in can have massive massive impact which is super powerful stepan on your end I'm really curious to know what a day in the life of Stephen is like I could wrap my head around the founders job over here in both lean and Ben but what what is the the head of sustainability for polygon's day look like and you know can you bring that back to maybe conversations that you have that I don't know if they I'm sure you have conversation about all types of sustainability not just carbon removal but if you can tie that back at all to

this conversation yeah I mean to kind of reiterate on on your own point there we're still fighting that fight around blockchain sustainability right I think luckily a lot of that conversation has has quietened or at least developed to the point where we're starting to look at you know how do we standardize measurement what do we classify as efficient but it's really an Innovative industry where you know the example that that I always try to give is take ethereum used to be proof of work consensus mechanism magnitudes larger in terms of its impact negative externalities of of the operation of that chain and in less than 10 years they've switched over to proof of stake and they've reduced their environmental impact their energy

consumption their carbon footprint by more than 99.9% in that space of time right we're talking about leading innovators that are coming together and and aren't pushing away the challenge you look at any blockchain it doesn't just have to be polygon Network it can be salana hadera you name it they're involved in this effort we're all in working groups together we're all looking at how to really push that message forward positively to to seek adoption because we do see so much more than the negative impact of the blockchain what we see is something that is such an efficient technology that can actually be net positive and when it's interweaved into the economy we start to develop the the type of economy we need to see to to really regenerate nature and live in a

healthier world so that takes up a large portion of my time is really engaging with policy makers Regulators other blockchains it's a very collaborative field or vertical within sustainability is you know it's not competitive Landscaping the same way so we all trying to achieve the same thing and then you know on top of that it's it's really trying to support applications to get adopted because that's really where we're at right now we can continue to to look at you know how we make our networks more efficient but we also have to look at how do we make the rest of the world run better in this regard and and so I think my time is kind of evenly split between those two so those two key territories is where I spend most of my time but in terms of applications like tying it back to this like I said this

is really just the beginning for what we see as possible and and like leam was talking about before when that carbon uh removal comes on chain as well it's not just about the the trust and transparency it's maybe not in the case of the tech-based carbon removal but when we're talking about nature-based carbon removal or or nature based protection there are communities that do not see their Fair contribution in terms of economics in that supply chain and that's something you can change because let's take a project developer for carbon sequestration you're looking at you know tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars plus a year plus to essentially get that project certified so that your Delta or another airline or

company can buy that credit to to account for some emissions with this like I just spoke to a protocol two weeks ago they have a tool that can essentially create what's classified as a baseline which is what takes all this time you know working out what is the base before additionality occurs where we're sequestering additional carbon into the ground let's say into the soil and this can create the Baseline in just a few minutes essentially it takes to process a few transactions and process data and essentially record it on chain and that's the Baseline created the economic cost the the time everything just opens up this Market to an entirely new group of people where you know a single farmer can engage in this market

rather than having to be some conglomerate or large project developer and that's really what we're looking to do is is transform this from you know what's currently really a top- down Market into into something that's bottom up and can get everyone involved and it can be an inclusive economy and and as Ben said users want this the community want there's so many people out there that are looking to find like-minded people that also care about this they want to be a part of this and carbon removal in particular is it's a very inefficient Market it's very difficult to access it directly as a user uh which causes a lot of issues maybe we can go over Leanne why are we struggling so much to address climate change like we

all talk about we all know it it is so important I think everybody on this call and everybody listening I'm sure cares what's the harder yeah it's I mean that is a absolute BS nest of a question because I think there's a number of things going on here right but if we kind of want to bring it down to what we're talking today it's definitely not intent right like there's stats everywhere and I think the latest one I've read is that 97% of people want a more sustainable life they want to live a more sustainable life the thing is though that they really and actually Stefan S this really interesting a report to me the other day um saying that later is too late but really what it digs into is like what's the narrative holding us back you know if people are saying they're motivated they

want to do it what why are we not connecting the dots here what's the Gap and it really comes into there's a few things but a lot of it comes to do with they want one brand and and governments to take that responsibility there's been a lot of sort of propaganda that the individuals is are the ones responsible right but really that we know that look we're pushing up against the stream if individuals are really the ones to take this on their shoulders yes we can do things right and people want to do things but we have to enable that so they want to be enabled that means that Brands like perfect example is B they come in here and they go look we're going to do it we're going to put it in our products all you have to do is buy from us you

want this anyway you get a choice to where of who you buy this from if you buy it from us that that box is took that's done the other thing I think we have to do is take trust out of the equation right so there's also a wealth of stats that basically say that people just don't trust it they don't I think say 14% of people believe that when they see that sustainability sign something is actually happening behind it not that they can articulate what that is but there's a whole heap of people out there that go yeah I'm not so sure if that happens and I'm one of them and no one has the time to dig in to actually go and find out is this brand actually standing up behind this what are they doing to what extent so we just sort of

need to really try and remove that this is obviously where blockchain really comes in and then I think it the other kind of interesting thing is around the narrative in the messaging people are motiv at um but they're not so motivated by the ways that we've been kind of communicating this so far you know we've really been coming to this with the step not the carrot you know what is often presented to us is this fiery future which is actually kind of one terrifying and two hard to kind of figure it out right like what is that even really look like of millions of people displaced and all the rest of it but what this actually that Stephan sent me the other day was overwhelming is that people want to protect what they love and they want to make sure that the future or the Next

Generation actually has the good things that we have you know we want to be making sure that uh we're reminded of what we're fighting for is actually the things that we already love the things that we want to remain the things that we want to keep here and make sure that they they actually you know stay there for the future Generations so it's more around I think making it something that you go okay I know I love doing this thing and if you know if the world goes to the place that they're saying it could go to we could lose this we can't lose that we can't lose this biodiversity we can't lose all the things that make life life at the end of the day so communication around that kind of way and the other thing for me I think is branding like when you look at

the world branding is a powerful tool and it's not used in the space there isn't one brand that you can go to that go oh they're nailing it with this and I think that's that's a massive Gap you know the brands that we have to turn to in a sustainability space are really other companies like you look at Tesla's a car company car manufacturer Patagonia makes you know Outdoor Clothing these are the brands that we hold up at the moment and there's nothing wrong with that like they are very good at what they do because they've nailed it they've also asked no one to to kind of sacrifice on style or um how good the car is you know if Tesla wasn't as fast as and as sleek and as good a design as it was just because it was electric wouldn't make it different wouldn't make

it good it's good because it's designed well it's you know just as competitive as any other car and again this is where I then come back to Tre cor and what we're trying to do is going you want that brand you want that t-shirt let's make that thing sustainable as opposed to having to choose a sacrifice and go for a different brand that you don't like as much but you're trying to make a good decision so if we can kind of put these things into places where people already are paint a picture of we're doing this because we're trying to protect what we love and kind of just come at it with no need for trust all the rest of it well I guess like like Stan said there is a need for trust but the fact that it's radically transparent you can see what's happening I think

that really does change it there is a good chance that we can actually get people motivated and get more people involved and again it's about these micro actions at scale you know if we can get billions of these things happening all over the place all of the time through everyone's day that actually will add up to this massive impact and really getting that kind of consumer power climate action into full force I think I'll jump in there too because just like more real world type discussions right like when we first got in they started talking to like the major publishing houses like two of the big five actually have in their corporate document that they will not use proof of work right and I was blown away that they were even that forward like forward thinking I was like wow I didn't think you guys were thinking

about this at all right so there is that portion of it right but the other thing is when you talk about Brands it's like she's talking about motivation like I think there is a motivation there it's also a question of capacity how much time do you have to throw at this like stefon's talking about like how much money do you have to throw at this so if you can reduce those things then you can make it scalable right so again when we show up and we say like you can be a part of this this is you just have to check this box it's like it's really developed it's a solution to a problem they know it they want to be more greed they want to have they want to have more action they just don't know how to do that right and so I think a lot of time

it's the entrepreneurs the people like on this call the people who listen to this who are thinking like you know how do i s solve real world problems right and also make an impact like we've talked about this a lot on other calls it's like it doesn't have to be this or that right same thing in web 3 it doesn't have to be convenience or ownership it can be both for Brands like book iio we believe it can be both we believe we can have a positive impact we can be a profitable company and we can also have a positive impact and a lot of that stuff is you know people like Leanne coming to us and people like Stefan coming to us say hey this is pretty easy and it's like man that's that is really easy like we did it once there was the heavy lifting right and it

wasn't very heavy right but now we can do it hundreds of millions of times or billions of times if we choose right and again we can pass that along to the brands that we work with so I A lot of times I think it's just capacity I mean again these the huge corporations they're moving forward super fast they want to do these things they just don't know how and they need somebody deliver those solutions to them yeah if that's okay I just think there's so many key points that are hit on there and and just coming into the end of what you had to say Ben this is a capacity challenge right if we're talking about a mission you know let's not even get it into a positive impact with something like this generally like more than 70% sometimes as much as 90% or more of emissions

happen in the supply chain for an organization like apple I think 99% of their emissions are indirect they're related to something in their supply chain and that is incredibly hard to manage that's a coordination problem right there it's a monstrosity to try and deal with that's why we're not even thinking about compliance or anything that's legally binding when it relates to scope three emissions and that's something where we can actually you know manage that capacity by implementing blockchain like like Ben said we build we build this once right we build a tool that creates this coordination we build it once for one example and the pilot Works functionally others can just use that same platform right they don't need to iterate and create a new version it's it's very straightforward and that's the direction we're heading and and that's how we

manage things is if if there isn't the capacity let's make capacity let's make things more efficient and and that's the way we think about things uh you know in termon Labs as well as is how do we make things uh more efficient essentially and and I think that can apply to sustainability as well I think there's some virality to that ideology too right because like even when we have our conversations it's like we go to our our partners and a lot of the ones who are doing who have Supply chains right and now they're asking us the other questions is like what if we use blockchain for our Logistics what if we use blockchain for inventory management so it is a cascading type of disruption that we see right is once they understand it once they see the

efficiency once they see that what can be done you know is entrepreneurs giving ideas to other entrepreneurs and so that snowball starts to roll pretty fast right so it's just really interesting to see like even with the people that we work with when we talk about supply chain right because again when we go back to even capacity right covid was a problem right and prices spiked everywhere which means they have less capacity and the costs are going up and it's like where do you pass that cost on is it to the end user who is it going to go to right so I think a lot of the times the stuff that polygon Lis is building stuff that's like Trix cool is building is it does help right and it helps them jump into a conversation they wouldn't be able to jump into because it's so easy to get in right again if

you're talking about hey we want to build our own blockchain and and we wanna and we want to have carbon offset it's like okay well I'll see you guys in15 million in four years right or it's like here this is all at your fingertips and you you can get started tomorrow I think again when we when you start adding all those things up and again like-minded people who are listening to this who are how do we get involved that's the the really interesting thing about web 3 right now is it's it's probably smaller than people think the real utility the real projects building the people who survived the bare market right and and we talk a lot right of who's doing what and like what is really cool because again these are all

pointing to a better outcome and a better web experience a better ownership experience than we had in web 2 and we're democratizing both data and ownership in the meantime and again like lean said like I think the mindset and maybe this is an American mindset of like we got to do something big and we got to do it now it's like I think she's right it's like no what we need is like tiny little changes a couple trillion times and then that becomes the norm and then it's every brand does this and if you don't do it then what are you doing for your social impact just cut that lean and then just send that out to every brand and if you don't do this what are you doing there you go done sales made you guys have done a great

job Stefan then sort of wrapping up and pulling everything together here lean just want to see if you have any final thoughts before we wrap up no other than come and buy a book I think there are some still available so come and see it working this is it right like one of the things is it's hard when things are just in our minds but what people do need is is to get it in your hands you need to feel this and this is one way that it's now possible to do so like you know if you're a Creator and you think this is interesting but you're also not creating a smart contract just yet it's not that magical time for you this is a way to come and get it in your hands and it's worth it like you get a book you get to

own that book you get that knowledge plus also you're removing carbon so yeah I wanted to give a shout out and make sure people knew that they could come and do this still just hit booko book. I say and you'll find it there well we'll have the link directly uh in the show notes for anyone that wants to purchase I would agree go purchase this book because not only is a great book that will teach you a lot about the state of climate change and where we're at and the optimism to come but you'll also indirectly be supporting carbon removal all on chain which is just fantastic to see Stephen Ben want to go back to you guys one more time anything you want to ask from the audience anything you want to say and maybe just also mention where

people could follow you online and lean I'll come back to you for that one as well I think the thing is is if I was going to leave every every listener with something I think it's very positive I think the things that are happening in the web three world are they're just starting to to roll the utility of what people are building is just starting to come to fruition I think people should own the things they buy right and I think we're starting to see see that happening come be part of our community like we've we've grown so rapidly I think we have the ideological mindset of like hey I buy digital books I should own them I should be able to resell them I should be able to give them away I should be able to lend them out like so come be part of our community jump on to

our Twitter just you know just search book iio and I think the interesting thing mostly with us too is our community is just very giving right when you have questions they're like hey can I send you a book do you want to see this right that's the only thing I would say is like I think there's a lot of you know coming out of a bare Market there's always just there's so many people it's the long crypto winner a lot of people froze to death right and I would say like out of this I think there's been so much utility built for the builders that kept building the future is very bright the future for books is extremely B for digital assets is bright for social impact is bright so I would say like jump in like for the entrepreneurs out there like jump in find your place

listen first connect with people and find your place in this revolution that is going to be worth trillions of dollars and really change the entire world stepan yeah I mean I guess I just like to second that it really is a community where you start looking at everything and there it's just overwhelming there's so much and before you know it you found your Niche and you have a community that's there to support you it's very collaborative I think if I was to say anything now is the time you know I mean now is always the time but now really is the time I've seen a lot of maturing happen with with a lot of products where now we're just starting to you know measure how we can get these implemented make sure that everything's functional and you know we we are

starting to see that engagement curve evolve for a lot of what would generally be skeptical organizations and and so you know now is the time to start understanding this technology if you're in the professional field look at digital product passports you know understand dig decentralized identity there's so much to unpack of course follow polygon Labs we'll have some exciting updates coming in in the next couple of months around our own sustainability strategy around some products that we want to highlight so yeah I mean just jump in now is the time could have you back on the show to have a whole conversation about decentralized identity as well that's a a big one that very exciting but I won't I won't go down that route I have I have to jump in

because it's like it's literally something that we talk about every day and it's solving this problem mostly of like the unending ability of of AI right and it's like when you look at the components of web 3 the blockchain as the trustless source right a source of trust of like who created this it's going to be a big deal and it's a very big deal within publishing and like where books are are identified from so yeah I think you should do a whole show on it and I'm too busy for it bring bring Stefon back and it's funny that you bring a up AI because AI is really accelerating the need for verified identity and blockchain is just sitting there waiting

as the solution so it's obvious where it's going to go I won't go further into the conversation right now lean any any final thoughts or asks from the audience yeah for sure I think what the two guys have really kind of raised is really does wrap it up nicely what we see as a world is this is pretty inable too right like I now kind of view uh that online will be on chain and what I wanted to do was be there and have this um ability to weave this in and program this in just kind of default like what Ben said if you're not doing this why not there is no real good reason not to put this in and I think you when you think about what we're doing right now it's a special time right we're getting to shape the future the foundations that we

lay now through this be Market whilst we're building whilst we're creating now is actually going to create the future and that's what pulled me in like what I want to say I've been doing during this decade is trying to get a foundation right that when this goes and when this really does become to full adoption it's done right you know we're coming into this this next Revolution every other Revolution before us is actually been worse for our planet this one is the chance to actually get it right and start getting in the right direction and I wanted to be there when that happened and if I could help make that happen that's something that I want to sit back and say yeah I tried you know at least try and I think then when we look at what we're doing we've got every chance of doing this right so get amongst is

basically the message couldn't have said it better myself this is the revolution that's going to get it right I believe that I know all of us believe that thanks so much for everybody for listening in thank you much for all of you for joining us today thanks for all your work I think Ben you said it best the space is very small anybody listening if you are interested in getting in touch with any of these three people I'm sure they will gladly love to spend some time with you reach out to them uh there's so much opportunity right now because we are still so small you can really connect with anybody and everybody wants to partner and support each other it's a very collaborative space in web 3 right now so don't hesitate thanks for much for listening and everybody have a great day thank you

for listening to web through Academy your one trusted source to capitalize on the next big phase of the internet if you enjoyed this episode please share it and subscribe or follow so that you don't miss the next one while you're at it there's a link in the description for our free newsletter where we provide timely and relevant web three insights so you can confidently build and invest in web 3 make sure to subscribe today one final note this podcast is for educational purposes only and nothing we say is financial advice crypto and web3 are risky and you should never invest more than you're willing to lose thank you friends and see you in the next one