The Chainlink Community Grant Program provides financial resources to the many development teams and researchers building a more functional, accessible, and socially impactful Chainlink Network. In order to fuel the growth of the Chainlink community and accelerate the adoption of hybrid smart contracts, the Chainlink Grant Program continues to support work that makes it easier, faster, and more efficient to build and test new smart contracts and applications.

We’re excited to announce that Open Earth Foundation, a research and deployment non-profit working to advance open-source platforms that help increase planetary resilience, has been awarded a social impact grant. This grant will fund the development of an oracle node that delivers open-access integrated assessment models for carbon pricing on-chain. 

Open Earth Foundation aims to increase support to existing oracles publishing climate emission data by providing an integrated assessment model (IAM). This new oracle node will use an advanced carbon pricing mechanism that accounts for social aspects, policy scenarios, various economic variables, and energy projections in order to calculate the social cost of carbon (SCC). Publishing more nuanced carbon pricing models on-chain can help the construction of more stable and sustainable carbon markets that automatically adjust to changing social, economic, and environmental conditions. Ultimately, a carbon pricing oracle could support the development of voluntary carbon taxation schemes powered by smart contracts.

Open Earth Foundation aims to complete the following deliverables as a result of this grant initiative: 

• Conduct research to identify the optimal IAMs for SCC calculations, their parameterization capacities, the feasibility of incorporating oracles as inputs, and the solutions architecture required. 
• Develop APIs and implement a cloud-based IAM web application for SCC that enables users to set the parameters used to calculate carbon pricing. 
• Prototype a voluntary carbon taxation pilot program for individuals and corporations that uses smart contracts and an SCC oracle and supports robust carbon accounting, disclosures, and offsetting. 

There is increasing pressure on various entities, from individual corporations to governing bodies, to internally price carbon. Creating IAMs for carbon prices will enable entities to develop accurate pricing mechanisms that automatically account for equity weighting, discount rates, and other key parameters. Moreover, with IAM carbon pricing data published on-chain, any smart contract developer will be able to use it to build innovative applications in support of climate change initiatives such as carbon-backed assets, climate accounting protocols, and corporate compliance systems. 

Open Earth Foundation has previously been awarded a Chainlink social impact grant for the creation of an open-source data feed that measures the planet’s atmospheric CO2 concentration and makes the data available on leading blockchains through an OEF-run Chainlink oracle node. The deliverables were completed successfully and the CO2 oracle is now available.

Open Earth Foundation is a not-for-profit creating and deploying open-source digital systems and solutions to tackle climate change and environmental challenges. Using blockchain, IoT, and artificial intelligence technologies, the foundation creates multi-stakeholder solutions that progress through the phases of ideation, proof-of-concept, prototypes, and commercial pilot. These projects are primarily aimed at developing global climate accounting systems, removing frictions in climate investing and financing, and mobilizing global networks of key stakeholders on open-source infrastructure. The Open Earth Foundation collaborates with numerous organizations, such as the UN Environmental Programme, UNFCCC, scientific authors to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Yale University, University of California at Berkeley, and more.

“We’re excited to receive a Chainlink social impact grant to help us develop an oracle node that enables more sophisticated carbon pricing and markets based on integrated assessment models,” stated Dr. Martin Wainstein, founder and executive director of the Open Earth Foundation. “Through this Chainlink grant, we can enable smart contract developers to build innovative new applications around carbon markets and help establish a global climate voluntary taxation system that corporations can easily access and adopt across different jurisdictions.”

Through the Community Grants Program, Chainlink continues to enable innovative teams, academics, and social impact projects that research and develop key tools and infrastructure to accelerate the adoption of hybrid smart contracts, secure oracle networks, and cutting-edge technology capable of creating a more economically fair world.

About the Chainlink Grant Program

If you want to learn more about the Chainlink Community Grant Program, check out our recent blog post that further expands upon its goals and the criteria for submission. We encourage talented individual developers and development teams to apply to the grant program here, or if you’re a researcher and want to collaborate, contact us.