Introduction
KlimaDAO proposes to offset 8,974 tCO2 of on-chain carbon offsets to make Synapse certified carbon neutral and to amplify Synapse’s climate impact messages with a dedicated media partnership.
KlimaDAO recommends drawing selective retirement of the 8,529 tCO2 using NCT pool with selective retirement of Pacajai REDD+ Project or Rimba Raya Project with an approximate price of ~$17,366.46.
Motivation
Using Kyle McDonald’s emissions estimates, the Ethereum network has a carbon footprint of roughly 18.1M tonnes. Now that the merge has taken place, Ethereum’s footprint looking forward is minimal. However, it’s important for the community as a whole to effectively quantify and take action for historical emissions. Doing so is a win for Ethereum, but also helps push investment and ideation into the growing ReFi (regenerative finance) ecosystem.
The good news is that taking action on historic emissions is possible in a web3-native way, thanks to KlimaDAO’s development of DeFi rails for climate finance. The KlimaDAO team has developed expertise and unique technology to make the process of addressing historical emissions achievable for dApps such as Synapse
Methodology
To measure the carbon emissions of Synapse we have implemented the comprehensive emissions model developed by Kyle McDonald in the research paper: Ethereum Emissions: A Bottom-up Estimate which maps network energy usage to emissions factors.
We then use carbon.fyi which is a tool that applies this methodology to calculate the emissions of defined contracts based on gas usage within specific blocks.
Scope
Known Synapse Ethereum contracts with carbon emissions quantified from carbon.fyi calculated on October 21st, 2022 (post-merge).
The 3 main contributors of emissions of multi-chain bridges/protocols and the methodology to calculate the tCO2 are given below:
Gas due to transactions on ETH L1
- Identifies contract accounts and Externally Owned Account (EOA) address list from protocol docs, GitHub and Etherscan.
- Deduplicate and calculate emissions using carbon.fyi
Hardware of the validator nodes
- Calculate the # of validator nodes and the min hardware requirements
- Calculate emissions per node based on hardware spec
- Calculate total emissions for all nodes and 2X the number to account for hardware which will be above the min specs defined by the protocol (in most cases)
Gas due to transactions on other blockchains
- Uses 1% of Ethereum emissions as the emissions of the other blockchains where the tokens would be swapped from w
Total Synapse Protocol emissions: 8,974
Link to more in-depth proposal and analysis: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zA9GOqLorccSV_-4VcNxoZo2DA7e0zWdDC-s1PeELhY/edit#
Alternative Projects
Below are a number of projects of note, KlimaDAO can also help identify additional projects for consideration within tokenized carbon pools (BCT - Base Carbon Tonne, MCO2 - Moss, NCT - Nature Carbon Tonne).
Project name
Chao’er (BCT)
The Inner Mongolia Chao’er Forest projects the once logging forest. The project is implemented in three forest farms under the jurisdiction of the Project owner, namely Dacongshan Forest Farm, Quansheng Forest Farm, and Taerqi Forest Farm. Selective Retirement Address: 0x6362364a37f34d39a1f4993fb595dab4116daf0d
Pacajai (NCT)
The objective of the Pacajai REDD+ Project is to protect nearly 166,000 hectares of biodiverse forest in the state of Pará in Brazil. The project is both VCS and Climate, Community & Biodiversity certified. Selective Retirement Address: 0x65d96f0d45606016e30c97ee039775de9722a7d2
Rimba Raya (NCT)
Located in Borneo’s southeast and stretches for almost 100 kilometers from North to South along the borders of the Tanjung Puting National Park, the Rimba Raya Reserve covers around 64,000 hectares. The project area is home to an array of endangered species, including the endangered Bornean Orangutan. Selective Retirement Address: 0x62896f42cf1371b268db56e50d67c34f3eb1ad7a
Alternative project and costs
Below are two alternatives to give indicative pricing impacts compared to our recommended approach. Selective retirement using Toucan has a 25% fee which is included in the quoted amounts.
Offsetting and trade execution
To offset the tCO2 footprint of Synapse the Klima Infinity portal can be used which supports selective retirement by project address. A representative of KlimaDAO can demonstrate specifics of how the tool can be used. Note also that tokens on the Polygon (MATIC) network will be required to purchase the offsets via the BCT and NCT pools using
SushiSwap.
Case Study
As an example of previous partnerships, Polygon worked with KlimaDAO and retired $400,000 of carbon credits representing the entirety of the network’s CO2 debt since inception. Going forward Polygon will continue to build upon its Green Manifesto and become carbon negative.
Achieving carbon neutrality was critical in Polygon securing key partnerships with notable brands including Starbucks and Meta whose mainstream users' concerns were addressed by the action they took on climate change.
You can take a deeper look at projects that have used KlimaDAO to offset carbon emissions transparently through our pledge dashboard.
Closing
KlimaDAO is looking forward to feedback from the Synapse community on this proposal and ways that we can partner together on tackling historical emissions. We appreciate Offsetra’s carbon.fyi for their work in developing a methodology for on-chain calculations and the countless stakeholders who have refined it over the past year.
Thank you for your consideration.
