Tree Tokens

Growing forests by trading codified trees. 

People living in extreme poverty need employment. Organizations and individuals need a way to share their green images and offset their impact. And everyone in the world needs trees. 

We employ people to plant and tend to trees. We do this by paying people to verify their planting efforts in a way that helps us codify each individual tree. We then convert these digital trees into tokens that we sell to support more tree planting.  

Tree planting is big business. Most tree planting operations incentive reforestation efforts based on the number of trees planted, the results are mostly untracked and often bleak. These short-term rewards incentivize people and organizations to plant as many trees as possible, which basically means they dig tiny holes and drop in trees. Although this works well in some cases (like Mangroves), in most situations the results are worse than imagined. Most 'tree counters' are directly connected to a donation button and that is that. Trees are often double funded, die young, or are never planted at all. In the past, when people would make claims like, “we planted 20,000 trees last month” it was extremely difficult to verify that. 

Meanwhile, businesses and consumers are finding value in a green image. They need a way to of offsetting their activities and they need a way to share their positive social and environmental impact.

Tree tokens can solve these problems.

There are fantastic organizations and millions of self-appointed village environmentalists around the world who are planting astronomical numbers of trees, often with no funds at all. Until now, there has not been any accurate way of tracking and supporting individuals planting trees. Accurate follow up has been nearly impossible.

The organization GreenStands has been creating an open source tree tracking platform as a “tree verification” system that works by collecting geo-tagged, time-stamped photos and sending them to a database. This project, is answering the fundamental question: “Who planted what tree where and how long is it surviving?” 

On the ground, the organization is shifting the monetary reward from planting trees to incentivizing ongoing care.  We place tree survival into the hands of individual planters; the individual planters understand the localized challenges, they will keep the trees alive if it helps them survive.  

We are codifying living trees, turning them into tree tokens which are environmentally backed digital assets that can be shared, traded and sold to support more tree planting efforts. This connects the world's poorest citizens to a global economy. This is a solution that feeds the starving and cools the earth. This is a solution that can scale and turn the face of earth green.

We are using a new application of existing technologies to codify trees and trade them on global markets. This application of technology will change  social behaviors, counter extreme poverty and build environmental wealth.

We are using technology to answer, who planted what tree where and then determine how long each individual tree is surviving. This allows us to employ a network of individuals anywhere in the world. This process creates a verified digitized tree token that can be given ownership. 

This process relies on using neural networks, image recognition, block chain and AI technologies to:

• identify individual trees and measure growth over time
• identify specific users
• create a transparent system that allows the trading of tree tokens. 

To sell more tree tokens and employ some of the worlds most remote communities to grow forests. 

We aim to create widespread meaningful employment that benefits the entire planet. Picture a global network of tree planters who survive and thrive by planting trees. Picture millions of new trees flooding into an economic system that benefits both the planter and the owner of the asset.

By creating value for both parties, this is a system that can cover the face of the planet with trees while providing the opportunity of employment to some of the world's poorest citizens.

For planters, we will be using local advertising such as radio adds, and word of month.  Once people in rural and developing countries learn they can get paid monthly from keeping trees alive it will spread.

For organizations, such as tree planting organizations, clothing companies and eco-backed digital currency foundations, we are starting by directly contacting them.

For individuals, we will be using social media.

With our prototype system, we are currently surviving a small number of users that can be divided into three sets

We are currently connecting a small number of villagers as our system is not ready to scale.  700 people have downloaded our app.

We are providing tree tokens for one organization (One Tree Planted)

We are providing verification for planting movement. (The Kilimanjaro Project)

12 months about 1000 planters. 

3 years, about 3 million planters

I am emerging as a leader that can collect talent and activate a massive of individuals to accomplish an extremely complicated project. 

We sell digital trees to donors for $1 and pay the planter $0.035 cents per living tree per month. On the carbon market each tree is worth about $30 over the next 30 years. We intend to transfer as much of that to the planter as possible. 

This system is set up as open source with the understanding that for-profit operations can optimize and benefit from the network. 

We need understand Solve can provide guidance and possible funding, both of which we need. 

It is a lot of work to implement properly. Solve can help us build a stronger team or help employ some of our key members.