Project Context
Problem
The tokenized voluntary carbon market lack’s transparency and project integrity. This data is critical for carbon funds to make informed decisions and adjust portfolios for risk.
Solution
A wrapper system that enriches tokenized carbon with live third-party ratings, giving carbon funds the transparency they need to make informed portfolio decisions.
Audience
Carbon Funds
Chainlink
Project Type
Constraints
5 Time Zones
Frontend Blocked Mid-Project
Time Frame
1-Month Sprint
My Role
User Interface Designer
Video Editor
Team
Five Teammates
Project Breakdown
01
Problem Context
The carbon market faces a fundamental transparency problem. When companies issue carbon credits through Verra, those credits get tokenized on-chain through protocols like Toucan. But investors have no way to verify project quality or assess risk on-chain. They’re forced to make portfolio decisions based on off-chain information. This creates friction, reduces capital flow, and means portfolio managers can’t programmatically adjust for risk.
Aetlas was building risk-adjusted carbon indices and hit this wall directly. I was recruited by Aetlas CEO to join their hackathon team.
They’d identified the core gap: carbon funds needed on-chain access to third-party risk data, but the infrastructure didn’t exist. The tokenized carbon market had tokenization (Toucan), oracle infrastructure (Chainlink), and ratings providers (BeZero)—but no one had integrated them.
Figure 1: "Life of a Carbon Credit" diagram highlighting transparency and trust gaps that Verified MRV solves.
02
Research & Synthesis
The core insight: automated risk-adjustment requires third-party data on-chain. That infrastructure didn’t exist.
The market needed an integration layer. This led to the development of VerifiedMRV, a project focused on enriching on-chain tokenized carbon with live ratings data and biomass changes estimated by AI models utilizing satellite data.
By wrapping existing carbon tokens with live third-party data through Chainlink oracles, we could maintain DeFi composability while adding transparency that carbon funds desperately needed for risk-adjusted decisions. The wrapper pattern creates a universal data structure: any rating provider can plug in through a standardized interface. A wrapped carbon credit (WMRV-TCO2) carries enriched metadata including third-party ratings, performance data, and transparent fees—all on-chain and composable.
More Details
As shown in Figure 2, the wrapping process is designed to be transparent and straightforward—users can see exactly what happens to their carbon credits, including the small fees (0.046 MATIC marketplace fee, 0.0075 MATIC carbon steward fee) that support the infrastructure.
This wrapper pattern creates a universal data structure, allowing any rating provider or verification service to plug into the ecosystem through a standardized interface.
Figure 2: The wrapping process interface showing the four-step flow (Define, Approve, Wrap, Complete) and transparent fee structure, demonstrating the user-friendly approach to enriching carbon credits.
03
Design
Verified MRV is designed to generate dynamic project token wrappers for on-chain tokenized carbon, enriching project metadata with 3rd party carbon ratings and live performance data.
The interface needed to communicate: what’s being wrapped, what value is added, and what happens next.
Portfolio Interface: Shows wrapped WMRV-TCO2 tokens with project metadata and ratings badges, highlighting the new risk information.
Credit Details: Displays enriched metadata including third-party ratings, demonstrating the concrete value-add versus the underlying token.
Wrapping Flow: Four-step process (Define → Approve → Wrap → Complete) that abstracts smart contract complexity while maintaining full transparency on fees and outcomes.
My role translated technical architecture into interfaces non-technical stakeholders (fund managers, portfolio managers) could navigate confidently.
04
Deliverable
For our initial prototype, we integrated Toucan Protocol’s TCO2 (tokenized carbon), Chainlink’s Oracle, and BeZero Carbon Ratings.
Toucan Protocol serves as a key tokenization bridge for off-chain carbon issued by Verra, a prominent voluntary carbon standard. BeZero, a significant collaborator, provides a ‘credit-style’ rating that incorporates satellite data analysis, methodology review, local policy scrutiny, and scientific review. The Chainlink oracles played a pivotal role in pulling BeZero’s project-specific carbon ratings on-chain as a new attribute associated with the relevant carbon credit project.
We created smart contracts that generate unique ERC-20 wrappers for Toucan TCO2 tokens, enriching each with real-time third-party ratings. The UI was prototyped in Figma; when frontend development got blocked mid-project, our detailed Figma screens and technical documentation allowed Aetlas to continue building post-hackathon.
Outcome
Through dedicated collaboration, Verified MRV stands as a practical solution to bridge the transparency gap in the carbon market. Our accomplishment lies in creating a reliable system that integrates Toucan Protocol, Chainlink’s Oracle, and BeZero Carbon Ratings, providing a comprehensive on-chain solution for live project ratings data and biomass changes. This achievement contributes to the carbon market’s integrity and establishes a foundation for a more transparent and trustworthy decentralized carbon market.
Beyond this, the project plays a crucial role in standardizing the data structure of tokenized carbon, simplifying the aggregation of various on-chain carbon sources for more efficient DeFi carbon market infrastructure. Aetlas open-sourced the smart contracts and integrated the wrapper system into their product. The solution is now live infrastructure powering real carbon DeFi transactions. By standardizing how ratings flow on-chain, we’ve created a precedent other teams can adopt, potentially accelerating the market’s shift toward transparent, data-driven carbon markets.
In Retrospect...
Key learning: Designing for real users solving concrete problems is fundamentally different from designing for hypothetical ones. We weren’t building for “carbon fund managers in general”—we were building for Aetlas’s specific customers with known workflows and constraints.
Async constraint became a strength. Five time zones meant every design decision had to be documented clearly. Figma comments and recorded rationales became our design language—this actually resulted in better documentation than co-located teams typically produce.
Frontend blockage taught a lesson. Comprehensive Figma prototypes and technical documentation allowed Aetlas to continue development post-hackathon. Design artifacts need to outlive the immediate project.
Biggest takeaway: Working with a founder solving a real market problem fundamentally shifted my approach. I now prioritize direct user conversations over assumptions. In DeFi, problems are domain-specific, stakes are real, and design decisions impact how people allocate capital.
