New carbon-backed crypto initiative to focus on research funding

Quantum Commodity Intelligence - A new carbon-backed crypto initiative is seeking to raise funds for research into promising carbon technologies in the developing world, its founder told Quantum on Friday.

DrawDAO was founded earlier this year and already employs a staff of five.

It defines itself as "a community of carbon drawdown project operators, climate activists, scientists, and artists fighting climate change via the open-sourcing of carbon dioxide removal and storage methodologies."

The project was inspired by a scientific effort around blue carbon in the northern US state of Alaska, which ran out of money last year.

"How do we avoid situations where research projects run out of funds," said Matthew Sniff, who thinks non-fungible tokens (NFTs) could provide a solution.

DrawDAO will aim to fund 12 high-quality carbon projects in the developing world over the next year at a rate of a few hundreds of thousands of dollars each.

The money will come from the sale of NFTs online, which will provide immutable proof of purchase to buyers.

In return, project developers will have to agree to release their project methodologies and make them open-source.