The planet needs healing—more nature and less carbon in the air. Reforestation is one of the cheapest and most effective ways of capturing carbon from the atmosphere. But the tree planting industry is rife with problems. There is a lot of greenwashing, double counting, lack of transparency, and, frequently, little or no follow-up after the first planting efforts. 

As the custodian of a blockchain that aims to exist for the greater good, the Cardano Foundation wanted to play its part. So we partnered up with the Canadian company Veritree, which was created to solve these problems by giving companies—big and small—the opportunity to reforest with ease and, crucially, transparency.

With Cardano's unique On-chain metadata capabilities, veritree can easily store and share GPS coordinates, photos, and other specific characteristics of restorations. This data is traceable, permanent, immutable and available to all, solving one of the industry's most significant and growing problems—a lack of trust.

This makes it the perfect example of the real-world value that a blockchain can bring. In celebration of this partnership, we decided to push the envelope by launching the world's first global impact challenge. 

The challenge was simple, could we get the Cardano community to donate 1 million ADA to plant 1 million trees?

The Cardano community answered the call and donated over 1 million trees in just over three months. 

To prove the power of blockchain, each of these donors received a tree planting certificate with the exact location of their donation and other info like which type of tree is used, which in this case is mangroves in Kenya. This made the process hyper-specific and highly transparent. 

Whatever happens in the future, the Cardano community can take pride in knowing our efforts led to a forest being restored. This is just the first of many forests that will live on Cardano's blockchain because, over the next few years, veritree is on track to plant hundreds of millions of trees for their various corporate clients.

All that planting will be stored on the Cardano blockchain, giving all of veritree's clients a transparent and simple way to help heal the planet. That is not just very, very much needed, but also tremendously rewarding.

To learn more about the redemption process see here: ​​https://ito.veritree.com/

And watch our case study video here.