IBM to Use Stellar for Its First Crypto-Token on a Public Blockchain

IBM will issue Verde tokens on the Stellar blockchain. The company is creating a marketplace to facilitate buying and selling of tokenized carbon credits on the public permission Stellar blockchain.

International Business Machines Corporation is issuing a token on its public blockchain Stellar, and that will be the Verde tokens. The tokens, which were developed in partnership with carbon credits startup Veridium Labs Ltd., targeted at giving enterprises that pollute the environment, a way to offset the damage by supporting a patch of the Indonesian rainforest.

Blockchain helps in easier and faster tracking and auditing of carbon credits to assure that money paid is actually used to replenish the environment. The credits are tokenized on the blockchain with the Verde tokens.

Verde cryptocurrency works on the blockchain through smart contracts. It follows the entire process of accounting for a company’s carbon emission and offsetting that pollution.

So IBM is creating a marketplace to facilitate the buying and selling of the tokenized carbon credits. IBM’s newly appointed blockchain offering manager, Jared Klee said the marketplace could be open to a much larger audience.

Klee said,

“We’re creating a fungible digital asset, a token which part of the goal. Therefore is to create a market where people can buy, sell, trade and then redeem it for the underlying credits. By having a liquid market you open up a world of possibilities”.

The blockchain uses a “public, permissioned” model” unlike the entirely public blockchains such as Bitcoin. However, to mean there is a restriction for participants.

That restriction will be achieved in accordance with regulatory requirements. Currently, IBM has nine nodes on the Stellar blockchain to facilitate that permissioning.

Restricting allows them to ensure network stability and it makes it easier to “create a point of review in the transaction flow before it gets committed to the ledger”.

The restriction may, however, be removed later or extends to allow for more inclusion. However that individuals can be able to offset their own carbon footprint through the exchange “someday”.

The Veridium tokens will be backed by Triple Gold REDD+ credits from Veridium’s sister company InfiniteEarth, which helps companies to offset their environmental impacts in a number of ways. InfiniteEath’s clients include Big Four accounting firm PwC, and software giants, SAP and Microsoft. Thus, all of which are working on their own blockchain projects.

Microsoft, for instance, is working with a number of partners in different projects that touch on improving shipping supply chains among other things.

What is your take on IBM’s use of blockchain to facilitate blockchain-based carbon credit trading? Share your opinions with us on Twitter and Telegram.