Nori Litepaper
Our Mission is to Reverse Climate Change
Nori’s Platform Makes Carbon Removal Scalable and Provides Strong Incentives To Participate
The Background
Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities have already warmed the Earth’s temperature more than 1°C (That’s almost 2°F!).
Reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels is critically important to reverse the climate change that’s already happening. We need to not only reduce emissions, but to remove existing emissions from the atmosphere.
The good news? A combination of new technologies and cross-industry innovation already make it possible to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. And there are marketplaces in which buyers pay suppliers (farmers) for CO2 they’ve removed and stored. The products that change hands in these marketplaces are known as carbon removals.
The Challenge
The challenge with carbon marketplaces today is that they’re project-based. They connect individual buyers with individual ‘suppliers’ of carbon assets, on a one by one basis.
This model isn’t going to scale carbon removal 1,000x. To accomplish that, carbon markets will have to look more like commodities markets.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide is a commodity like oil or gold. There’s a lot of it. Work is required to bring it to market. And society places a value on it.
There’s no reason the carbon market can’t reach commodity market scale. That’s where Nori and the NORI token come in.
The Nori Platform
Nori has spent five years building a better carbon marketplace with seamless transactions, transparent bookkeeping, and 100% verified and trusted carbon removal supply.
It’s working - Nori has sold 117,000+ tonnes of CO2 removals and paid more than $1.8M to the farmers who implemented regenerative agriculture practices.
One key component of Nori’s approach is that all of the carbon removals in its marketplace are retired immediately upon sale. Said differently, Nori’s carbon removals don’t trade hands more than once. When you buy a carbon removal from Nori, it’s yours forever!
This prevents carbon removals from being double counted, which has been a problem as long as carbon markets have existed. Alongside other challenges like proving that offsets are truly ‘additional,’ double counting hurts carbon markets ability to grow.
Why? When carbon assets trade hands more than once, inevitably multiple parties take credit for the same tonne of CO2 reduction or removal. Problems like this are so pervasive that it’s been hard to prove that carbon markets contribute to emissions reductions at all. This minimizes the impact of money that buyers spend on carbon removals.
Solving these problems in Nori’s marketplace was a big first step. Still, the fact that Nori doesn’t support trading carbon removals more than once means the marketplace doesn’t create a market driven price.
Since transparent, 24/7 prices are one of the most useful things about commodity markets, another solution is necessary.
Backed By
The NORI Token
NORI is a cryptocurrency that will act as the primary medium of exchange in Nori’s marketplace and will establish a universal price for carbon removals.
How Does the NORI Token Work?
👉 Each NORI token will be redeemable for one Nori carbon removal (known as Nori Carbon Removal Tonnes, or “NRTs”). To enhance transparency, NRTs are minted as NFTs on Polygon and come with a unique certificate certifying a buyer’s ownership with the date of their carbon removal retirement. NORI tokens trade separately from NRTs but still reflect real-time demand for them given the 1-1 redemption mechanism.
👉 Unlike NRTs, NORI tokens can be actively traded. NORI will be tradable on crypto exchanges just like BTC and ETH, where order matching engines pair buyers and sellers in real time to create a dynamic price for carbon removals.
👉 When redeemed for NRTs, the NORI tokens are paid to the carbon removal suppliers. Paying suppliers directly in the carbon removal token ensures they can participate in any marketwide price increases.
👉 NORI also enables Nori (the marketplace) to offer an insurance guarantee. Suppliers are paid for their NRTs in NORI tokens. Their tokens vest over a 10 year contract term. If there’s any problem with the supplier’s carbon removals, unvested NORI tokens will be recouped to purchase new NRTs.
How Our Suppliers Benefit
A true universal carbon removal price will help Nori suppliers make informed, data-driven forecasts for their businesses. For example, when carbon removal prices are high, they may choose to expand their operations or hire more people, allowing them to increase future carbon removal supply to meet demand.
How Our Buyers Benefit
For Large Scale Buyers
NORI reduces business transaction costs. Large scale buyers often work with brokers and consultants to source supply from many different projects. NORI provides buyers access to carbon removals in a one-stop shop.
Buyers also tend to prefer carbon removals with newer ‘vintages’. Vintage refers to when the carbon removal was first produced (similar to wine). Currently, suppliers sometimes hold on to their supply anticipating higher future prices. Nori solves this by paying suppliers in NORI. Since NORI’s price increases based on market demand, suppliers who work with Nori don’t need to worry about missing out on future upside. This also means buyers consistently get newer vintage carbon removals.
NORI will also offer buyers opportunities to hedge against price increases, which is common in commodity markets.
For Small Scale Buyers
NORI is easily accessible and highly divisible. Anyone will be able to buy even fractional amounts of NORI with a few clicks of a button or via Nori’s API. Check out how Rarible does it.
NORI Token Distribution
New tokens will primarily be distributed based on demand for NRTs. When a customer wants to buy an NRT and doesn’t own NORI tokens to redeem, Nori takes their payment and issues them new NORI tokens from the treasury reserve.
New tokens will also enter circulation when investors and Nori team members sell or redeem tokens. These token owners are subject to unlocking schedules which range from a minimum of twelve months for contractors to four years for Nori investors and five years for Nori employees. Within these timespans, there are ‘cliff’ vesting events as well as linear ‘block by block’ vesting mechanics.
The unlocking schedules are designed to prevent a situation where there are too many NORI tokens and not enough NRT supply. This is important to ensure one NORI token always remains redeemable for one NRT..
The NORI Token Launch & Roadmap
To launch the NORI token, Nori will leverage Balancer, a decentralized protocol. The launch itself will be executed via a ‘fair launch’ on Copper. This will be the first opportunity for market participants to buy NORI tokens. These tokens will come from the treasury reserve.
Roadmap at a Glance
✅ NORI CarnivalWe hosted a party to celebrate our Series A and share updates on the NORI token.
2. Nori DiscordJoin a community of people passionate about reversing climate change.
4. NORI Token Launch!Coming soon! The $NORI token launch on Polygon Mainnet is closer than you think.
3. More SupplyWe’re working hard to onboard a ton more top-notch supply to the Nori marketplace.
Join Nori's Discord Community
Nori’s Discord community features much more info on Nori, the NORI token, and will be the best place to meet the Nori team, network, and ask any questions.
