UK financial services firm Tokenovate has teamed up with ZERO13 to successfully implement the world's first smart legal contract for voluntary carbon credit (VCC) derivatives trades based on the BSV blockchain. This move comes at a time when efforts to reduce carbon emissions are crucial, given that the World Meteorological Organization predicts the planet will exceed the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C warming threshold within the next five years.
Tokenovate's founder and CEO Richard Baker said, "Our collaboration with ZERO13 is an important first step and significant milestone in bringing VCC's to market using BSV blockchain-based smart legal contracts." Tokenovate provides distributed financial market infrastructure (dFMI) that facilitates the programmatic lifecycle event management of OTC and exchange-traded derivatives. Meanwhile, ZERO13, an initiative by the GMEX Group, delivers a digital climate fintech aggregation ecosystem.
The BSV-based smart contract enables execution and settlement of VCC trades by incorporating Tokenovate's dFMI into ZERO13's hub. The hub connects carbon participants, including exchanges, registries, custodians, and ESG project owners globally for supply verification, transparent pricing, and real-time settlement using APIs.
Hirander Misra, GMEX/ZERO13 CEO, said the smart contracts would help "enable liquidity growth in VCC markets digitally and flexibly map it to address buyers' criteria." The contract’s counterparty was the Bio-CNG Project AJS Fuels in Savli, Gujarat, and trades were conducted on the Seychelles-licensed Securities, Commodities and Derivatives Exchange (SECDEX).
Scott O'Malia, ISDA CEO, praised the development, saying that "digitization of derivatives markets will significantly improve efficiency and set the foundations for growth at scale." The Tokenovate-ZERO13 partnership aims to bring blockchain-based solutions to problems involving fraud and 'greenwashing.'
The BSV blockchain's unmatched data-handling capacity allows it to serve as a universal source of truth, offering real-world solutions to issues of transparency, authenticity, and security.
