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Kyoto: Mainnet launch and Grant Round Success
Recorded: May 30, 2024 Duration: 0:38:09Space Recording
Short Summary
Kyoto is set to launch its planet-positive blockchain on June 27th, aiming to revolutionize the voluntary carbon market while recently completing its first grants program to support innovative projects. With strategic partnerships and a focus on sustainability, Kyoto is positioning itself for significant growth in the Web3 ecosystem.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Oh I Thank you. do
do Music Hello, hello, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Zandra. I'm the community manager for
Charmverse, and I'll be your host for the next hour-ish.
So really excited to have our guests from Kyoto here today.
But before we get started, I do want to tell you a bit about Charmverse, in case you're not familiar.
So Charmverse is trusted by Optimism, Safe, Game 7, and Kyoto.
Kyoto, and it is a Web3 community operations platform for managing members, helping people
And it is a Web3 community operations platform for managing members,
build relationships, helping them work together and vote. So you can manage your members,
coordinate tasks, facilitate structured discussions and decisions, and hold each other accountable.
So if you are looking for a hub for your Web3 community or for a grants program,
definitely check out Charmverse, but not until after the space today, because I'm very excited to introduce you to our guests today.
So today we have Frank and Ash of Kyoto.
And Kyoto is a planet-positive blockchain built to scale the voluntary carbon market
and regenerative finance by harnessing the power of Web3.
Hey, Frank. Hey, Ash. How are you guys?
I'm very good. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on.
Absolutely. Happy to have you here.
Ash, are you speaking from the Kyoto?
I am indeed. Yes, it's great to be here.
Okay, fantastic. Yes, absolutely. Thanks for joining me, guys.
So, Frank, you are a co-founder of Kyoto, is that correct?
Absolutely. Yeah, it is correct.
Amazing.
Yeah, I think we've been in comms over some time now,
getting the Charmverse platform integrated into Kyoto and getting things ready.
So, yeah, I'm a co-founder along with Ash,
and we've been working on this now
for around two years. So I'm excited to get into more detail on it all. Absolutely. So Ash, you're
a co-founder as well. I wasn't aware of that. So fantastic. Congrats on everything that's been
going on. You have a lot happening over there. So I'm excited to dive into it. But before, let's start
with some basics for anyone that's not familiar with Kyoto.
Why don't you tell us more about this planet positive blockchain?
I'm happy to leave if you want.
Yeah, go for it, Ash. Take it away.
Yeah, so we're a layer one blockchain, which has a slightly different spin to your traditional blockchains.
We've built with it in mind that green chain and climate finance is going to adopt blockchain because of DeFi.
And what Kyto is, is a blockchain that supports regenerative finance. and it's supported by its climate technology business, which is effectively a new carbon digital standard
that brings carbon credits to companies
that look to offset their corporate emissions.
So that's like a super high-level overview.
Frank, if I've missed anything, feel free to add on.
Yeah, I think what's really interesting
is when you get Ash and I together,
we kind of fit from two different perspectives.
And he's very much Web3 and blockchain focused.
The only thing I would add is, you know, we're a climate technology company that uses the blockchain to scale and improve the voluntary carbon market or indeed any carbon market.
And I think that, you know, there's a whole lot going on with what we're doing.
But essentially, we digitize the entire carbon supply chain using blockchain technology.
So it's a pretty epic and vast project when you break it down into what we are building,
what we have built, and what we're looking to achieve.
But blockchain and our layer one is what makes it all possible, essentially.
So, oh, first of all, I want to apologize.
So you said Kyoto, I said Kyoto.
Apologies if I mispronounced that.
What, can you just break down, what is the voluntary carbon market?
And I'll direct that to you, Frank.
And I'll direct that to you, Frank.
Well, essentially, the voluntary carbon,
but the carbon markets are essentially allowing companies
to mitigate their carbon emissions or pollution in the environment.
And essentially, one carbon credit represents one ton.
That's so that an airline, for example, flying transatlantic
puts X amount of emissions into the atmosphere and then, you know, they have to with the,
well, not with the voluntary side, but they have to pay for carbon emissions a certain amount.
And then the voluntary carbon market is built for people that
you don't have to but essentially do offset through goodwill and I think that's what you see
a lot of within Web3 and what people are trying to do so what we're trying to do with that or what
in fact all of the leaders in carbon markets are trying to achieve with blockchain is to bring
a certain amount of transparency and trust to that sector because there have been even quite
recently actually in the press there have been issues with um not fraudulent activity that
greenwashing with double counting and i think when you use a blockchain technology in that mutable ledger, then none of
that becomes or is indeed possible. So it's certainly a trend in which the market's going
to. Some of the leading standards are all trying to adopt blockchain and it's widely accepted that
carbon markets will move that way. Yeah, so you just mentioned it. Some of the issues that we've
seen are like greenwashing, right? You said double counting and lack of transparency. So what Kyoto is introducing is like this new digital standard for carbon credits using advanced technology and blockchain, as you said.
can you elaborate how you're doing this? Like, yeah, just, I mean, are we talking smart contracts?
How are you providing that transparency and trust? Can you tell us more about that?
I'll address the first part. I think, you know, you're saying there about using our own digital
carbon standard. And I think that's really what makes this project unique and different is that when we look at players in Web3 or a lot of players that exist within Web3 that have worked within
this space, they sort of take another existing carbon credit such as gold standard or Vera
and then they've wrapped that asset similar to what we see with RappBTC
or wrapped ETH on different chains.
And what they do then is create a mirror asset of a carbon credit that they hold and then
it's tradable on a blockchain.
And, you know, that's great.
But what we saw was that Gold Standard and Vera are still trying to adapt legacy-based systems
and a way of doing things and incorporate blockchain technology.
And we identified that that might take a lot longer than what we thought
or what we were prepared to work with. And we thought to ourselves to create a digital born or digital only carbon asset through creating our own carbon credit, which would become its own carbon standard, which is then only issued one credit onto the blockchain, is traded speculatively on that blockchain with a liquidity
back market and then retired when people want to off sell.
What's good about that is that you create that complete supply chain.
So going to your next question, yes you're right, when you do it that way, when you strip
back what's not necessary from a paper-based system or a particular
way of doing things and it's digital only first of all it becomes much more efficient secondly
things can be done a lot quicker and there you know even on the project development side when
you look at using different carbon standards we can bring a digital carbon asset to market quicker and cheaper than current
I don't want to use suppliers but players in the industry and that's something that
like you've mentioned using smart contracts and blockchain technology, that's when it starts to become very exciting
because then you can use that to create a financial instrument
of a carbon forward contract or futures, whichever way,
and have it mature based on certain milestones of its life cycle.
So you could say plant a tree today,
work out how many comes over its lifetime, take that to market at a very cheap price,
sell it to people that want a high integrity carbon asset. That means it has its evidence-based,
it's got a full provenance of its life cycle. And then as that matures over time, and gets to the market value, let's say,
use a blue carbon credit from mangroves, a $20 credit could be sold for five or 10 or whatever
you decide. But over a period of time using smart contracts and blockchain, you can take that to
market and sell it at a cheaper rate. And I think giving that, that you know bringing that integrity and that accountability
but also the efficiency of blockchain and making it
much more efficient in the way that we do things is an incredibly
big project in terms of what's necessary to complete that.
But I think that once we get to the stage with a digital car on credit
and that becomes adopted and we've had, again, with that side,
significant uptake in conversations,
then I think that Kyoto will really come into its own.
I could just add on to that quickly in terms, you know, from a web-free perspective, you know, like the market has already validated the want for carbon assets on chain.
You know, ClimaDal rushed to a billion dollar protocol and then got, it had scaling issues because one of the bodies that it racked in carbon assets decided they wanted to take a step back from tokenizing their assets.
And currently right now, you know, the space is quite open for a digital based carbon asset to help scale a blockchain, just like DeFi protocols scale other DeFi blockchains.
you know, DeFi protocols scale, you know, other DeFi blockchains.
So how are you handling, like, scalability and interoperability?
Yeah, so look, we're EVM.
So, like, we're compatible with, like, the wider 99% of DeFi.
So, you know, bridges, et cetera.
You know, if you're deployed on a typical EVM chain, you can deploy on Kyoto.
And then scaling, you know, our blockchain is proof of stake.
It's, you know, it can handle a high amount of transactions.
We've got a good dev team.
And, you know, I don't think that we're running to, you know, tech scaling issues for the technology that we use.
So we have the smart contracts. you have this transparency that you're giving
through blockchain, you have scalability and interoperability, and you're also working on,
and I'm not sure how far you've gotten with this, but land acquisition, right?
Yes, we are. I don't know what I can say and what I can't say, but yeah, that's absolutely right.
And essentially where we are now is we're working on what we call our proof of concept.
And the first milestone is obviously mainnet launch and making sure that the blockchain and ecosystem is delivered.
that the blockchain and ecosystem is delivered and then once that works is when we plug carbon
into the blockchain and bring that to a digital carbon exchange and work through all of our DMRV
process as part of that proof of concept we have a partnership which allows us to plant a significant
amount of mangroves that will generate a large amount of carbon credits or
digital carbon assets or real world assets that we will then bring to change so that starts as
soon as the blockchain um goes live and then um we will plant one key thing is is like you coming
back to your original point is you know we we don't want to be a project developer.
If we want to use blockchain to scale this, it almost has to be an infrastructure as a
service model.
And to achieve that, we need to plant enough or bring enough of our own carbon assets to
chain to show that, look what we've done, look at how this works, but really where the scale will come in this market is from us becoming a digital carbon standard in its own right.
And that's really what we're working towards.
One step at a time, one step at a time.
And of course, I don't want you to I don't want to go you into giving any alpha.
You're not supposed to be dropping yet.
But you just mentioned the upcoming mainnet launch.
So that's a significant milestone.
So congrats on that.
And that's happening in four weeks from today, right?
Four weeks from today, yeah, 27th.
Amazing.
And then Kyoto will be operating as the standalone network.
So I guess, what are you most excited about for this launch?
What does this mean for Kyoto?
That's a good question.
I'll let you go first if you want to.
Well, I think it's really the first,
it's the flag in the ground and taking our product to market.
So what Frank's just highlighted there,
it's technical, but the ground in taking our product to market. So, you know, what Frank's just highlighted there, it's technical,
but, you know, the issuance of the token and us going out to the market helps us start to open up the doors to the wider communities that exist on Web3.
But I'll let you answer, Frank, because you'll probably give a much more sincere answer.
For me, it's just a culmination of a lot of hard work, you know it's a long time coming,
who knew it was such an epic project that it would take so long to build you know I think
going into this now with both eyes open I didn't quite understand or kind of we evolved with what
we knew at certain times to get to where we are now.
And, you know, the blockchain is really just a small part or probably even the smallest part of what we're building.
And for me, it just will be great to get it out for the community.
You know, they've been incredibly patient.
You know, I'm not going to.
We started two years ago and, you know pretty much to the date
that we launched so it's been a long road for us it's been a long road for them and for me it's
just you know culmination of a lot of hard work by by by us when i say as our team and everybody
that works for us everybody that's you know all the way through the company have have really really
pushed hard for us and been incredibly committed.
So, yeah, I'm looking forward to getting it out the door for everybody involved, really.
Well, that's a huge step forward.
And I'm sure, you know, like you said, it's taken so long to get here,
but it must feel so good to be so close to the finish line at this point.
So shout out to you and the whole
Kyoto team. Can you, you said, you know, you had challenges you had to come overcome. And I always
think it's important to be transparent with our listeners and people that want to do something
similar. Can you share advice, advice, um, or challenges that you did have to overcome, you know, that people might expect
and how you navigated that?
Yeah, look, do you know, if I did it all over again,
I would have hired our CTO on day one
or certainly after our launch.
You know, like for us, we're not devs,
we're entrepreneurs.
So building out a blockchain and an ecosystem even you know
we made a lot of mistakes in regard to that and having people that can quality assure
you know yes we met some great developers some talented companies and spoke with them but
you know um you know there's a saying like when ignorance is mutual confidence is king and really
what i learned was that we just listened to them
like they were the best devs in the world.
And perhaps, you know, not to discredit anybody, you know,
I think if you had somebody who knows what they're doing inside out
rather than relying on third parties,
we probably would have launched quicker.
That's my key observation in Web3 when you're not a developer, right?
So, yeah, I probably would have done it differently now.
In hindsight, get good developers,
get good people you can trust within your team
to sort of manage that process.
And we got burned a few times and cost us a lot of time.
So that would be how, if I had to do it again,
what I'd do differently.
Yeah, I mean, live and learn, right?
Going through that.
Ash, what about you?
Did you have anything you wanted to add as far as like lessons learned or something you would do differently or advice for someone going through a similar situation?
Yeah, if you're building, I think just prepare for burnout.
You know, like this is incredibly incredibly fast-paced you know web free
changes it's a volatile market one day bitcoin's great and the markets are pumping and community
sentiment focuses more towards a token launch and then other days markets are red you know it's
some people are nervous about launching tokens in certain market conditions etc
and then you know the qualms of development and what goes on within the space in terms of regulation.
It's just, you know, it's a big feat.
Don't underestimate it.
But, you know, if you're doing something that you're passionate about
and you want to build and deliver, you know, continue.
Endurance.
It certainly takes endurance to do what you're doing
and just keep pushing forward.
And like you said, the volatility of the market and the uncertainty of things, but just pushing forward and you're passionate about it. So let's go. Let's do this. And having a great team behind you. But as you said, things you wish you had known, having a CTO, having really like the developers that you truly trust, I think is super important
having that team in place, but you've gotten there.
So I want to talk about the recent grants program that just wrapped up the recent grants
round.
And you, you were running it on Charmverse and we were so happy to have you.
And it's been lovely working with your team to kind of get that space set up and assisting along the way.
But tell us a bit about the mission of that grants program.
And had you run a grants program before, or was this your first one?
This was our first one.
Absolutely first one.
And no, we hadn't.
This is our first grant round.
So we, we,
we originally were doing it, I believe through Google forms.
And then we sort of stumbled across Chavez through research and you know, it was a great fit and helped us streamline the process, but we're,
we're new to it,
but we're just working through all of the applications now.
And I'd spoke with Ashley who's been dealing with it last couple of days
we're starting to move move through with the ones that are the pick of the bunch now
it's exciting it's a lot of work running a grants program so cheers to your team for doing that
and making it through as if you don't have enough going on let's do a grants program in the middle
of all of it um so are you feeling good about how it went for that kind of pilot round
yeah do you know what i do i think we got some really good you know um applications from known
projects which was really encouraging for us um and we got. And we've also had a lot of exposure through
our own spaces and things and outreach or marketing initiatives within the refi space.
So we've got some of the key players within refi that have also gone through there. So yeah,
I think we're incredibly happy with how it went. That's great to hear. You said you saw a lot of great projects come through. So listeners,
there were different categories from refi to digital monitoring, reporting and verification,
DeFi apps, NFT stuff, GameFi, DAO, infrastructure and others. i don't know if you know this yet because
i know you're kind of just going through everything but do you did you see like a heavier
um heavier lean on certain categories ever others you did mention refi but i wasn't sure if
yeah something came through stronger that you really saw focus on uh that's a really good
question i know i'd say it's a pretty good mix you know we got um a lot of got a key infrastructure
pieces um in terms of decentralized exchanges and bridges and and things like that um we got a good
spread of refi you know very nice to see some of the known refi projects through there.
It was just a little bit of everything.
We had a good DeFi project come through from memory.
But yeah, it was a really good spread.
I wouldn't say it leaned any particular way, actually.
A good mix.
I mean, that's what you want to see.
I feel like when I talk to grant programs,
oftentimes they ask, you know,
what are projects seeing?
Are they seeing a leaning towards certain categories?
But if you're seeing a good mix,
you're doing something right.
That's great.
And it's very cool to see the projects
that come out of these grant programs.
So are you thinking about the next round?
Are we kind of just chilling for now and getting through the launch
and getting through the current applications?
Yeah, I think we'll probably get through this, do mainnet,
have four weeks, and then look to do another round.
I mean, that's my thoughts.
We probably need to discuss it a little bit longer. And I guess it
depends how long it takes for all of the initial projects to integrate and build on chain before
we move through. But yeah, no plans yet, but probably pretty soon after mainnet.
So I'm curious, Ash or Frank, whoever wants to take this why why was Charmverse the right fit for you
so I had a friendly developer that we worked with um know the stresses that we were dealing with
with the Google uh form approach um and it was actually quite centralized and we couldn't have
you know a broader feedback in terms of the product or the application.
So I looked into Chalmverse and seen it to be a great fit.
And obviously, as a part of our decentralisation and grants, we manage that through our DAO.
And the product fits for that purpose.
it fits for that purpose. Frank, did you want to add to that?
Frank, did you want to add to that?
Yeah, I think yeah, Ash found it. The more we looked into it, the more we liked it.
We took a lot of legal opinion on the right way to launch the layer one, specifically the token,
the way to get that right. And to do that, you need to show sufficient decentralization
or progressive decentralization.
So there's a lot of elements that then need to become
over time decentralized.
And what we liked about Charmverse was the Grants Council,
when you were very helpful in setting it up,
it means that that was the first element that we managed to decentralize we have a grants council
that worked through the applications and then you know when we've already set up the dow when we
look to see how decisions have been made and we move to token-based voting and governance. And again, Charnverse will help with that.
It's all part of us trying to show chronologically how we went from a token to a blockchain,
but prove out sufficient decentralization.
And Charnverse has been incredibly helpful with that roadmap.
We love to hear that.
And listeners, you might be familiar,
if you applied to the Kyoto Grants Program, you might be familiar because you went through Charmverse to apply. But it's really great to see how grants programs are setting it up. And I think Kyoto was a great example to look at. And it's always exciting to see these spaces get built out and how it's being used. So just for listeners, you know,
Charmverse is hosting information about the grants program,
and then they're able to submit their applications directly through Charmverse.
And as the guys were saying,
you can evaluate directly in Charmverse.
So instead of having a Google form
and then putting into Google Sheets
and having to do all that in different places,
it's all in one place. And it's allowing this grants council to be able to communicate with
one another, leave notes about each project, score them, and really build out this custom
workflow for how they want to evaluate each of these projects. Because every organization
operates very differently. So it's nice to have
this customized workflow that works for your organization. And I'm excited for the next round
that you do, hoping it's on Charmverse again, because we're just continuing to build out a more
robust features for grants programs. So now you didn't have this before, but now you could
KYC people through Charmverse and have that be attached now to an individual application.
DocuSign, if you need people signing off on different terms and conditions or something
like that, that will be included by the time you have your next round. So it's really exciting to
be working with grant
programs like yourself and seeing how they work and continuing to build out the platform
to be even better for you on the next round. So we're really excited to have you guys on board
and using Charmverse. Yeah, we love using it. It's made our life easy. And I honestly believe it will continue to make our life easy.
And, you know, giving you guys a grant to integrate our layer one means that all of those services or products that you offer,
we can then bring to our layer one and our community.
And I think that's where it will start to get very exciting.
So I'm really interested to see how that develops.
Me too, me too.
And I was very excited to hear we were doing that as well
and doing this integration.
So listeners, stay tuned because there will be more on that.
As they said, we got a grant, Tromverse got a grant,
so we can build that integration
and be working with Kyoto even more.
So I'm curious if you guys can share, what do you find to be the significance of Web3 grants
and how they're affecting the ecosystem for these builders and these projects?
I think, you know, they kind of ignite a lot of projects, especially within refi and Kaito included.
We actually started off by receiving a grant from NIR.
You know, they validate the product first and foremost, but they also give an opportunity for seed funding, which is needed within this space.
Web3 has a lot of liquidity, but there's a huge amount of startups.
Web3 has a lot of liquidity, but there's a huge amount of startups and that liquidity,
it was always, it goes a long way to startups in forms of grants.
And we hope to do our part in that space too, and obviously build an ecosystem on our chain
for everyone.
Yeah, I think Web3 grants are just such a game changer for these projects. And I love seeing that there are so many programs out there, you know. Yeah, having like accelerating adoption, building, helping like build up the community and fostering all of this innovation. It's really, it's really incredible. So thank you for your part in doing that. And I'm really excited for the Kyoto ecosystem to grow,
especially with this launch.
So what would you say, ultimate goal of Kyoto,
five years down the road, what are you hoping for?
I mean, a lot of things.
But I suppose really is to be one of the larger blockchains in
the space.
You know, there's two aspects to our business, which is the carbon business that Frank outlined
and then regenerative finance, which is a subsector like DeFi, kind of built on DeFi.
We want to be the home for that.
And you know, they're both multi-billion dollar markets. And, you know, if we can capture that market in the next five years
and, you know, be here, I suppose that's where I would like to be.
But, you know, frankly, probably got a better rundown.
That's a good question.
And I've had the good fortune of having a chance to think
while you answered.
I would like us to be leaders in digital sustainability.
And by that, I mean, I'd want to be known for using the blockchain
for doing what I believe is its true purpose,
which is, you know, it can do many things,
but social good and environmental impact is is is you know certainly something that
i'd like to our chain to to um uh be known for uh and i'd like for our carbon standard within five
years to be you know industry recognized and i think that with um the team that we've built that's entirely
achievable you know like I think if you get the digital carbon credit that's
widely accepted and adopted by project developers but also purchased by you
know companies looking to offset or corporates looking to offset then we've
nailed it so I'd like to see that and for that to be entirely possible we have to
execute the business plan effectively and you know that's a pretty ninja thing to do but if
we do all of that i think we'll be leaders in digital sustainability and i certainly want to
see us be that and i think it's achievable within five years.
So that's what I'd like to see.
Well, I feel like you're on the right track from what I'm seeing
and like I said,
you have so many exciting things happening
from wrapping a grants program.
Again, congrats.
I know you're still in the process of evaluations
but this mainnet launch is huge.
So a big shout out to you and your team again.
Any other alpha or things that we need to know about this launch that people should be watching out for?
I'm the wrong person to ask that question because I never give out alpha.
I'm actually not allowed to as well.
You've both been muzzled.
I'm asking the wrong crowd.
You are.
That's a line of advice as well.
You asked earlier what advice would I give is don't share too much alpha
because it can get you in trouble.
I've been known to get people in trouble on these spaces,
so I apologize. all right well how about
this listeners make sure that you're following Kyoto so click that pfp so you can stay up to
date on all the alpha as it drops and is it allowed to drop um in real time also go to
coyotoprotocol.io check out the website
and keep up to date
on that way.
Kyoto is the world's
most sustainable blockchain
working toward
making this world
a better place
through
the blockchain technology.
So we're really excited
for them
and their main net launch
coming up
on June 27th
I want to say
four weeks from today. So stay tuned and
definitely check out all the stuff they're doing because there's much more to come. Frank and Ash,
I really appreciate you taking the time to be here today and chat with me. And I already said,
I see Ashley's on here. Shout out to Ashley, who's been an absolute pleasure to work with.
Yeah, your team's just been great. So I'm really happy to have had you on here and help spread the word about the upcoming launch.
Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Really enjoyed it.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, guys. And yeah, I look forward. Let us know if we can help in any way.
And we're here for you.
But listeners, thank you so much for joining us today.
Really appreciate you showing up.
And definitely give Kayoto a follow and keep up to date on the amazing work that they're doing.
And guys, we'll be in touch.
I'm sure we'll be chatting on another device somewhere.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Take care, guys. Have a great rest of your day.
Bye.
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