Our initial focus is the retail space, after which we will be expanding to corporates, traders, and governments. Retailers will be able to integrate with our platform through various channels, including their Point-Of-Sale (POS), websites, mobile apps, and more. We will work closely with retail partners to build a user experience that matches their brand image and create an integration that is both simple and modular to ensure an enjoyable user experience that is also scalable. The following example shows a typical retail user journey:

Consumers are increasingly demanding more ethical products and services.10 Our platform is built from the ground up to support those consumers make environmentally conscious choices by putting a price on carbon and linking it to consumer products. The knowledge of the carbon emissions that each of these products and services carry, combined with the tools to do something about them, will empower consumers to be active participants in the fight against climate change.

We have chosen APO as our blockchain partner as it is the only platform that offers scalability in line with our values. Compared to the vast majority of other blockchain platforms, APO created an architecture that uses far less electricity and offers significant environmental advantages, which is crucial for our purpose. We could not be building AUCCx as part of a climate change solution if our blockchain platform were an excessive carbon emissions contributor.

The following comparison table shows the tremendous environmental impact of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Interestingly, a transaction on the APO network not only uses significantly less electricity than both Bitcoin and Ethereum, but also uses only a fraction of the electricity that a VISA transaction requires.

At 634 KWh, every Bitcoin transaction is responsible for about as much carbon emission as driving 1,225 km in a small and efficient car.11 Moreover, while blockchain technologies constantly improve their efficiency, demand for them increases, subsequently pushing their resource requirements higher.

Using Bitcoin as the benchmark, a VISA transaction is equivalent to driving the same car for about 3.3 meters, which is still a noticeable impact. With APO only using about 1.79% of the electricity a VISA transaction requires, this results in an environmental impact that is very favourable in comparison. For us at AUCCx, this was the most important factor when we chose our blockchain partner.

It is interesting to note that while many compare the transaction processing time, it is important to consider the time it takes for funds to clear, i.e. to be available to the recipient. The above table demonstrates the significant advantage of blockchain technology over traditional credit card transactions in this respect.

From a development perspective, how we would integrate our back-end software with the blockchain we were building our platform on was crucial for us. APO shines here as well. It provides integration points that allow smooth interaction between what we call on-chain smart contracts, which sit on the APO blockchain, and off-chain smart contracts that are hosted by AUCCx on a secure infrastructure. The protocol is fast and scalable, providing AUCCx with a future-proof environment that will ensure our platform will be able to grow and scale while remaining environmentally friendly.

The main interaction with APO’s blockchain is through a RESTful API called Horizon. This allows us to build hundreds of variations of software that sit outside the blockchain to perform complex tasks that satisfy global carbon market requirements. The outcome of these operations, the available amount of carbon credit in a specific emission reduction project for example, is then published to the on-chain smart contracts via a HTTPS request to the Horizon API.

We use blockchain wallets that are assigned to every customer as part of the back-end of our platform. Wallets are basically digital bank accounts and allow our customers to securely store and use our tokens within our platform. Every customer will automatically have two token wallets, one for tokens in the public pool and one for tokens in the liquidity pool, both of which will be explained below.

Public pool and liquidity pool
Our tokens will co-exist in two pools, separated by wallet types. We will have tokens in a public pool, accessible to everyone, and 30% of all tokens in a locked liquidity pool, restricted to the AUCCx platform for transactional purposes. It is crucial for our ecosystem to have both public and liquidity pools, otherwise a situation could arise where all tokens are kept by their holders for future use, effectively stalling the platform. We will ensure that enough tokens are available in the ecosystem to transact the carbon credits our platform offers.

Tokens from the public pool will be available to our customers to hold for future use, for trading on exchanges, as well as at a later stage to purchase carbon credit on our blockchain. Once this feature is available, tokens from the public pool that are used to purchase carbon credits will be sold back into that pool by the AUCCx platform after completing the transaction, thus ensuring that the number of tokens in the public pool remains the same.

Tokens in the liquidity pool will not be available for trading on exchanges and will instead only be used to transact on our blockchain, effectively as a pass-through from traditional currencies to carbon credits. In addition to ensuring token availability, this will also allow us to value carbon credits globally with one digital currency rather than having traditional currency movements impact price analysis.

Tokens in the liquidity pool will never be held by market participants and will always stay within AUCCx’s internal infrastructure, locked in wallets only accessible by the AUCCxback-end, to ensure enough tokens are available to transact carbon credits on the platform. As transactions on the APO blockchain take between 3-5 seconds, the token volume we need to set aside in the liquidity pool has to be able to cover the projected global carbon credit trading volume on our platform for that timeframe.