ArborToken

The Opportunity

In September 2021, I was living in Bushwick, Brooklyn, enjoying the almost nonexistent subway crowds and relatively low rent prices of post-quarantine New York. I worked remotely for a Manhattan-based videogame development company called Rose. The company specializes in building AR (Augmented Reality) experiences for mobile web browsers using the 8th Wall platform. For clients such as Steve Madden and Kenneth Cole, we would develop WebAR games with 3D animated objects and characters who appear to be standing in the room with you when viewed with a smartphone camera.

One day on our company Slack channel, a colleague shared a link to a news article (link) about a 3D digital artist who went by “Beeple” on his popular, but mostly unprofitable Instagram account. Beeple is known for having sold all of his collective digital works as a consolidated NFT for $69 million. 

Since high school, I’ve been an amateur Blender 3D user and a fan of Beeple’s disturbingly detailed images of dystopian worlds. It’s always nice to see a talented and humble artist make a fortune. The spectacle of the sale bolstered the popularity of NFTs. The YouTube algorithm began showing me a large number of news stories about “super currencies” and “play to earn” crypto games. They made me feel anxious. I had the sensation that if I didn’t start learning this new tech immediately, I would miss out and be left behind. I wondered how many other people at software companies felt this way, and how many tech companies in Manhattan felt pressure to spend their R&D budget on crypto buzzwords.

While I was researching socially-conscious cryptocurrencies online, I sent an email to a non-profit organization called Greenstand.org. This company pays local farmers in reforestation areas in places such as Haiti, Africa, and Nepal to plant trees and store their information in a blockchain record-keeping system, including a geotagged photo of each tree. The farmer can get compensated on their phone for each tree planted with an “impact token,” which can be exchanged for cash. I spoke on the phone with Ezra, the cofounder of Greenstand.org, who explained that most of the people using the Greenstand app support reforestation as part of their larger corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals. Ezra suspected that there’s still an unmet desire for individuals to get directly involved in reforestation. “What if it were as easy to plant a tree in Africa as it is to pay someone on Venmo?” Ezra asked. 

Customer Personas

We needed to know what kind of people are most likely to purchase trees. Would people buy trees simply out of concern for climate change, or would there need to be a social or entertainment-related reason as well? As part of my research, I visited a climate-conscious home goods store in Brooklyn called Good Earth Essentials (link) and made friends with the store's owner and several of her customers. I also visited a small clothing store in Brooklyn called Lagoon New York (link) and made friends with some fashion designers who were sewing garments at a table with sewing machines in the middle of the store. Lagoon sells clothing that is mostly one-of-a-kind, sewn locally in Brooklyn, and sometimes made out of reclaimed fabric. Here is a summary of the customer personas I observed at Lagoon and Good Earth Essentials.

Fernando Fashionable

Characteristics:

• Sometimes spends $300 on a hand-knitted poncho at Lagoon New York

• Appreciates statement pieces that spark conversations about sustainable fabrics and circular economies

• Expresses skepticism whenever a brand claims to “plant a tree” for every product sold. Cites various scandals in which companies “greenwash” their marketing campaigns by dishonestly marketing a product as climate-friendly (link). For example, a Copenhagen tree-planting campaign planted saplings that were too small to survive city traffic and pollution (link).

Brielle Brick and Mortar

Characteristics:

• Owns a physical storefront that sells gifts and clothing in Brooklyn, NYC. Spends more than $2k per month to restock merchandise in her store

• Prefers that customers pay in cash because if the customer pays with a credit card, Brielle will have to pay a fee to a point-of-sale SaaS product

• Uses marketing materials that include one of the following phrases:

  • Locally sourced

  • Plastic-free packaging

  • Recyclable, made from recycled material

  • Biodegradable, compostable

  • Reclaimed, salvaged, scrap, refurbished, reusable

• Uses one or more of the following paid subscriptions for her physical product business: 

  • Mailchimp, Hubspot, email marketing software

  • Shopify for eCommerce, coupon codes, gift cards

  • podcasting/blogging software for content marketing

Gita Game Developer

Characteristics:

• Has built a web-based video game and monetized it using one of the following advertising platforms:

  • Unity Ads

  • Facebook Audience Network

  • Google AdMob

• Often downloads games for her iPhone and PC both for fun and for research

• Often uses user authentication plugins from Google or Facebook  instead of developing a custom authorization feature. Gita’s users can import their Facebook friends’ lists and Gmail contacts, enabling Gita to implement word-of-mouth marketing features within her game such as “refer a friend on Facebook and get a free year’s subscription”

The Iterative Prototyping Process

Iteration 1: ArborToken (Stripe and Venmo Competitor)

I worked with a software firm based in India to mock up and estimate the engineering costs of a mobile app called ArborToken. For simplicity of phrasing, I will discuss the features of the app as if it is already operational and the customer personas are real users. For example, the ArborToken mobile app allows the user, Fernando Fashionable, to buy and spend a blockchain currency that is abbreviated as AT. ArborToken is a digital currency that retains a stable price at $5 USD per 1 AT because it is backed by real, verified trees planted by farmers in reforestation areas (see examples). You can use AT to make online purchases just as you would with a credit card.

Retailers can also use the ArborToken mobile app to make their brands authentically climate-friendly without “greenwashing.” The business user, Brielle Brick and Mortar, can use AT to advertise and sell a cashmere sweater from her Shopify or Amazon store. Then, Brielle can set up an “AT rewards account.” For every sweater Brielle sells, she will throw in one ArborToken. For Brielle, 1 AT costs $5, which comes out of her $210 profit margin (link). Brielle can also promote her merchandise by allowing users to purchase them with their accrued AT.

Customer reward programs like these are nothing new. I personally use a credit card rewards program to collect airline miles. AT rewards allow customers to feel good about the environmental impact of their purchases when they track the progress of their trees on Greenstand.org.

Early Feedback

I workshopped the concept of an eCommerce payment app that used trees as currency with the owners of both Good Earth Essentials and Lagoon. Both business owners seemed open to alternative payment methods, but the climate-impact aspect of ArborToken did not excite them. I interpreted this feedback as an opportunity to fail fast and explore other ways to get consumers interested in incremental solutions to deforestation. 

Iteration 2: Play-to-Earn Racing Game

Background

Ezra put me in touch with Karen Nicolas, an employee of Greenstand.org who works directly with tree farmers in Haiti. Karne explained the economic process through which tree farmers get paid to restore forests via Greenstand's mobile app. In terms of air quality and global temperatures, the entire world benefits when we replant a forest anywhere on the planet. Smallholder farmers produce around one-third of the world’s food (link). Yet, they are the first of many who go hungry when deforestation reduces rainfall and increases temperatures (link). For this reason, it is in everyone’s best interest to help farmers find sustainable work that involves planting forests instead of cutting them down. We brainstormed ways to help consumers "show off" their environmental contributions in a gamified environment.

In late 2022, I began working with Vladyslav Mykhalchuk, a software developer and video game designer based in the Ukraine who has a lot of enthusiasm for both blockchain projects and video games. As of December 2022, Vlad published the first playable prototype of a racing game using Unity3D.

You can view the first published MVP of the racing game here:

https://smartjack123.itch.io/mvp-for-cargame

The ultimate goal is to build a MarioKart-style racing game in which players can earn AT as in-game currency based on the number of races they have won and their interactions with in-game advertisements.

Example User Journey for the Racing Game

1. Fernando Fashionable plays the racing game and interacts with an advertisement at the beginning of each race.

2. Fernando Fashionable’s wins a tornament against his friends. He is awarded an ArborToken that other players can view.

3. A digital representation of the real tree Fernando effectively planted is placed alongside the racetrack in the game so that other players can see a symbol of Fernando’s contribution to the climate as well as his impressive racing skills.

Advertisement Revenue Model

The purpose of this game is to plant as many trees as possible, so we want to avoid paying fees to Apple, Google, or Facebook for banner ad interactions or in-game purchases. The racing game will be browser-based and the advertisements will be custom banner ads with integrations from Facebook Authenticator and an affiliate marketing plugin called Sovrn Commerce. The software will reward the user, Fernando Fashionable, for interacting with a customizable survey question based on data from Fernando’s Facebook account. Once we have proved the concept in our own racing game, we can further monetize the software as a plugin for game developers who want to use an environmentally impactful in-game currency.

Big Lessons

As of October 2023, the ArborToken project is still very early in the process, so most of the lessons from ArborToken remain to be seen. So far, our largest barrier is customer faith. If customers believe us when we promise that a real, living tree backs every AT, they are more likely to play games that drive demand for the in-game currency, which itself drives demand for reforestation agriculture. Going forward, we’ll have to overcome consumer cynicism for private-sector climate change solutions and avoid being accused of “green-washing” (link).

Special Thanks

• David 'Ezra' Jay - Founder of Greenstand.org (link), inventor, and jet-pack enthusiast. Ezra originally pitched me the idea for a tree-based payment app and suggested this project could become my day job. 

• Vladyslav Mykhalchuk (link) - Video game developer and Blockchain developer who implemented my design for a racing game. Vlad is an incredibly hard worker who is also quite passionate about blockchain technology and the positive changes it will bring to the internet in the coming years. I could not have made it this far without you, Vlad.

• Karen Nicolas - Treetracker Liaison (link). In her own words, Karen enjoys “connecting smallholder farmers with the help they need to reforest in their local communities around the world.” She works with farmers who use Greenstand’s app to get paid to plant trees in Haiti. When we spoke on the phone, Karen answered tough questions about the time and costs associated with planting and raising a self-sufficient tree. She also provided interview transcripts and photos of the Haitian farmers she works with. Karen’s personality is full of passion and generosity.