The OFP Ecosystem

Flexing The Web3 Infrastructure Stack on NEAR Protocol

By Michael Kelly, OFP Co-Founder and CPO

“This is not a conventional rocket,” Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s CEO, said during the unveiling, live streamed on YouTube. “This is what a rocket should look like in 2050. But we’re building it today.” As of now, Neutron is slated for its first flight in 2024.” — The Verge

Our goal at OFP is to build a regenerative finance (ReFi) protocol ten years before anyone would believe such a level of sophistication and complexity would be possible. In the crypto space, that means building a product that is attentive to user needs, cost-effective, scalable, and also multi-chain in nature. In terms of the focus of this protocol, our goal has been the same from the very beginning: To accelerate the transparent protection, financial support, and holistic preservation of forests across the globe. And maybe that will just be a start.

Below, I outline the most important differentiating facets of OFP as our team builds out the protocol today. While this is subject to change with the release of new tooling from the NEAR team, it provides a pretty straightforward ‘snapshot’ for where we hope to be in the next five years.

Open Forest Protocol Enhancements: What and Why

I think the best way to introduce the nooks and crannies that make OFP what it is, is to first take a step back and evaluate the macro crypto environment today:

The last couple of years in crypto have been all about building base-level infrastructure: L1s, Oracles, Indexers, and so forth. More recently, we have seen DeFi primitives, Ownership primitives (Social Tokens and NFTs) and governance primitives (DAOs) emerge at scale. Interoperability is a familiar term, but few bridging protocols have taken hold.

Given these recent developments, I think, we are currently at the beginning of a new stage of crypto development that will eventually be characterized by composability between dApps and interoperability between chains.

More on this here:

This assumption has guided the development of OFP and the thoughtful design behind the protocol. Here is how that translates directly into the OFP Ecosystem:

Governance — Sputnik V2 and the Open Forest Congress

Ecosystem-wide governance of OFP is under development via the Open Forest Congress. The Open Forest Congress is the custom OFP DAO built using the fantastic tools from Sputnik V2. For a little context, NEAR launched Sputnik V1 in March of 2021, Sputnik V2 came out around July, and has since been used as a basis for NEAR’s Astro DAO.

The reason OFP is building with Sputnik V2 is because of the neat customizations possible with different proposal kinds and actions. These functions provide the foundation for a host of different governance policies and roles that can be custom-created for specific needs and contexts.

A short overview of proposal kinds and actions using NEAR’s Sputnik V2!

With Sputnik V2, we are able to custom build out how we want OFP to be governed with specific attention to accessibility, security, and participation. As the Open Forest Congress develops, we hope it will encompass more and more aspects of the protocol. In this sense, governance of OFP is planned to iteratively grow over time (as the protocol develops).

Interoperability — OFP Colonies and Carbon Economies: Cross-chain Deployment via Rainbow Protocol

We believe that the future of crypto is multi-chain in nature — even if the tooling and infrastructure isn’t all developed yet. Thanks to the Aurora team and the Rainbow Bridge, builders in the NEAR Ecosystem have a nice starting point. With OFP, we hope to expand core financing and project infrastructure across many different chains, to allow each chain to be able to have their own ‘OFP carbon economy’.

Concretely, this means that project NFTs, financing for projects, and carbon primitives that may be built or created in the future — could all live on other chains — while data would be bridged across to NEAR and validated by OFP Validators. Not only will this be important for the development of OFP, but it will also potentially supply different L1 ecosystems with data-backed carbon credits, and new ReFi primitives.

• Multi-chain Project NFTs: Projects can be created on other chains and send data frequently back to OFP validators for validation.
• Cross-chain Financing: OFP Starter — the OFP financing product for smart-contract based rewards and payments to projects
• Cross-chain Governance: Voting and proposals applicable to users on other chains.
• Multi-chain Carbon Economies: If Carbon is ever created on OFP, ReFi primitives and DeFi legos using on-chain carbon can flourish on different protocols.

There is a wealth of talent, interest, and support for climate-crypto projects — from Celo and Algorand, to PolkaDot, Aurora, and Ethereum. We intend to harness the collective power and talent of these different ecosystems to boost OFP’s development over the long-term.

Usability — User-First Product Experience, Croncat, and Future Infrastructure on NEAR

NEAR’s appeal from the very beginning has been its usability. The original supply chain-crypto projects from the 2017 cycle proved that legacy industries like supply chain (or for example, the forest or clean energy industry today) need to be able to use a crypto product, without the jargon, the long alphanumerical hashes, and the risks traditionally associated with the crypto-user experience (i.e. lose your key, overpay transaction costs, send to wrong address, etc.).

With NEAR we can get pretty close to offering a traditional internet experience to forest companies, green financiers, and entrepreneurs alike, using a number of tools that are already live:

• The NEAR Account Model: Named accounts (hello.near), that cannot overpay transaction fees, or send value to non-existent accounts. 2FA, email, phone, and seed phrase backup are all possible. Link dropping prepaid accounts, or utilizing croncat will allow users of OFP (Projects, validators, voters, and collateral providers) to participate with zero transaction fees anytime soon.
• Croncat: Automated function calls for validation, governance, transaction fees, and reward distribution. All beneath the surface from the average user, and as an easy way to cut costs for users unfamiliar with tokens and transaction fees. More on Croncat can be found here: https://docs.cron.cat/docs/.
• Spaceport: In the longer term, the NEAR team is already actively developing custodians able to allow users to begin their crypto journey through a centralized entity (similar to a Coinbase, FTX, or Gemini exchange) before then blasting off into the NEAR Ecosystem by disconnecting their account from this entity. While still in its early days, the future of Usability on NEAR is extremely bright thanks to its account model design.

We envision a user-experience on OFP that is seamless, easy to navigate, cheap, and intuitive. Our assumption is that in order to onboard forest projects, non-governmental organizations, and other large global actors — we need to ease the barrier to entry as much as possible. Here is to making the new forest economy accessible!

Community and Network — The OFP Community Fund

Those familiar with our crypto-economics may be surprised to see that we have allocated close to 16% of our initial token distribution to our ecosystem/community fund. Community building is a particular forte that many members of the OFP team have plenty of experience with. For as long as we can keep her, Rimberjack is leading the charge for the Open Forest Protocol, as we look to make the Corpsemen Guild grow to 150 strong by early Q2 of 2022 — The form to join is Here.

Our emphasis on community building is strongly based on our experience: Community building remains one of the most overlooked facets of crypto. Given the nature of OFP, we want to double down early on, and make it clear that we are all about funding, mentoring and developing an inclusive and active community that is passionate about innovating at the intersection of forest preservation, climate solutions, and crypto. Game on!

A short synopsis of what have planned for the OFP community:

• 7 million tokens in the Community / Ecosystem Fund.
• The Corpsemen Guild will be 150 Strong by Springtime.
• Recruiting Entrepreneurs and Builders today to integrate OFP far and wide in the future. We are looking for entrepreneurs from across the globe and on many different chains!
• Building quickly, but for the long haul. Speed matters in crypto, especially as the ReFi movement takes off. But purposeful design is all about playing the long game.
• Human capital is the most important capital to invest in! And I am not kidding here. This is a thesis I hope we will be able to look back on and have proven in the next three years.

Conclusion

Success of the Open Forest Protocol in the long-term is largely built around purposeful design, and proper execution. The crypto space is young, and the ReFi space is even younger. But at OFP we believe that there is already more than enough tooling and infrastructure on NEAR Protocol to create a user-friendly, interoperable, and cost-effective product — well ahead of its time.

If you are passionate about ReFi, interested in having OFP bridge to your L1 ecosystem, or for all other inquiries do not hesitate to reach out at m@openforestprotocol.org!