projects – hazel™

The World Needs a Climate-Focused Web3 Solution

I’m excited to announce our newest project: The Hazelverse!

We’ve been working on this project since late last year, but now I get to reveal publicly some additional details around it. The Hazelverse is our climate-focused segment of the metaverse. In time, it will be an open-world explorer experience, where you’ll work with the local animals who live in the Hazelverse to fight a cabal of evil scientists who are intent on bringing climate change from our world to the digital world.

Our first step in this exciting journey is happening now. We’re completing the prototype for a casual, mobile clicker game that will be your first introduction into the Hazelverse world. It’s a web3 experience, meaning that as you earn and unlock specific awards in the game, those digital assets will be NFTs that you’ll own. What this means is that, unlike mobile games we all play now, you’ll own the digital assets that you win and will be able to trade, sell and buy them among other players–and they’ll be fully usable in our future experiences (and potential other metaverse experiences as well!)

To see samples of our artwork, gameplay demos and other up-to-the-minute information about the Hazelverse, follow us on Twitter. We’ll be running contests, giveaways, and making other announcements in the coming weeks on our Twitter feed, and you don’t want to miss out!

Critically, we’re building our experience on a next-generation, climate-friendly blockchain to avoid the negative impacts of other web3 projects. More on that below.

But that still leaves a critical question: Why are we doing a web3 project at all?

We’re launching our work on the Hazelverse for three main reasons:

First, our team strongly believes that crypto needs to be climate-friendly as early as possible, and we hope that we can demonstrate the demand for climate-friendly projects. Web3 shouldn’t be all about sketchy financial schemes, mutant animals and shadowy transactions–we think the technology can be used for the good of society and the planet. We hope to demonstrate one way to be climate positive, and by doing so, we hope to inspire future rounds of new projects and products that incorporate climate impact into their product from the start.

Second, we knew we wanted to create a collection-based experience as part of our product. One of the core challenges that prevents consumers from funding carbon-removal work is the sense that you ‘don’t get anything’ from your purchase–and historically, this has been true! Other than feeling good about helping the climate, you don’t normally get anything in return for your purchase.

We knew that we wanted to change this by enabling users to build collections of digital goods from their purchases–and by incorporating web3 into our project, we’re able to dial this collection experience up to 11 out of 10.

Now, when you earn a digital good through Hazel for your efforts, what you’re earning is actually an NFT – you own it outright. You can collect it, use it in our experience, or sell it – it’s yours to do with as you please. We think this just amplifies the fun of filling out your collection and playing with our experience.

Finally, we’re launching a web3 project because we wanted to appeal to the masses of users. As a consumer-focused business, we knew that if we were going to have an impact on a challenge as huge as climate change we needed millions of users–or more.. And while there certainly are altruistic users who are funding carbon removal through Hazel today, we know there’s a lot more users out there who are motivated by the desire to play a game, or be entertained, or by greed—and that’s OK! We’re intentionally building a solution that enables anyone–even if you don’t even believe in climate change–to have a positive impact on the climate by using our app.

Best of all, you can have a climate impact *without ever spending a penny on our app*. Web3 technology lets us create a totally free experience for our users that has a climate impact. So whether you get hooked on our product and accelerate your experience by funding carbon removal or never pay anything and just play, you’ll have a positive climate impact through our platform either way!

Our core model is: Play – Earn – Impact. We’ll be launching our platform into beta in a few months. Follow us and learn how you can be one of the first to make a climate impact with us!

Get involved in our project!

Learn more about the Hazelverse here

An Aside About Climate + Crypto:

“Wait,” I hear from a lot of people, “I read somewhere that Bitcoin uses more electricity than the entire country of Argentina/Switzerland/Brazil/Korea (the country changes each time). Isn’t a crypto project the *worst* thing you can do for the climate?”

Thing is, they’re exactly right.

First generation crypto (Bitcoin and Ethereum) are horrendously inefficient–by design–and use tremendous amounts of electricity. Since that electricity isn’t all coming from renewable sources, that makes their carbon footprints horrific–they’re helping cause climate change. Anyone who builds on top of these platforms is doing tremendous harm to the planet – and deserves the public ridicule they receive – if they’re doing it in the name of a supposedly climate-friendly endeavor.

But that’s first-generation crypto.

First generation anything is typically pretty bad and inefficient–look how bad solar panels were initially. That’s why we’re not using either of the first generation crypto technologies. We haven’t officially announced which chain we’ll be using yet, but it will be one with an electrical use that’s in-line (or ideally, better) than current web2 technologies.

So if you’re comfortable doing a Google search, or scrolling Instagram, you should be 100% comfortable with the climate impact from our solution.

Looking out across the Middlebury Forest Tract.

We’re excited to announce our latest forestry project: 2,500 Acres in Middlebury, Vermont! This is the first domestic US project that we’ve worked with, and we couldn’t be more excited–in addition to being a critical mixed hardwood habitat, it’s also an opportunity to support the environmental efforts of Middlebury College, one of the nation’s oldest liberal arts institutions, as they go carbon neutral across their entire campus.

This project is a mix of reforestation and improved forestry management–it’s a mix of planting new trees, protecting the existing trees, and protecting the entire forest from diseases and invasive species. If you’re looking for a unique way to support carbon removal, higher education, and protect a classic New England ecosystem, this is it!

We learned about this project initially through its association with Middlebury College. The college has owned–and, since the 1920s commercially harvested lumber from–this forest (in fact, many of the buildings on campus are built with timber from this forest tract). When the school committed to going carbon neutral in 2016, the forest became an integral part of the plan–by prohibiting commercial logging, the school could ensure additional carbon capture through the forest’s growth each year. Plus, by reforesting sections that had previously been harvested, newly planted trees could capture additional carbon–above and beyond what the carbon needs of the school are.

Each year, Middlebury College retains and retires the rights to some of the carbon that the tract has captured to meet their Net Zero goals. The forest captures more carbon than the school produces, however, and these additional tonnes of carbon are what we’re able to purchase through this partnership–directly supporting the on-going health of the forest and its natural work of removing carbon from the air.

We also like this project because, unlike some reforestation projects in other parts of the world, the legal system in the US ensures that the conservation commitments that the school signed to protect the forest are iron-clad, and issues of on-going maintenance and monitoring of the forest are greatly reduced.

Plus: It’s fun to support a project in our own backyard! (Relatively speaking, of course….)

By supporting this project with Hazel, you’ll enable this project to:

Sequester more than 19,000 tonnes of carbon annually
Increase the sequestration potential of this forest by adopting techniques that increase the biodiversity of the forest
Provide an educational resource for students, faculty and the local community
Provide recreational opportunities for the local community
Create habitat for local fox, coyotes, moose, fisher cats, turkey and black bear
Protect freshwater river sources for the surrounding watershed, including the East Middlebury River

Reforestation–planting new forests that were once harvested–is a significant method for removing carbon from the atmosphere. We’re excited to add this forestry project into the mix and work with you to support it!