Carrot dMRV Standard — Technical Principles

The Carrot dMRV Standard is the set of principles that every methodology in the Carrot Network must follow. It establishes the technical requirements for verification integrity, data traceability, and credit quality across all methodologies.

Core principles

Integrity & Traceability

Every data point in the verification process is linked to its origin through an immutable audit trail. From the original supply chain event to the final credit issuance, every transformation and validation is recorded and independently verifiable.

Additionality & Verifiability

Credits represent environmental impact that goes beyond business-as-usual. Methodologies must demonstrate that the verified activity (e.g., composting organic waste instead of landfilling) would not have occurred at the same scale without the incentive structure provided by the credit system.

Standardization & Comparability

All methodologies use a common document format — the MassID — to represent supply chain data. This shared format enables consistent validation patterns and allows rule processors to be reused across methodologies.

Interoperability & Automation

Methodologies share infrastructure, rule processors, and verification patterns. The shared library architecture means that improvements to common rules (such as weighing validation or actor identification) benefit all methodologies simultaneously.

Transparency & Auditability

All verification rules are open source and publicly auditable. Verification results are published on-chain and viewable through the Carrot Explorer or any blockchain block explorer. Anyone can inspect the logic that produced a given outcome.

Design for Verification

Every rule, criterion, and parameter in a methodology must be expressed in a form that allows objective testing. Given a set of evidence, it must be possible to determine — without interpretation — whether a requirement was met. This principle drives the structure of MvF specifications and ensures that automated verification produces deterministic, reproducible results.

Requirements for MvF Authors

Authors of a Methodology Verification Framework (MvF) must deliver:

• Scope definition — Clear boundaries for eligible waste types, treatment methods, and geographic coverage
• Eligibility criteria — Specific requirements for participating actors and facilities
• Validation rules — Each verification check defined as a PASSED/FAILED condition with unambiguous criteria
• Traceability matrix — A mapping from every verification requirement to its data source, validation rule, and expected output
• Verification guidelines — Instructions for Network Integrators on what data to collect and how to submit it

See the MvF Author Guide for the full process.

Requirements for MvA Developers

Developers of a Methodology Verification Application (MvA) must ensure:

• Fidelity — The software faithfully implements every rule in the MvF specification
• Determinism — The same input always produces the same output, with no dependence on external state
• Comprehensive testing — Every rule has unit tests, integration tests with seed documents, and end-to-end tests
• Open-source publication — All code is published under an open-source license (currently LGPL-3.0)

See the MvA Developer Guide for the full process.

For how compliance is enforced, see The Standard — Compliance and enforcement.

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