Digital Public Infrastructure

A market that needs forming

Solving the world's hardest problems — climate change, the stewardship of natural resources, human development — depends on economies that value public goods, not only private ones. The difficulty is that the markets such an economy requires barely exist: the outcomes that matter most — a stable climate, clean air and water, recovered materials, healthy and productive communities — benefit everyone, yet are paid for by almost no one. And forming those markets is a coordination problem that neither companies nor governments, acting alone, are positioned to solve.

Forming them takes three things at once: a financing system that directs capital to verified outcomes rather than promises; a technology layer that makes those outcomes trustworthy — measured, independently verified, uniquely recorded, transparently settled; and an organization bound to a public purpose it cannot quietly abandon, to steward that layer. Digital public infrastructure is where those three meet — and the Carrot Network is Carrot's working contribution to it.

What "digital public infrastructure" means

Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) is the term used across the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, and the G20 for digital systems that work as shared, society-wide rails rather than proprietary platforms: foundational, interoperable, inclusive, and publicly accountable. The reference cases are the foundational layers of identity, payments, and data exchange — India's Aadhaar and UPI, Brazil's Pix, Estonia's X-Road. The Carrot Network applies the same pattern to a domain those cases have not reached: outcomes-based funding for environmental and social advancement, beginning with waste reduction, recycling, and methane — and built to extend to other environmental domains.

Its core components are digital public goods — the open parts the rails are made of: open methodology frameworks, a public credit registry, and open-source verification code that any operator, verifier, methodology author, or application developer can build on. Together they operate as a public registry for the circular economy — an open, digital MRV and crediting infrastructure on which established standards, registries, and buyer coalitions can build.

What makes infrastructure "public"

In the DPI literature, what makes infrastructure public is not who builds or owns it, but how it is governed — whether it is created and governed for the common good. The Carrot Network is built to meet that test through mechanism, not assurance:

• Purpose, locked. The network is stewarded by the Carrot Foundation, a Swiss foundation whose purpose is fixed in its deed, externally supervised, and cannot be redirected toward private gain.
• Open rules. The verification code that executes each methodology is open source and publicly inspectable; methodology frameworks are versioned and documented.
• Independent verification. Verification is executed by deterministic software and reviewed by independent validation and verification bodies — not by Carrot itself.
• Public records. Credit issuance, transfer, and retirement are recorded on a public registry anyone can audit.
• Reward-sharing. Under transparent, published fees, 100% of proceeds fund the ecosystem and the network that serves it: proceeds from every credit sale flow to the people who do the environmental work, under the published Rewards Distribution Policy — governed, not discretionary.

What the rails enable

Because the rails make outcomes measurable, verifiable, and bankable, they open a path markets have struggled to build: buyers and coalitions can commit to verified results before those results exist — advance, outcomes-based commitments that de-risk the producers who deliver them. The Carrot Network provides the verification, unique recording, and settlement such commitments require; it does not run market commitments or act as a buyer. And far from competing with government, the infrastructure is built to work with the public sector and lighten its load — the state keeps its mandate, regulatory authority, and role as backstop. What the network guarantees, a regulator can choose to endorse or reject at any time.

Go deeper

The full argument — the market-formation case, the public-governance test, how the network is funded, the safeguards we design against, and what the model means for funders, participants, buyers, and governments — is in the White Paper:

→ White Paper: Digital Public Infrastructure for the low-carbon circular economy (read online or download the PDF)

Related pages: The Network · Governance · The Carrot Foundation · Rewards Distribution Policy