The Network

What is the Carrot Network?

Carrot is the steward of a circular economy crediting system — with open methodology governance, a public credit registry, and dMRV infrastructure for independent, third-party verification. Together, these give credit buyers a single, auditable chain from physical recycling event to retired credit.

The Network organizes its work into domain-specific protocols, starting with circular economy — turning verified waste diversion and recycling into tradable environmental assets. Network Integrators provide supply chain data; Carrot's dMRV system verifies that data against open methodology rules and issues credits when outcomes are confirmed.

Track material, verify outcomes, issue credits, distribute proceeds to the people who did the work.

Who is this documentation for?

• Credit buyers — See For Buyers for the purchase process and impact evidence
• Decision-makers & stakeholders — Start with the Overview to understand the problem and solution, including the standard and registry model and independent verification
• Developers & integrators — Jump to Integrations and the API Reference
• Methodology authors — See Methodologies for frameworks and rules

This documentation evolves alongside the ecosystem; some components described here represent architectural directions of the ecosystem.

The problem

More than 80% of everything produced and consumed by humans ends up as pollutants — buried in landfills, dumped into water bodies, or burned into the atmosphere. The linear take-make-waste economy fails because it offloads the environmental costs of waste into the commons and spreads disposal costs uniformly across taxpayers, providing no incentive to reduce, sort, reuse, or recycle.

Existing approaches like Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws and Pay-As-You-Throw (PAYT) programs have seen limited adoption. Scaling high-performance recycling requires market forces and direct incentives at both the individual and business level.

Read more about the problem Carrot addresses

The solution

Carrot's dMRV system executes methodology rules against waste management data — turning verified outcomes into tradable environmental assets:

1. Track — Physical waste is codified into MassIDs, digital records that capture material type, weight, provenance, and chain of custody.
2. Verify — MassIDs that reach accredited recycling and composting facilities are verified through automated, methodology-based rule validation.
3. Generate — MassIDs that pass methodology verification generate Certificates (GasID for prevented emissions, RecycledID for certified recycled material), which in turn mint credit tokens: Tokenized Carbon Credits (TCC) and Tokenized Recycling Credits (TRC).
4. Trade — Credits become tradable assets that companies buy and retire to meet ESG goals and EPR compliance.
5. Incentivize — Proceeds from credit purchases are distributed automatically to participants, creating direct financial incentives for greater participation.

Read more about how it works | Read more about the solution

Technology

Carrot uses blockchain as coordination infrastructure — not as a financial product, but as a tool to create verifiable trust at global scale.

• Trust — Verification rules are defined in smart contracts. Each verification result is deterministic and auditable — any party can confirm that methodology rules were applied correctly.
• Transparency — All verified outcomes are recorded on a public, immutable ledger. Any auditor can trace a credit back to the physical event that originated it, without relying on information provided by Carrot.
• Programmability — Smart contracts automate credit issuance and revenue distribution to supply chain participants — eliminating intermediaries and ensuring value reaches those who performed the work.
• Open-source — The verification code (MvA) that executes methodology rules is open source (LGPL-3.0). Technical teams and external auditors can inspect the verification logic before any purchase or partnership decision.

Learn about the system architecture

Governance

The Carrot Foundation exists for one immutable purpose: building a circular, low-carbon economy. The Foundation stewards the protocol — governing methodology approval, protocol development, operational compliance, and resource allocation. As the ecosystem matures, the Foundation will progressively expand participation mechanisms, enabling active contributors to have a voice in the protocol's evolution.

Read about governance | Read about the Foundation

Explore the docs