The Standard

What is a standard in environmental markets?

In environmental markets, a standard is the organization that defines and governs the rules for how environmental credits are measured and verified. It approves methodologies, manages their lifecycle — from initial design through versioning to eventual discontinuation — and ensures that the credits produced under those methodologies meet a consistent level of quality.

Without a standards body, there is no independent authority governing what counts as a valid credit. The standard is the layer of trust between the project that generates environmental impact and the buyer who pays for it.

Why Carrot is a standard

Carrot operates as a standards body for domains where no established global standard exists. For BOLD Recycling, Carrot is the standard — it created and governs this methodology. For domains with established standards, such as carbon credits under UNFCCC AMS-III.F, Carrot provides the dMRV infrastructure and registry while the methodology framework references the external standard — as with BOLD Carbon (CH₄). Carrot defines the Carrot dMRV Standard — a set of principles that every methodology in the network must follow — and manages the full methodology lifecycle: approval, versioning, and discontinuation.

The Carrot dMRV Standard establishes the common ground that allows multiple methodologies to coexist on shared infrastructure, each contributing verified environmental impact data to the same ecosystem.

What this means for credit quality

Every credit issued within the Carrot Network is backed by a methodology governed under the Carrot dMRV Standard. Three properties support credit integrity:

• Open-source rules — All verification logic is published under an open-source license and publicly auditable. Anyone can inspect the rules that produced a given outcome.
• Automated, auditable verification — Verification is executed by deterministic software (MvAs) that produces the same result for the same input, every time. Results are recorded on-chain and viewable through the Carrot Explorer.
• Independent assurance — Third-party Validation and Verification Bodies (VVBs) provide independent review, adding a layer of oversight beyond the automated process.

Core principles

The Carrot dMRV Standard is built on five principles that apply to every methodology in the network: integrity & traceability, additionality & verifiability, standardization & comparability, interoperability & automation, and transparency & auditability. Together, they ensure that every credit is backed by auditable, reproducible evidence — from the original supply chain event to the final credit issuance.

For the full definition of each principle, see the Carrot dMRV Standard.

Compliance and enforcement

Methodology compliance is currently managed by the Carrot Foundation, which oversees adherence to the Carrot dMRV Standard. As the ecosystem matures, enforcement responsibilities will progressively expand to include community participation. See Governance for how this evolution is structured.