Impact Oracle

Public.icon

My name is Oh (@realblob) and I work in impact management and measurement. I lead a community of SDG stakeholders and experts, and provide support to startup companies to align their KPIs with impact KPIs, metrics, and frameworks. Our proposal is to align impact metrics and values with monetary values and streamline their reflection in transactions through "Impact Oracle".

I have also posted about Impact Oracle in the proposal thread for proof of impact, but in this proposal, I would like to appeal to a different aspect of this theme. Please see the separate proposal document if you are interested.

About Impact Certification

Existing impact certifications (e.g. Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, etc.) are excellent tools for marketing. In other words, they are usually used to advertise how "ethical" or "fair" a product is. Most companies do what is necessary to obtain certification, pay the required fees, and appeal to consumers for certification as part of branding and marketing.

This marketing technique is effective. However, in many cases, it turns impact into a luxury. Providers of goods and services will charge higher premiums because they have paid for certification. In other words, to be a responsible company, one must have a high disposable income and be middle class or above. Being a responsible or impactful business also means that the cost of doing business is higher.

Impact for Everyone

The difficulty with certification (NFT or otherwise) is that it becomes subject to the whims of philanthropists and the middle and upper classes. Certification is rigid, done after the fact, and often lacks due diligence. Measurement criteria are often static and unchanging, and cannot evolve at the speed of change. As a result, there is competition at the bottom to determine what is the minimum required to obtain certification.

We want to create a system that aligns the maximization of corporate profits with the maximization of impact, giving companies an incentive to make the greatest effort possible. More impact means more profit - it is not something added to reporting or measurement, but something that is integrated and rationalized.

IO maintains a registry of the value of impact as a flexible, ad hoc metric provided by the community. It is constantly evolving, living, and changing to meet the needs and values of the ecosystem. Just as the price of goods and assets changes according to market demand, impact must also change. Through this pricing, IO offsets positive impact and offsets negative impact.

By pricing all types of impact, companies can create a new metric for evaluation. By making this metric monetary, it can create new potential sources of revenue and encourage competition at the top. More impact means more profit.

This creates unprecedented transparency, impact, consistency, and change in economic incentives. IO builds a system where impact verification is an all-in-one process. Whether it is a DAO or any other organization, it can rationalize impact accounting, receive compensation for positive impact, and offset negative impact.

Companies that connect to IO and conduct transactions through IO create live images of their impact, rather than building an authentication system retrospectively. By fully calculating the impact of their products, authentication becomes a byproduct of the transparency of impact pricing. If the product is renewable, it becomes more affordable, and if it lacks sustainability, it is offset by pricing.

We envision a world where authentication is unnecessary because it is "backend". Just as we don't have to think too much about the presence of dangerous substances in food, we shouldn't have to think too much about the impact of products. Like risk assessment when purchasing a product, impact accounting and authentication should be invisible to us, as they are already built into the price of goods and services.

We are currently building Talknomics and governance systems, and partnering with relevant stakeholders to supply capital and professional resources. This should be a cross-chain initiative, not only built on Ethereum but also on other blockchains.

The full version of the white paper can be shared upon request.

It would be a great help if you fall into one of the following categories:

Provide 35K USDC to Oracle's MVP

Professional and technical support from the ICC community

Community formation support for IO DAO by Gitcoin, etc.

(This proposal is similar to the proposal in the "Proof of Impact" thread.)