Polygon’s sustainability journey, which in the past few months included a commitment to becoming carbon negative, offsetting the network’s CO2 footprint and setting aside $20 million for climate projects, has reached a new milestone.

On July 13 Polygon hosted the Green Blockchain Summit, a virtual forum for Web3 leaders to develop solutions to the most urgent environmental problems facing the blockchain industry. The event convened founders, operators, investors, academics, and more across Web3 and beyond with discussions ranging from on-chain carbon credits and NFTs to climate narratives and lessons from other industries. 

The full recording of the event is available online in all of its five-hour glory, but here are some of the highlights from each of the talks.

Keynote by Mihailo Bjelic, Polygon Co-Founder

Polygon’s own sustainability story began earlier this year. While the team has always prided itself on having a Proof of Stake network that is very energy efficient, it was becoming clear that this was not enough, Mihailo said in his keynote. 

“One of the most striking signs that the project has come of age was when we actually realized that the project has grown big enough for people to care about our carbon footprint. And I mean really care,” he said. “We took that realization very seriously.”

In April, Polygon announced that it will become carbon negative by the end of the year and committed $20 million to climate-related projects. Since then, the protocol has retired $400,000 in carbon credits representing 104,794 tonnes of greenhouse gasses, or the entirety of the network’s CO2 debt since inception. The team has also hired a sustainability le

https://youtu.be/zOWKcZdroJk?t=327

[Read more: Polygon Reaches First Sustainability Milestone by Achieving Network Carbon Neutrality]

Digitizing MRV: Ensuring Quality, Avoiding Fakery, and Creating Transparency

Speakers:

Jeremy Epstein, Head of Growth, Open Forest Protocol

Adrian Wons, Co-Founder and CEO, Senken

Alexsandra Guerra, Co-founder and Director of Corporate Development, Nori

Gregory Landua, Co-Founder and CEO, Regen Network

Moderator: Charlie Moore, Head of Carbon & ESG Solutions, Chainlink

The New Coordination Machine: On and Off-Chain Collaboration

Speakers:

John Hoopes, Head of Ecosystem, Toucan Protocol

Hugh Salway, Head of Markets, Gold Standard

Dana Gibber, Co-founder and CEO, Flowcarbon

Francisco Benedito, Chairman, Climatecoin|GreenClimateDAO

Moderator: Pavel Alpeyev, Polygon

Planting Trees, Saving Seas: Using NFTs and Blockchains Across Ecologies

Speakers:

Jon Jie, Co-Founder and COO, MarinaChain

Luis Adaime, Founder and CEO, MOSS

Apurva Bhandari, Founder, SankalpTaru Foundation

Kuan-Ning Tseng, Chief Sustainability Officer and Co-Founder, FUND THE PLANET

Moderator: Kathleen Chu, Polygon

Navigating the Crypto-Climate Narrative

Speakers:

Anita Ramaswamy, Reporter, TechCrunch

Andrew Chow, Correspondent, TIME

Dionysus, Co-founder, KlimaDAO

Daniel Hwang, Head of Protocols, stakefish

Ben West, Cause Round Lead, Gitcoin

Moderator: Joseph Pallant, Founder, Blockchain for Climate Foundation

Enterprise Influence: Lessons on Sustainability

Speakers:

Paul Brody, Global Blockchain Leader, EY

Ying Qin, Global Insights - ESG & Sustainability, Citi

Matthew Sigel - Head of Digital Assets Research, VanEck

Moderator: Cristine Chen, Polygon

Lightning Talks: Building Solutions on Polygon

Speakers:

Savinien Caracostea, Co-Founder, META foundation

Mark Patterson, Growth Lead, Realitems.io

Subramanya Kusnur, Founder Chairman and CEO, AquaKraft Group Ventures

Nick Zwanevel, CTO and Co-founder, Coorest

The Multi-Chain Future: Building A Net-Positive Industry

Speakers:

Marc Johnson, Environmental Solutions Architect, Filecoin Green/Protocol Labs

Ikarus Janzen, ReFi Ambassador, Climate Collective (Celo)

Dr. Christian Stoll, Co-founder, CCRI

Austin Federa, Head of Communications, Solana

Moderator: Stefan Renton, Sustainability Lead, Polygon

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TKTK a graph on what commitments were made at GBS and something casting forward TKTK

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