Dear Coorestians,
We can say that the year 2022 has been a wild ride.
In only one year we turned an abstract unexplored concept – transparent on-chain carbon compensation, into a reality. Coorest developed all the necessary structure and tech, created the first blockchain Carbon Standard, planted trees, and onboarded our first partner projects.
All of this, within a rollercoaster of ups and downs, both for Coorest and the worldwide economy.
We took on this project through a worsening global economy, the crash of the stock market, and the following collapse of crypto, which added to our struggles and challenges as a newborn start-up.
We made a lot of progress, but also many mistakes along the way.
We acknowledge that in some important aspects we have failed to meet your expectations.
This article won’t just be a summary of our progress in 2022, it will also be a self-reflection, a formal promise and a commitment to do better.
Moving forward we would like to address everything – the good, the bad and the ugly, in that particular order.
The Good
We are the first company to combine real carbon compensation with blockchain technology. We were able to identify the main issues with the current voluntary carbon market and build a fully functional on-chain alternative. From real-life trees to NFTrees, CO2 tokens and PoCC certificates, to a completely operational carbon compensation ecosystem.
Additionally, we are the first ones to successfully integrate satellite monitoring into our CO2 token minting functionality, which adds value, and accuracy to the whole carbon compensation process. We did not only manage to materialise an idea, but we were also able to optimise it to the point of having a competitive advantage. By working on the goal of solving the carbon market’s inefficiencies, the solution we have created is now much more cost and time effective, efficient and transparent than that of any of our competitors.
Earlier this year, we purchased six hectares of land, planted, and tokenized our own batch of trees in Spain. This served as our pilot project and set the basis for our entire carbon compensation ecosystem.
Because land and trees were not enough, Coorest also designed and built a whole carbon compensation scheme that allowed for third-party projects to join its ecosystem. For this, we created the Onboarding Process, the Coorest Carbon Standard, the Coorest Carbon Registry, and the Coorest dApp.
All of these are the first of their kind, and the perfect integration of carbon compensation, blockchain, and satellite data.
Furthermore, the Coorest Carbon Standard was recognised and certified by a certified carbon auditor, Coorest has successfully onboarded its first projects – a mango plantation, and a cherry tree farm along with our own fig orchard. Both of these are already collecting CO2 tokens while their trees absorb harmful emissions and add to our planet’s biodiversity.
To learn how to grow as a company, we joined an accelerator program by Newchip. We not only got the chance to gain access to additional funding but also furthered our knowledge of business and the industry. This gave us insights on how to properly structure and professionalise the company, identify and correct our mistakes and also connected us to a network of mentors and advisors with tremendous knowledge and experience in the industry.
We have achieved collaborations with big names in the industry, such as Polygon, Chainlink, Floodlight, Xave, Elvis Presley Legacy Council, SWALLOW digital, and Women Force NFT among others, which reinforces the idea that Coorest has built something extremely valuable.
The Bad and the Ugly
Even though we have developed an industry-disrupting carbon compensation ecosystem, we did not deliver on many of our other promises.
We recognize that in doing so we have failed to meet your expectations.
We made too many commitments and took on multiple projects in parallel, which caused us to overextend our resources and capabilities, mismanaging your expectations in the process.
Our mobile game My Coorest Tree and our NovaTerra metaverse are examples of this. While game development is an ambitious and worthwhile undertaking, we realised that developing those two projects caused our focus to drift away from our core business – carbon compensation.
Due to this, we recently decided to finalise and sell both projects. My Coorest Tree has already been sold and the team is currently searching for the best possible offer for Novaterra.
We have decided to redouble our efforts on carbon compensation because it has been the main source of value creation for Coorest. This is especially true for the past year in which the crypto market experienced a crash while the carbon market saw rapid and continuous growth.
We also did not deliver on our promise to launch the IDO this year, as we were struck by the sudden and ongoing collapse of the crypto market, something we were poorly prepared for.
Nevertheless, our commitment to launch the IDO still stands. As well as that to deliver functional governance tokens that meet your expectations. We can only do an IDO once, so we want to do it as successfully as possible. We want you to be proud of being initial investors.
While we prepare for our launch, creating utility for our CRST tokens will be among our top priorities, especially given the separation of our gaming division.
Every decision we made was far from being arbitrary and was based on financial and business considerations.
What we failed to do is share the reasoning behind these decisions with you, the Coorest community. Going forward, we aim to improve the way we communicate. Expect changes in the frequency, style and approach to communication from our side. From now on we want you to be informed about our decisions and the processes behind them.
We are aware that there is a disconnect between Coorest and its community. That is why we, the current team members of Coorest, will do everything in our power to mend communication.
We will explain and discuss everything, including operations, direction, governance tokens, IDO, and cancelled projects, using facts and figures. We acknowledge that this has not happened yet, but we will now prioritise proper, organised, and constant communication in the coming year. This will be one of our most important tasks.
Despite our ambitions, Coorest is still a one-year-old startup, and like any start-up, is undergoing a process of learning through trial and error and constant reinvention. We do not aim to excuse our mistakes and failures by releasing this statement. We only want you to consider the fact that we have just recently emerged from a tough and challenging learning period.
We firmly believe this has made us stronger, more experienced, and further capable of building a successful project.
A promise from Coorest
We will no longer hide behind the guise of fairness, accountability, and transparency. We will become the embodiment of these values by taking ownership of our actions and decisions.
With this in mind, we have come up with the following list of actions and improvements we have already started discussing, designing, and preparing for, which will be the main tools for the team to start living up to the expectations of the community and take Coorest to the next level:
Focus on revenue generation
We want to turn Coorest into a mature and sustainable company that will be able to give investors back their value. We want to minimise our dependency on external investors for the survival of the company. This will require us to create a sustainable revenue stream from everything we have successfully built.
To generate such revenue, we will put all our efforts into token sales. Similarly, Coorest will also concentrate its work on onboarding more projects, which will not only allow the company to increase revenue generation but will also increase the supply of CO2 tokens.
Marketing
We admit that we have failed in the marketing department, a department which has a key role in growing a business. We will address this issue by having marketing and sales work closely together. This will create a synergy that makes maximising revenue generation possible. Specifically, Coorest will direct its marketing efforts towards companies and target the B2B segment, as we believe it will offer the most potential and profitability for our products.
Communications
We admit that our communication was far from satisfactory, and solving that will be among our top priorities. By having a smaller team that follows clear procedures and has specific duties we aim to create a style, frequency and transparency in our communications that meet the expectations of our community and audience.
We also understand that fixing our future communications is not enough to rectify the present mismanagement. We will take the time to address each existing concern, complaint and suggestion with due diligence. In January we will notify the community of the specifics of this process, in which we will gather all questions, and reply in an extensive, factual, and diligent way. A deadline will also be set for us to release these communications.
Deadlines
In connection with the point above, we have concluded that an indefinite promise is an empty promise. Coorest commits to using deadlines wherever applicable. This relates to our announcements, projects, and promises.
Team
As mentioned before, we do not expect the community to understand the latest decisions regarding the team taking into account the ongoing lack of consistent communication. Proper and detailed explanations will be provided as described in the Communications point above. Coorest is working to find the most efficient and effective team structure for its present challenges. The team will be required to meet specific sales, communications, and marketing goals.
Community involvement
It is a well-known fact that the options we have provided for the community to influence Coorest’s strategies, projects, and decision-making processes have not been sufficient or successfully adopted. Because of this, we will not only work closely with the Tree Council but will also adjust the forum in a manner that allows people to have individual talks with the team regarding each applicable proposal. We understand that communication and collaboration are not a one-way street, and it is not enough for us to receive your input, but you also need to feel like your input is received, appreciated and processed.
Roadmap & Milestones
An updated and realistic roadmap and milestones will be released in the first two weeks of January. The updated roadmap will not only be the basis upon which Coorest will grow as a company, but will also serve as a tool of accountability. By strictly adhering to such milestones Coorest will make sure that its focus is strong and its efforts are properly directed. This will be done in a way that the community can follow and will allow for a degree of certainty.
We do not expect you to be satisfied solely by the promise we made here, nor is our duty fulfilled by this commitment alone. We want you to be satisfied with actual achievements and results that will come through hard work and goal orientation.
We would like to end with a thank you for your continued support and input, and your patience in the face of hardship and uncertainty. We are dedicated and committed to building Coorest into a successful enterprise.
Because we are building a better future. Together.
Sincerely,
The Coorest team
