Transforming the Green Finance With Blockchain

The Green Assets Wallet (GAW) is a unique case where blockchain brings the real value for investors, validators, issuers of the Green Bonds. The platform is built on blockchain aimed to make the investments into green bonds more transparent and immutable Green Impact Verification.

Such platform on the blockchain will give the investors the confidence to trust issuers and allows for strong audit trails. It was launched into production in Sep 2019 ahead of market launch.

The project is under the leadership of the Stockholm Green Digital Finance (SGDF), where 4ire Labs team is responsible for development and integration Chromia blockchain. The project is supported by SEB bank, Government Authorities in Sweden and Germany, Öhman, the Stockholm Sustainable Finance Center, GIZ, CICERO (Center for International Climate Research and the leading global provider of Second Opinions on green bonds).

Business part

Green Assets Wallet is a global trust platform that accelerates impactful asset allocation.

We created a platform consisting of 4 web apps (admin, issuer, investor, and validator apps

Issuer app.

Register as an issuer and add frameworks and green bonds, impact reports, projects to your profile. All changes to the green assets save to the blockchain and users can see all versions of the green bond or impact report.

Validator app.

The validator can see impact reports and validate them.

Investor app.

Investors can create portfolios of bonds and impact reports based on bonds.

Admin app.

Admin can block inappropriate accounts, approve/disapprove, create and delete accounts. Admin can see every Issuer report/framework/project.

Technical part

Technologies stack:

• Frontend: React, Mobx, Apollo GraphQL client, yarn workspaces, Ant.design UI framework.
• Backend: Express.js, GraphQL, Chromia, and Postgres.
• Docker, AWS

We used Chromia to simplify our work with blockchain. Chromia uses postgres in its core and you can use simple SQL queries to get data from the blockchain. You do not need to learn new approaches. All your experience with DBs with Chromia is not useless.

All 4 web apps use a shared library of React components and GraphQL queries. It was implemented by Yarn workspaces.

With GraphQL we reduced our time to change API and add new endpoints to get different data from DB and Blockchain. It helped us to add new queries directly from the frontend by adding new configs. It made the work of the frontend and backend teams more independent. 

How the architecture looks like?

The platform is built on Chromia blockchain – both a blockchain and a relational database.

Alongside this, code on the blockchain is also transparent, so green impact calculations are always performed using the same fair method. No surprises, and no arguments about rounding errors! Chromia is written on Rell language ( specifically written for Chomia). Most dapp blockchain platforms use virtual machines of various kinds.

But a traditional virtual machine architecture doesn’t work very well with the relational data model, as we need a way to encode queries as well as operations.

For this reason, we are taking a more language-centric approach: a new language called Rell (Relational language) will be used for dapp programming.d in the context of Rell, blockchain as a method for secure synchronization of databases on nodes of the system. Thus Rell is very database-centric.

On September 5th 2019, GAW was also presented at 4ire Labs FinTech Meetup in Stockholm together with Jorgen Mundin, Chief Solution Architect at Chomia Blockchain. You can check our the vidoe recording of this speech below.

Jörgen Modin, Chief Solutions Architect at Chromaway was presenting the case, where was integrated Chromia blockchain in Green Debt Market aimed to make the investments into green bonds more transparent and immutable green impact verification. This is a mutual project with 4ire Labs and Stockholm Green Digital Finance.
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Why sustainable finance matters?

The green bonds are not delivering on their fullest potential in terms of market size or additionality, however there has been the significant growth each year. At the same time, investors want to be protected and have a positive and measurable impact on society.

Green bonds experience enormous market potential expected to reach vital $1 trillion in 2020 compared with $250 bn in 2019. Thus, it could be a huge potential market where investors, validators and issuers of the Green Bonds could be connected and having the transparent relationships.

If we invest in solar in Sweden, we meet one SDG. If we can find a solar investment in Africa, we can meet up to 7 SDGs, reaching beyond clean energy targets to gender, equality and health. — Åke Iverfeldt, CEO Mistra

When did the journey of Green Assets Wallet start?

The Green Assets Wallet (GAW) has passed a very long journey before getting the grant and it started in 2017 when they won Climate KIC Ideation Award and secured seed funding for the development of a prototype.

• Securing 435 000 EUR from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), for the development of a Minimal Viable Product in 2018.

• Establishing and co-creating the technology with a multidiscipline team of leading green finance experts, blockchain specialists and sustainable investment practitioners.

• 7 pilot issuers from Latin America, Asia and Europe testing and co-developing the technology.

• Launching the first version at Climate Finance Day in Paris 2018.

• Securing 300 000 EUR from Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), and 500 000 SEK from Stockholm Sustainable Finance Centre for taking the MVP to Production Standard in 2019.

What is next?

As blockchain technology continues to disrupt the finance sector through decentralization, immutability, and cost/capital efficiencies, we are very delighted to be part of this revolution. The GAW has been already launched into production and we have big plans with the list of improvements. The goal for 2020 – full market expansion with the new investment types (crowdfunding) and automated API integrations.

Current status: The official released was on 12th Dec and it is still on-going collaboration with the Stockholm Green Digital Finance. We will be working on implementing new features for the investors, integration with the exchanges in 2020.

Discover more about the Green Assets Wallet on their official website: https://greenassetswallet.org

Review provided by Cecilia Repinski, CEO Green Assets Wallet about our collaboration on Clutch.