CASE STUDY · PROJECT GENESIS 2.0 · BIS INNOVATION HUB

Genesis 2.0 · BIS

Data acquisition pipeline for one of the BIS Genesis 2.0 prototypes, treating data as an asset, signed at the edge, from metered device to digital green bond.¹

Project data

Genesis 2.0

Institution: Bank for International Settlements (BIS), Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre
Collaborators: Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the UN Climate Change Global Innovation Hub
Programme: Project Genesis 2.0, the extension of Project Genesis 1.0 (2021)
Consortium: Goldman Sachs (Asia) LLC, Allinfra and Digital Asset

The problem

A green bond promises an environmental outcome and pays in cash. In 2022 the BIS Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre, the HKMA and the UN Climate Change Global Innovation Hub asked whether the promise itself could be made an instrument: a mitigation outcome interest attached to the bond, delivering verified carbon units to whoever holds it at maturity. Such an instrument is only as good as the data behind the units. Measurement and verification by hand takes months while the bond trades in minutes, and the buyer of a carbon unit has no way to see the meter it came from.

The decision

Two consortia built two prototypes. In the consortium of Goldman Sachs, Allinfra and Digital Asset, Allinfra took the data. Allinfra registered the asset and its meters on Allinfra Climate, captured the readings at source so that only a device's own service could write into its data store and nothing could be altered between capture and storage, and served them by API to the tokenization platform, which ran on Goldman Sachs' platform built on Digital Asset's Daml and Canton, where the bond, the mitigation outcome interests and the carbon units lived as smart contracts. Nick led Allinfra's engineering on it.

What shipped

A working prototype against a simulated asset: the wind farm, "VietnamTestWind", and its issuer are fictitious by the report's own footnote, while the meters feeding it and the pipeline behind them were real.¹

Figures

50 MW
Onshore wind asset, simulated for the prototype
Table 1, p. 28
3 + 1
Revenue-grade production meters and one consumption meter
Table 1
Hourly
Reading cadence, captured at source
B.1.4.6, p. 39
USD 80m
Bond size
Table 3, p. 29
1,200,000
Mitigation outcome interests, one per verified tonne
Table 2, p. 28
USD 5
Price per interest, pre-funded at issue
Table 2
120,000 t
Verified carbon units a year, delivered on each anniversary for ten years
Table 2
8
Allinfra participants named in the report, Nick among them
p. 81

The instrument is a schedule

DWG GL-ILL-004 · Fig. 01 · Delivery scheduleVerified carbon units, delivered on each anniversary and accumulating to 1,200,000 t over the ten-year term.Table 2 and footnote 30, p. 28

Two capture paths were demonstrated: Allinfra's cloud Electric Reader, and in parallel a device-embedded reader and signer, so that a reading could be tied to the instrument from the point of capture. The transaction indexer was extended for a high volume of assets, devices and readings, and emission calculations ran as user-defined formulae at asset or device level.¹ The BIS published the report on 24 October 2022. Eight Allinfra participants are named in it, Nick among them as Head of Engineering.¹

What we would do differently

We would push harder, earlier, for a live asset in the prototype. The meters and the pipeline were real; the wind farm behind them was not, and a prototype proves most when the asset is live too.

We would also put the ESP32 reader on more assets. One device signing at source proves the path, but only a fleet tests the platform.¹ And we would pair each device to its local MQTT proxy by its own signature, so the key that signs a reading is the key that admits the device.