In the Bono Region of Ghana, a crucial restoration effort is underway to revive 242 hectares of degraded land surrounding the Tain River. Once rich but deteriorated by continuous farming, grazing, and bushfires, this area is now undergoing restoration led by the Environment and Agroforestry Foundation. Since 2022, over 120,000 seedlings have been planted, and approximately 150 hectares are actively under restoration. The project focuses on building the capacity of community members-including women and youth-through training in nursery establishment and improved agroforestry techniques, leading to increased food production and income through carbon credit accreditation.
But crucially, this isn’t just a tree-planting initiative. It is a data-verified asset.
Tain River Ghana is one of 300+ forest projects across 30+ countries that live on Open Forest Protocol (OFP), a digital platform built to solve one of the most significant bottlenecks in the fight against climate change: the lack of transparent, affordable, and scalable measurement for carbon credits.
The Problem: Carbon Markets Built For the Few
The voluntary carbon market is projected to scale by a factor of 100 by 2050. However, the current infrastructure is struggling to keep up. Traditional carbon verification is manual, prohibitively expensive for small and medium sized-projects, and opaque.
There are an estimated 400 million hectares of land globally that could be restored if farmers and landowners had the tools to monetize that restoration. Currently, they don’t. The gatekeepers of the carbon market are too slow and too costly for the vast majority.
OFP establishes itself as the new Digital Carbon Standard For Forest Restoration and subject matter expert in Digital Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (dMRV). By digitising and automating verification end-to-end, OFP is building a market that works for the many, not the few, removing the cost and complexity that prevent capital from flowing to high-quality nature projects.
A New Standard for Digital Trust
As a World Economic Forum Uplink Top Innovator, OFP is used by 90+ project developers in more than 30 countries, with backing by Venture Capitalists Übermorgen Ventures, Mercy Corps, and Foundations.
They are backing OFP because the platform offers a “truth machine” for environmental assets:
- 100% Traceable: Every tree, data point, and carbon credit is recorded in a secure, tamper-evident digital ledger. Each credit carries a unique project ID, enabling investors and carbon credit buyers to transparently audit project records from day one.
- Rigorously Verified: OFP utilizes a decentralized network of validators (forest experts and satellite data firms) to verify the ground data collected by projects. Annual verification is simultaneously validated by multiple verification bodies, increasing the quality of the credits.
- Standardized Scalability: Unlike the fragmented traditional market, all projects on OFP use the same open-source tools and equations. This standardizes the asset class, understanding one carbon credit on OFP means understanding them all.
A trustworthy carbon market turns restoration into a viable economic engine.
When landowners can reliably access carbon finance, biodiversity returns, water systems stabilize, and local communities gain a recurring income stream that rivals the profits of deforestation. For the off-taking corporations, this provides net-zero compliance with full confidence.
For a limited period starting December 10th, Open Forest Protocol is inviting investors to acquire equity for a limited time via its public fundraising on Republic. The proceeds from this round will enable:
- Entry into new markets with biodiversity and mangrove verticals and digital ground monitoring tools
- Onboard the next 1,000+ projects to scale their validated model
- Expand into key countries like Brazil, Ghana, Colombia, Kenya and beyond
- Strengthen their team to support this global-scale system
This is a unique opportunity to back the infrastructure layer of the new carbon economy- funding verifiable global impact while tapping into a multi-billion-dollar growth market.