Why Verra's Deal With Hedera Really is a Big Deal

This article was written by Steve Zwick, Co-Founder at CarbonParadox in reference to the announcement of the strategic partnership between Hedera snd Verra.

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The ALLCOT Blue Carbon (ABC) Mangrove Restoration Project in Senegal, listed as Verra Project 4653, has become the first carbon project developed under a fully digital methodology to enter validation. The move could sharply reduce validation times and costs while boosting transparency across the market.

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The project uses a digitized version of Verra’s VM0033 methodology, which covers tidal wetland and seagrass restoration. Its submission coincides with a long-term partnership announced today between Verra and the Hedera Foundation. The collaboration aims to speed up the digital transformation of carbon markets by integrating Verra’s Project Hub with Hedera Guardian, an open-source platform for managing digital carbon methodologies and workflows.

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The partnership brings together efforts from different angles: Verra has been building backend infrastructure, ALLCOT digitized the methodology and supporting documents, and Hedera provides the underlying ledger technology.

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Verra’s Project Developer Hub was created to streamline project registration and review. Hedera has funded the digitization of methodologies across standards, while ALLCOT, through its digital unit ALLCOT.io, converted VM0033 into a machine-readable format. The digitized methodology is open source, part of a broader effort to make carbon project tools more accessible.

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Historically, validation has been one of the most difficult and expensive stages of developing a carbon project. The process has relied on lengthy PDFs and disorganized email threads, making review slow and error-prone.

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“Validation—usually a process that takes months of trading PDFs and spreadsheets—can now be streamlined through digital interfaces,” said Raphaël De Ry, head of digital innovation at ALLCOT.io. “That cuts turnaround time significantly.”

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By integrating with Hedera Guardian, Verra’s backend can now accept structured, searchable data. This lets reviewers assess key parts of a project—such as additionality or baseline scenarios—without scanning entire documents.

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Digital submission means project data is routed directly to the right Verra reviewers, allowing faster feedback. Automated systems also catch common mistakes, such as typos or illogical values, before submission. “If we can cut timelines down to weeks, that would already be amazing,” De Ry said.

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The structured format makes data easier to translate and analyze. It also captures ecological and social data that usually doesn’t make it into a traditional project design document.

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ALLCOT.io digitized the VM0033 methodology using its proprietary software, Straatos, which connects project data to Hedera Guardian and then into Verra’s Project Hub.

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“The methodology itself is about 8,000 lines of code,” De Ry said. “When you add calculations for each of the 40 years in the project, it grows to around 30,000 lines.”

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Digitizing VM0033 was a months-long effort that required coordination between ALLCOT, Hedera and Verra. Verra needed to build internal systems to accept and verify the digital input.

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“We were solving the puzzle from different sides,” De Ry said. “Now the loop is finally closed.”

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The effort is rooted in open-source principles. Once approved, digitized methodologies are available for anyone to use. The Hedera Foundation is offering financial incentives through a $250,000 bounty program, with $5,000 awarded for each approved methodology.

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The goal is to build fully digital systems for monitoring, reporting and verification, or dMRV. “The vision is that you don’t validate keystrokes—you validate the system,” De Ry said. Once a dMRV system is established, incoming data can be automatically validated, allowing for real-time tracking and possibly even quarterly credit issuance.

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Previously, many digital methodologies existed in isolation, without systems to accept or process them. “We’d digitize a methodology, then print a PDF,” De Ry said. “Now, the system is connected from start to finish.”

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The digital shift could expand access to carbon markets by cutting development costs. Small community-based projects, long considered too costly to validate, may now be feasible.

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“We had people come to us with 500-hectare projects, and we had to say no because we couldn’t afford to validate anything under 1,000 hectares,” De Ry said. “That’s starting to change.”

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The integration also opens the door to more transparent benefit-sharing. Future versions may track how carbon credit revenues are used to fund teachers, health workers or other public services through digital wallets and payment systems.

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