How Proof of Growth works
Proof of Growth is a permanent public record showing that a specific tree was verified at a specific place and time, and confirmed again in later years. It is the difference between saying a tree was planted and being able to prove it.
What actually gets recorded
Not your personal life. The record ties together the essentials needed to audit a claim: that a tree at a given location was verified at a given moment, and which reward followed from it. The point of putting it on a public chain is that nobody, including the project, can go back and rewrite history when it becomes inconvenient.
The verification path
- Capture. The planter photographs the tree in the app. The photograph carries its location, so the claim is anchored to a place rather than to a promise.
- Identity of the tree. Each tree carries a tag, so next year's photo can be matched to the same tree instead of a different one that happens to look similar.
- Automated checks. The image and its location data are checked before submission is accepted, filtering the obvious failure modes: a stock photo, a picture of a screen, a location that does not match.
- Write. The accepted proof becomes an on-chain record, and the reward settles.
Why annual re-verification is the important half
Paying once, on planting day, rewards a photograph. Paying every year rewards a living tree. That single design choice is what stops the model from becoming another unverifiable planting claim.
If a tree does not survive, rewards for it simply stop. Nothing is clawed back, and a new tree can be planted and verified. The result is that ongoing rewards always trace to something still standing.
What this fixes in the wider market
Carbon and reforestation markets have one persistent weakness: verification. Buyers of offsets frequently cannot confirm the underlying work, and audits are expensive, periodic and easy to distrust. A public, continuous, per-tree record does not solve everything, but it moves the burden of proof from marketing to mathematics.
That is also why the same infrastructure is interesting to companies with reporting obligations, which is covered in verifiable ESG proof.
Honest limits
- Proof of Growth proves that a tree was verified, not that it will live forever. Survival shows up in whether next year's verification happens.
- Automated checking is strong but never perfect; it is a filter, backed by the fact that fraud attempts are permanently visible rather than hidden.
- The record is only as useful as the network it sits on, which is why the chain choice matters. See why Solana.