SunMint Whitepaper | TrueSight DAO

SunMint Program Design Document (PDD)

Project Title: SunMint

Project Proponent: TrueSight DAO / Agroverse InitiativeProject Type: Reforestation and Agroforestry-Based Carbon SequestrationRegions: Amazon and Atlantic Rainforests, BrazilProject Duration: 30 years (renewable crediting period)

1. Project Description

SunMint is a regenerative finance (ReFi) initiative under TrueSight DAO’s Agroverse program. It partners with small-scale farmers and Indigenous communities in Brazil’s Amazon and Atlantic rainforests to restore degraded lands through sustainable agroforestry—primarily via cacao cultivation. By financing upfront costs and verifying on-the-ground actions, SunMint enables participants to transition away from extractive practices toward nature-positive livelihoods, generating certified carbon credits along the way.

TrueSight DAO is founded with the purpose of building a better world based on compassion. Our core values are mindfulness, compassion, and equanimity.

2. Purpose and Objectives

Restore degraded lands and increase carbon sequestration through agroforestry

Improve local livelihoods by providing upfront financing and long-term revenue through carbon credits and cacao exports

Promote biodiversity, soil health, and ecosystem regeneration

Re-integrate Indigenous knowledge and cultural practices into land stewardship

Establish transparent, digital MRV systems using decentralized technology

3. Project Boundary

Geographic Scope: Select parcels within Brazil’s Amazon and Atlantic Rainforests

Temporal Scope: 30 years, with ongoing monitoring and periodic verification

Carbon Pools Considered: Aboveground biomass, belowground biomass, soil organic carbon

3.1 Geospatial Data Model: Tree Points and Plot Boundaries

SunMint records geospatial data as two complementary GeoJSON entity types, allowing both single-point registrations today and full plot boundaries as they are digitized:

Trees are always Points. Each registered tree is a GeoJSON Point carrying its coordinates plus species, status, QR link and measurement history. Points are the measurement and carbon-accounting anchor.

Plots are always Polygons. A plot is a GeoJSON Polygon defining the project parcel boundary. Each tree carries a plot_id linking it to its plot; a tree without a plot_id stands alone as a point and remains fully valid.

Why this separation is required: carbon methodologies (VM0047 / PM002) assess baseline, additionality and monitoring at the plot/parcel level, not per tree point. Plot boundaries make the carbon accounting and satellite verification defensible; tree points alone cannot define a project area. Satellite scene caching is clipped to plot boundaries rather than grid cells, and the impact map renders plots as shaded polygons with tree markers on top.

Backfill tolerance: boundaries may be added after registration without migrating legacy records. Trees without a plot simply render as standalone points until their plot is defined, keeping every consumer (map, cache, carbon calculation, on-chain anchor) on a stable contract.

4. Baseline Scenario

The baseline condition reflects continued degradation from cattle ranching and monoculture soybean farming, leading to biodiversity loss, GHG emissions, and disrupted ecosystems. Without intervention, these lands are unlikely to recover naturally due to lack of financial incentives and entrenched economic pressures.

5. Additionality

Small-scale farmers and Indigenous communities face a major barrier: cacao trees take ~1.5 years to bear fruit, creating a gap in income. Without financial and technical support, transitioning to agroforestry is not feasible. SunMint overcomes this through:

Upfront financing and DAO-based benefit sharing

Long-term cacao buyer partnerships

On-chain MRV tools that streamline carbon certification

6. Project Activities

Site Selection & Preparation

Conduct feasibility studies on land use rights and logistics

Environmental impact assessments and permitting

Prepare land with biodiversity-sensitive restoration strategies

Agroforestry Implementation

Plant cacao trees with native support species

Install water access and irrigation systems

Apply organic, regenerative practices and integrated pest management

Carbon Credit Development

Apply Verra VM0047 (ARR) methodology — the ICVCM-approved standard for afforestation, reforestation and revegetation (supersedes the earlier VM0017 reference; VM0017 is SALM, not ARR)

Quantify sequestration via biomass surveys and soil sampling

Certification decision — Plan Vivo first: Plan Vivo’s PV Climate framework is now CCP-Eligible under the ICVCM, the same benchmark Verra’s top methodologies hold; high-rated nature-based PVCs traded at a median above €30/t in 2025, above the broad VCU market, because buyers pay a premium for community co-benefits — which is SunMint’s model. The strongest cacao/coffee agroforestry precedents (ACORN, CommuniTree) certify under Plan Vivo, not Verra. Verra VM0047 + CCB is retained only for the scale phase or when a corporate offtake buyer demands VCS liquidity. Two-registry portfolio: Plan Vivo for smallholder plots (faster, cheaper, community-aligned, ≥60% revenue to communities), Verra on demand.

Cacao Production and Export

Harvest and sell cacao beans to ethical chocolate makers

Create marketing around social and environmental impact

Secure offtake agreements for price stability

Monitoring & Evaluation

Establish plots with satellite-based tracking via free APIs — Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem (ESA Sentinel-2, 10 m, 5-day revisit, free for commercial use), Microsoft Planetary Computer (Sentinel-2 + Landsat + HLS), USGS EarthExplorer (Landsat, 30 m, archive to 1972, public domain) — for the VM0047 non-forest ≥10-year baseline and annual leakage context; farmer smartphone monitoring of tree growth (DBH/height/species via mobile app + calibration card, per the ACORN / CommuniTree / TREEO operating model) is the primary measurement layer, cross-checked by the free satellite tier; drones deferred to post-pilot calibration sampling on a minority of plots

Regular soil, biomass, and biodiversity sampling

Social and environmental impact assessments

Community Engagement

Partner with Indigenous and local farming communities

Implement participatory governance via TrueSight DAO

Provide training and ongoing capacity-building

7. Traceability and Digital Verification

All project activities are logged and verified via open-access, on-chain tools:

Community-First MRV — a decentralized sensing network: SunMint's monitoring model is decentralized by design: every farmer with a phone is a sensor node — measuring their own trees (DBH/height via calibration-card photos), holding their own digital signature, and attesting growth on-chain. This is the model this era demands: community ownership of data and value, with independent verification layered on top for credibility.

Farmer-as-node: repeat geotagged measurements of the same tree over time (Greenstand Treetracker / TREEO model), signed by the farmer's own keypair — no central survey team required

Layered verification: farmer phone data cross-checked by satellite (NOR Space) and calibrated by drone surveys (PODream); VVB audits at credit issuance

Value flows to communities: ACORN pays ~80% of credit value to producers; Plan Vivo requires ≥60% of revenue to reach communities — the people who grow the trees keep the value

This era's precedents: Plan Vivo participatory monitoring (CommuniTree operating since 2010), ACORN (Rabobank + Solidaridad), Greenstand (open-source, 500k+ trees), Open Forest Protocol (on-chain community reporting), and the cacao transparency movement (direct-trade co-ops, bean-to-bar)

Why it matters for the mission: 10,000 hectares of Amazon restoration cannot be surveyed by a central team — it can only be restored and verified by thousands of community farmer-nodes. Decentralization is the mechanism by which the mission scales

Farm Registration:https://dapp.truesight.me/register_farm.html

Tree Planting Reporting:https://dapp.truesight.me/report_tree_planting.html

Public Registries:

Farms Registry

Trees Registry

Each record includes:

Timestamped evidence

Farmer identity and location

Photos and optional GPS metadata

Public auditability to reduce fraud risk

8. GHG Emissions Reduction Estimation

Estimates to be finalized with baseline data and methodology selection. Methodology (pilot): Plan Vivo PM002 (ACORN’s certified smallholder agroforestry methodology, active 29/09/2025) with Verra VM0047 (ARR) at scale. Accounting chain (PM002 v1.0): DBH + species → allometric equation → AGB; Eq. 1 ΔBGB_p = ΔAGB_p × R (root:shoot, IPCC default R = 0.32); Eqs. 6.1/6.2 PVCs = ((ΔAGB_p + ΔBGB_p) × 0.47) × 44/12 × (1 − A_pre)(1 − A_unc)(1 − LD)(1 − AR)(1 − RB) − (E_proj − E_base), with AR = 10% achievement reserve and RB = 20% risk buffer — fully implementable in the farmer mobile app. Precedent: Andean Cacao (Colombia) — the first large-scale cacao agroforestry project validated and verified under Verra (VM0047 + CCB co-certification, 56,000+ VCUs on first issuance), demonstrating that cacao-based ARR is bankable under VCS. Phone-MRV precedent: ACORN (Rabobank/Solidaridad/Microsoft) and Taking Root's CommuniTree certify under Plan Vivo using farmer mobile-app tree measurement cross-checked by satellite; TREEO (1M+ trees, 94–95% DBH accuracy) and Greenstand Treetracker (500k+ trees) run photo-based growth monitoring; peer-reviewed smartphone DBH accuracy is R² ≥ 0.95. Verra has not yet approved formal dMRV requirements for forest carbon — phone data feeds monitoring reports while credits flow through standard VVB validation.

Expected sequestration: X tCO₂e per hectare per year

Initial project area: Y hectares

Total expected reduction: X × Y tCO₂e annually

9. Leakage

To prevent displacement of deforestation activities:

Target already-degraded lands (not pristine forests)

Engage communities with sustainable income alternatives

Monitor surrounding regions for indirect land use change

Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) with Indigenous communities

No forced or child labor

Equal access and benefit-sharing for all genders

Grievance redress channels

Biodiversity conservation zones integrated into farm design

11. Risk Assessment and Mitigation

Risk	Mitigation
Drought/Climate Events	Use resilient native species; establish water harvesting systems
Market volatility for cacao	Long-term contracts and diversified buyers
Political/regulatory instability	Align with local NGOs; legally recognized farmer cooperatives
Verification delays	Use real-time on-chain verification tools to streamline certification

12. Scaling and Replication Strategy

Following pilot validation, SunMint aims to:

Expand to 10,000+ hectares across Amazon and Atlantic regions

Replicate in other tropical forest regions (e.g., Congo Basin, Southeast Asia)

Offer on-chain carbon credit issuance and transparent benefit sharing via DAO governance

Funding — existing grants (no external investors needed): cocoa-industry funds (Cocoa Horizons/Barry Callebaut, Cocoa Life/Mondelēz $1B, Cargill Cocoa Promise, Fundo Vale — Belterra/Caapora cacao agroforestry incubators), GCF + IICA cacao program (12,500 ha, 5.18 Mt CO₂e, 3,000 producers — SunMint’s model at scale), iNovaland South Bahia restoration call (R$8.8M), Gitcoin climate rounds (US$200k+ pools), CFC grants (cocoa focus), Forest Conservation Fund (quarterly cycles), regen.fund, Regenerative Agriculture Foundation. Blockers are paperwork + sequencing, not money. A complementary self-funding flywheel: a share of cacao/chocolate sales is reserved to fund the carbon-certification pipeline (PDD development, VVB validation, monitoring) alongside the share reserved for planting trees — so the more chocolate sold, the more credits can be issued, closing the loop between product revenue and carbon infrastructure.

Milestones — executed: M0 ✓ native Android/iOS SunMint app shipped (2026-08-23, Capacitor 8, offline-first, RSA-signed); M1 ✓ first tree linked to a sold QR code (2026-08-22); M2 ✓ PDD methodology corrected to VM0047/PM002. Planned: M3 Stage 0 capital + grant applications (Q3 2026) · M4 PDD draft + free-satellite baseline (Q4 2026) · M5 monitor_tree_growth module (Q4 2026) · M6 VVB engagement + Plan Vivo validation (Q1 2027) · M7 pilot planting 20–50 ha (2027) · M8 Terra RFP / offtake + scale (2027+).

Execution has started — the first funded tree: QR code FOUNDERHAUS_BOUGAINVILLEA_20260821_1 — SunMint Tree Planting Pledge, status ASSIGNED_TO_TREE, owner paloma@founderhaus.club, manager Gary Teh, ledger truesight.me/sunmint/main, linked 2026-08-22 (first real non-test tree–QR link). Scan: https://edgar.truesight.me/agroverse/qr-code-check?qr_code=FOUNDERHAUS_BOUGAINVILLEA_20260821_1

13. On-Chain Carbon Credit Lifecycle — the Tree as Transaction Anchor

Every carbon credit issued by SunMint is born attached to a specific tree, and every subsequent value movement — sale, proceeds, farmer payout — is recorded on-chain as a transaction referencing that same tree. The tree is the anchor; the chain is the audit trail; the farmer is the beneficiary. This follows the TrueChain architecture already used across the DAO (DApp/Edgar → Google Sheets → Mirror Service → TrueChain private PoA chain, chain ID 98794616), where Sheets remain the source of truth and an immutable transaction is appended for each event, with a transaction hash written back to the sheet row (“TrueChain Tx” column) for idempotency and “View on TrueChain” lookups.

1. Credit issuance (attached to the tree): a verified measurement (farmer photo + calibration card → DBH → allometric biomass → CO₂e) is recorded against the tree’s identity. The credit is issued with the tree ID as its provenance anchor — it cannot exist without the tree that produced it.

2. Credit sale (a sales transaction): when a credit is sold, a sales transaction records buyer → credit, sale price, and timestamp, all tied to the tree’s identity — the same pattern used for cacao bag sales receipts.

3. Proceeds return to the tree: the sale proceeds are booked back to the tree’s carbon account — a payment event whose recipient is the tree’s on-chain record — so revenue is provably attributable to the trees that generated it.

4. Farmer payout (a payout transaction): money moves from the tree’s carbon account to the farmer, recorded with the farmer’s identity, the tree ID, and the amount — every payment is auditable, and farmers can see exactly which tree paid them.

13.1 How Carbon Is Calculated — the measurement-to-CO₂e chain

Every tree’s carbon number comes from its trunk diameter (DBH), measured in the close-up photo with the calibration card. The chain is fully transparent and reproducible:

AGB = a × DBH^b — above-ground biomass (kg), species allometric equation (Chave et al. 2014 pantropical form; per-species coefficients for cacao, Brazil nut, açaí, mahogany, jatobá).

BGB = AGB × 0.32 — below-ground (root) biomass, IPCC default root:shoot ratio.

C = (AGB + BGB) × 0.47 — carbon content, IPCC default carbon fraction.

CO₂e = C × 44/12 — CO₂ equivalent, the carbon-to-CO₂ molar ratio.

Worked example: a cacao tree (a = 0.0673, b = 2.397) at DBH 10 cm → AGB ≈ 25.1 kg → total biomass ≈ 33.1 kg → carbon ≈ 15.6 kg → CO₂e ≈ 57 kg (project-level 10% achievement reserve and 20% risk buffer applied at the program level). Each photo-pair measurement drives this exact chain, so the number on every tree is method-backed and auditable.

Partner one-liner: “We measure each tree’s trunk diameter from a photo with a calibration card, convert it to biomass using the standard tropical allometric equation (Chave et al. 2014), then apply IPCC factors (roots ×0.32, carbon ×0.47, CO₂ ×44/12) — so every tree has a verifiable, method-backed CO₂e number.”

The result is a per-tree provenance timeline anyone can follow: planted → measured → credit issued → credit sold → farmer paid. It is the same registry pattern TrueChain already runs for contributions, invoices, QR codes, and sales receipts — SunMint adds the carbon lifecycle as a first-class flow on that existing infrastructure. One honest dependency: the credit-issuance leg is only as strong as the measurement pipeline behind it (the calibration-card photo analysis that computes DBH automatically), which is why the measurement workflow and its audit trail are the foundation this lifecycle is built on.