Cryptoversal authors are helping to build an infrastructure of sustainable blockchain-powered books. We are nurturing a creator-centric culture that puts authors in control, protects their rights, rewards their efforts, and innovatives new reader experiences and communities.
Join us.
Our Sustainable Future
In these early days of a nascant NFT book industry, our authors are demanding the adoption of best practices to guide us into a sustainable future.
Decentralized Files
More durable than an ebook file on a single computer or device, decentralized files are distributed across a network, making them resistant to erasure or censorship.
Immutable Ledgers
More authoritative than a paper receipt or email, an entry in an immutable public ledger on a blockchain certifies a smart-book’s ownership and provenance.
Smart Contracts
Enhancing the text of a traditional book, smart contracts can govern innovative transactions, features, and experiences in ways we are only beginning to explore.
Author Benefits
Because our books are governed by smart contracts instead of accounting departments, we can provide benefits no traditional publisher has ever been able to provide:
- Automated royalty splits among all contributing authors;
- Authors will receive a royalty on the inital sale and a secondary royalty each time a previously purchased copy is resold by one reader to another;
- Royalties will be distributed directly into each author’s wallet as sales are recorded; and
- A complete real-time record of sales is always viewable on an immutable ledger that can’t be fudged or forged.
Preserving the Environment
Smart-books offer an opportunity to create sustainability in publishing.
Printed Books Are Part of the Problem
The current paper pulping process chews up 24 trees, each 6-8 inches in diameter and about 40 feet tall, to produce a ton of paper. To manufacture that ton of paper, 20,000 gallons of water are contaminated with lignin, alcohols, chlorates, and other chemical agents and inorganic materials. The manufacture of paper also releases significant volumes of nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, and carbon dioxide into the air.
Using recycled paper is better, but recycling a ton of paper still requires an additional 7 trees and produces carbon emissions and chemical waste, especially if a de-inking process is required. Paper fibers can only be recycled 3-5 times before they fall apart completely, so fresh paper stocks will always be required even with maximal recycling.
Whether new or recycled, paper-based products account for about 1% of the world’s transportation and energy industries, which together account for about 69% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. And at the end of their service, discarded books take up valuable landfill space and release another potent greenhouse gas, methane, as they continue to degrade over a period of years.
The environmental toll of printed books is a combination of air pollution, water pollution, reduced landfill capacity, greenhouse gas emissions, and reduced CO2 uptake from deforestation.
NFT Books Can Be Part of the Solution
The carbon footprint of our NFT books can be measured in emissions generated by the combined energy consumption of our blockchain transactions plus our office operations.
For the office, we use best practices in energy conservation and renewable energy sources. For minting our NFTs, we use Polygon, a layer-2 scaling solution that runs alongside the Ethereum blockchain. Most transactions in our NFT Bookstore on Polygon are priced in MATIC, the native currency of the Polygon blockchain.
Our carbon accounting adds the impact of our high-efficiency Polygon transactions, our share of Polygon-to-Ethereum bridge transactions, and the impact of our office operations. This total carbon footprint is then offset with certified carbon credits at the 200% level to achieve the net-negative result of pulling two CO2 molecules out of the atmosphere for every molecule we are responsible for putting in.
We purchase REDD+ credits that reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation through conservation, sustainable forest management, and the enhancement of carbon stocks. In addition to cleaning CO2 from the atmosphere, these efforts help to preserve the biodiversity of endangered ecosystems, provide green jobs to boost impoverished communities, conserve water resources, control soil erosion, and reduce the siltation of rivers, which in turn protects fisheries and prevents damage to facilities generating renewable hydroelectric power.
The fact that we also eliminate the environmental impact of any printed books we replace is just an added bonus.
Crypto Climate Accord
Cryptoversal Books is a signatory to the Crypto Climate Accord, which was modeled after the Paris Climate Accords of 2015. We are not only committed to reducing our own carbon impact, but are also pushing to adopt sustainable practices across the entire NFT publishing industry.