Noble Profit is building BFLO technology, a blockchain to bring transparency to global markets and accountability to the estimated >$20 Trillion investment capital which is moving towards socially responsible investing strategies.
BFLO is a decentralised protocol to report, track and verify sustainability claims. With the global climate crisis looming, Climate Week NYC (and similar events on other occasions) take on renewed importance as government and business leaders converge in and around the UN to discuss what immediate action can be taken.
“We’re at a tipping point where, according to UBS, $1 out of $4 under wealth management are being divested into ESGs,” says Amy Seidman, Noble Profit founder and creator of BFLO. “But investors still face an enormous challenge due to the opacity of the companies and funds claiming to be sustainable.”
Noble Profit, BFLO and tracking
At Noble Profit, Seidman and CTO Gary Fitts are building BFLO to track data behind natural capital flows and resources. They have adopted blockchain technology to enable an indelible digital fingerprint. This can be used for independently verifying sustainability claims. Their logic asserts that transparency is needed to show investors the overlap of companies behind (for example):
- the burning in the Amazon Basin or in Indonesia or elsewhere
- pollution of the oceans
- enabling slavery in supply chains.
The company is starting with the formation of BFLO Lab. As part of this initiative it is inviting corporations with sustainability reporting initiatives to be among the first to use the system. Claimed benefits range:
- from building a bulletproof audit trail
- to reporting and verifying Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other metrics.
Using BFLO to track and report ESG and SDG data:
- provides accountability
- establishes a system of checks and balances
- can apply to all stakeholders in an ecosystem.
Beyond the BFLO basics
In addition to mitigating risk by streamlining the audit process, the BFLO proponents hope to make it easier to manage:
- documents and identities from vendors, certifiers and auditors
- non-financial claims, such as those related to education, financial inclusion and volunteerism.
Beyond these, the intention is that enterprises, governments and finance can:
- privately use BFLO for due diligence and audit trails
- choose to report their SDG and ESG metrics publicly – via BFLO’s blockchain-enabled API.
“We are seeing a wakeup call internationally. Global leaders starting with Costa Rica, France and Germany are stewarding climate solutions,” said Seidman. “And we are starting to see real action by US companies like IBM, Dell, Walmart and others, under the leadership of organizations like the Business Roundtable and their #EmbracingSustainability campaign.”
Selected BFLO use cases for climate regeneration
Noble Profit has already aligned with several climate restoration projects. These share the BFLO vision and will contribute data to the development of the BFLO protocol. This includes SID System, a tree tracking tech that uses IoT to report carbon offsets in Brazil.
As part of BFLO Lab, Minae (Costa Rica’s Ministry of Environment and Energy, a leader in developing frameworks for climate mitigation), has provided critical insights which will inform Noble Profit and BFLO on carbon capture. Other use cases include:
- a simple tool for fuel engines; this comes from Sustainable Flow. It is a British company offering magnet technology to reduce carbon output. Its technology can also apply to optimising refrigeration (a major source for greenhouse gases)
- an approach to fair trade and the use of organic fibers in apparel. Indigenous Designs provides a SDG use case which translates to the ESG score of Nordstrom and investment fund BlackRock.
Enterprise Times: what does this mean
Noble Profit says it has designed BFLO to enable the security, compliance and scale required to create transparency and accountability for a healthy sustainable business and financial ecosystem. At the centre of BFLO is a decentralised protocol and a trusted third party validator network. Via these, BFLO offers ‘proof of reputation’ for stakeholders throughout the sustainable business value chain.
Contrary to the many positive (and overly-positive) data models which enterprises and governments promote, BFLO offers a tool to contrast uncomfortable climate change truths, especially those that often remain in the shadows. To try to attract the maximum attention, especially at Climate Week in New York City in the week of of September 23rd (2019), Noble Profit has invited select businesses, financiers and other interested parties to join the BFLO Lab to test collaboratively its technology to model data and actions around SDGs and ESGs.
As an objective the BFLO Lab sounds admirable. Whether it is ‘sustainable’ may be much clearer in the next few weeks.
