Interview: meet CAPS-CO project!

August marks the end of the ONTOCHAIN journey for the innovators selected in Open Call 3, bringing to the spotlight the exciting work that they developed. We talked with two members from the CAPS-CO team - Jack Sharp, Head of research at Remade Group; and Taras Filatov, founder & CEO of Dappros, some weeks ago. They explained us how they found in ONTOCHAIN the right support for providing a secure way to derive carbon footprint using primary data, without revealing the sources of that information.

Jack Sharp, Head of research at Remade Group; and Taras Filatov, founder & CEO of Dappro

Can you briefly present us your team? What’s your story and what drives you?

The CAPS-CO team is led by RemadeGroup (RMG) and supported by Dappros. 

RemadeGroup (RMG) are an ambitious new entry in the green tech space and have been named by Digital Catapult as one the next generation Net-Zero startups set to reshape the future of industry. Our goal is to facilitate the uptake of circular economy practices throughout industry to reduce our collective impact on the world we live in. RemadeGroup consists of two primary arms - our RemadeMarket e-marketplace dedicated solely to the sale of remanufactured products, and our Remade Net-Zero carbon accounting consultancy.

Dappros Ltd are an established name in Blockchain development and offer expert consulting services in Web3 and DLT including Ethereum EVM, Solidity smart contracts development and tokenization. They also offer a Web3 platform including AWS hosted blockchain-as-a-service solution. They know everything about L1 and L2 chains, zero knowledge proofs etc. This ensures we have a solid infrastructure and expertise backing for integrating our solution with ONTOCHAIN ecosystem and for its future exploitation by the industry. 

In simple words, what is your project about and how does it contribute to the ONTOCHAIN software ecosystem?

Industrial companies in EU and UK are coming under legislative pressure to accurately record the carbon footprint of the products they manufacture. However full carbon footprint involves the entire supply chain and administrative enterprises along that supply chain (primary data). Industry is generally reluctant to disclose such details, given its confidential nature and usefulness to competitors. Using ONTOCHAIN we have come up with a beautifully simple solution, a secure way to derive carbon footprint using primary data without revealing the sources of that information. We are providing a solution to a huge industry problem, how to safely incorporate their primary (highly confidential data from their supply chain and assembly lines) into carbon accounting so that they can reap the benefits of their sustainable solutions and gain positive traction with buyers and governments. We think that CAPS-CO could be ONTOCHAIN’s most marketable project to date. The market need is huge and prescient, driven by both legalisation and consumer demand. It is stated that each year European public authorities spend the equivalent of 16% of the EU Gross Domestic Product on the purchase of goods, such as office equipment, building components and transport vehicles; services, such as buildings maintenance, transport services, cleaning and catering services and works. 

How did you come up with this project idea and what benefits will it bring to the end users?

The CAPS-CO concept itself came about as a result of RemadeGroup’s mission to facilitate the uptake of circular economy practices. Our outreach to potential clients confirmed that there was a real need for a shareable network of product carbon footprints that businesses could contribute to with confidence that their business activities would be kept confidential. When considering the current alternatives, in our words “everybody wants to take part, but nobody wants to take the risk”. Our CAPS-CO tool removes the risk by providing trusted and traceable emissions calculations, using sensitive primary data, while retaining confidentiality as our highest priority. 

In what way is ONTOCHAIN contributing to your own ambitions?

RemadeGroup are devoted to helping industry to reduce their environmental impact. In light of this, RemadeGroup are launching Europe’s first platform solely dedicated to the trade of remanufactured products which allow savings of up to 80% of carbon emissions. Our CAPS-CO tool will greatly enhance our offer by providing clear-cut evidence of the environmental benefits inherent in choosing remanufactured products over new ones. We aim to couple the development of this tool with RemadeGroup’s mission and incorporate ONTOCHAIN infrastructure to achieve our goals of providing solutions that allows industry to work towards achieving a circular economy. 

How do you assess the experience of working with other ONTOCHAIN teams? What type of synergies do you want to explore/are already exploring?

The ONTOCHAIN coaches have been invaluable to our development, providing an expert eye for both potential flaws and improvements. It is exciting to be a part of an ecosystem formation effort where current projects continue the path paved by the works of Phase 1 and Phase 2 projects. Our phase involves practical applications which we believe is the most exciting phase. It is also important we are sharing experience and co-mingling with our colleagues from the same phase. We have explored and apply multiple synergies from using the EVM and blockchain infrastructure provided, to learning from the experience of projects relevant to our use case - such as low code, zero knowledge proof, accounting etc. 

What are your expectations regarding the ONTOCHAIN software ecosystem and its contribution to the NGI priority areas?

Based on the current trajectory, we expect the ONTOCHAIN software ecosystem to become the new major blockchain ecosystem and a hub for the latest developments in the next generation of internet. Based on the NGI priorities, we are excited to see the development of numerous applications prioritising decentralisation and trust, security and resilience, and collective intelligence. Our project has a challenging role to fulfil as we are closing the gap between businesses and blockchain / web3 technology, eliminating their concerns around confidentiality, complexity, and maintenance cost of such solutions. This helps to achieve the NGI priorities making the technology more accessible and trustworthy.