Ethereum Alignment
Green Goods is built on Ethereum because Ethereum's core promises — self-sovereignty and sovereignty-preserving coordination at scale — are exactly what regenerative communities need. This page maps how Green Goods embodies the Ethereum Foundation Mandate and tracks our ongoing alignment work.
Why This Matters
The Ethereum Foundation Mandate establishes that Ethereum exists to provide two things:
- Self-sovereignty — users have final say over their identities, assets, actions, and agents
- Sovereignty-preserving coordination at scale — communities can organize without violating individual freedom
Green Goods extends both promises to communities that have never heard of Ethereum — waste collectors in Cape Town, agroforesters in Brazil, solar teams in Nigeria, students in Uganda. These are the "fellow travelers" the EF Mandate explicitly names:
"On the horizon are our friends working for clean air, and for regenerative and sustainable habitats and permaculture... for forkable technology transfer; free open source collaboration in science, software, hardware, health..."
We don't need to retrofit alignment. Green Goods was born from these values.
CROPS: Our Non-Negotiable Properties
The EF Mandate defines CROPS — Censorship Resistance, Open Source, Privacy, Security — as the sine qua non of all Ethereum development. Here is how Green Goods upholds each property.
Censorship Resistance
No actor can selectively exclude valid use or break functionality.
| Property | How Green Goods Delivers |
|---|---|
| Permanent records | Work submissions, approvals, and assessments are recorded as EAS attestations — on-chain, immutable, and independent of any platform |
| On-chain governance | Hats Protocol roles are transparent and verifiable — no hidden admin can silently revoke a gardener's standing |
| Offline-first | The client PWA works without internet; submissions queue locally in IndexedDB and sync when connectivity returns. No centralized server can prevent a gardener from documenting their work |
| Permissionless contracts | All Green Goods smart contracts are deployed on public chains. Anyone can interact with them directly |
Active work to strengthen:
- Building a direct EOA submission fallback for when the Pimlico paymaster is unavailable (the "zero option" the EF demands for every intermediated function)
- Documenting self-hostable indexer configuration so communities aren't dependent on Envio
- Ensuring all contract read functions work via direct RPC, independent of any indexer
Open Source and Free, as in Freedom
No privileged code or hidden specifications.
| Property | How Green Goods Delivers |
|---|---|
| Fully open source | The entire monorepo — contracts, client, admin, shared libraries, indexer, agent — is publicly available and auditable |
| Forkable | Any community can fork Green Goods, deploy their own contracts, and run their own instance. The architecture explicitly supports this |
| Open protocols | We build on open standards (EAS, Hats, ERC-4626, ERC-6551, ERC-4337) rather than proprietary infrastructure |
| Public specs | Product specifications, architecture diagrams, and integration docs are all published in our documentation site |
All Green Goods code uses permissive licensing. We commit to never changing to a source-available or restrictive license.
Privacy
User data is not exposed beyond necessity or against their interests.
| Property | How Green Goods Delivers |
|---|---|
| Passkey biometrics stay on-device | Biometric data never leaves the secure enclave. No server ever sees a gardener's fingerprint or face |
| Local-first data | Work submissions are composed and stored locally before any network transmission |
| No tracking | The client PWA does not include analytics, advertising SDKs, or behavioral tracking |
| Selective disclosure | Gardeners choose what to submit and when. The platform does not surveil or auto-capture |
Active work to strengthen:
- Investigating encrypted IPFS storage for sensitive community data (photos of work sites may reveal locations of vulnerable communities)
- Exploring zero-knowledge proofs of work completion that verify impact without revealing underlying evidence to all parties
- Evaluating protocol-level privacy features as Ethereum develops them
Security
Things must do what they claim to do, no more and no less.
| Property | How Green Goods Delivers |
|---|---|
| Schema-validated attestations | EAS resolvers enforce that work submissions, approvals, and assessments conform to their schemas — no invalid data enters the chain |
| On-chain role enforcement | Smart contracts verify Hats Protocol roles before permitting actions. No UI-only access control |
| UUPS upgradeable proxies | Contracts are upgradeable for bug fixes, but upgrade authority is governed by the Hats tree — not a single admin key |
| Modular architecture | Optional modules (Octant vaults, Gardens V2, Cookie Jar, ENS) degrade gracefully. A failure in one module cannot break the core system |
Self-Sovereignty in Practice
The EF Mandate's first fundamental principle is that a user has the final say over their identities, assets, actions, and agents. Here is how this manifests in Green Goods:
The Walkaway Test
The EF's ultimate goal is for Ethereum to pass the walkaway test — functioning even if the Foundation disappeared. We hold ourselves to the same standard.
| Component | Survives Walkaway? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| EAS attestations | Yes | On-chain, permanent, schema-validated |
| Hats Protocol roles | Yes | On-chain, governed by hat tree |
| Vault deposits | Yes | ERC-4626 standard — depositors can withdraw directly via contract |
| Smart contracts | Yes | Deployed, verified, interactable by anyone |
| Client PWA | Partial | Service worker caches enable offline use, but hosting required |
| Indexer | Partial | Envio-hosted; self-host path being documented |
| Paymaster | Partial | Pimlico dependency; direct wallet submission as fallback |
Our commitment: Every intermediary Green Goods relies on will have a documented, functional "zero option" — a direct path that works without that intermediary. This is an ongoing engineering priority, not a future aspiration.
Sovereignty-Preserving Coordination
The EF Mandate's second fundamental principle is that self-sovereignty must scale without violating anyone else's. Green Goods demonstrates this through community coordination that respects individual agency:
- Gardens are voluntary — Gardeners join and leave freely. No lock-in, no penalty for exit
- Roles are transparent — Every permission is visible on-chain via Hats Protocol. No hidden authority
- Governance is participatory — Conviction voting through Gardens V2 lets communities allocate resources without majority tyranny
- Impact is portable — A gardener's verified work history travels with them. It belongs to them, not to the garden or platform
- Capital is non-extractive — Vault deposits protect depositor claim value. Yield flows to community operations, not platform extraction
Not a Platform — A Protocol
The EF Mandate explicitly warns against platform dynamics. Green Goods is designed as open infrastructure, not a walled garden:
| What We Are | What We Are Not |
|---|---|
| Open protocol for impact verification | A platform that owns community data |
| Forkable infrastructure anyone can run | A service with vendor lock-in |
| Public goods tooling for regenerative work | A product studio extracting from users |
| Community-governed via on-chain roles | A company with centralized admin control |
Right Association
The EF Mandate states: "We prioritize working with individuals and teams who share our principles, spread them, and make their work legible."
Green Goods builds exclusively on commons-aligned, open-source protocols:
| Integration | Why It Aligns |
|---|---|
| Ethereum Attestation Service | Open, permissionless attestation infrastructure |
| Hats Protocol | On-chain, transparent, forkable role management |
| Hypercerts | Open standard for impact certificates |
| Gardens V2 | Conviction voting — governance without majority tyranny |
| Octant | Public goods funding through yield distribution |
| ERC-4337 (Account Abstraction) | Self-sovereign smart accounts, gasless transactions |
| ERC-6551 (Tokenbound) | Each garden is an NFT with its own smart contract account |
None of these are proprietary, VC-gated, or extractive. All are forkable, auditable, and designed for the commons.
Our Alignment Roadmap
Alignment is not a checkbox — it's ongoing work. Here is where we are and where we're headed.
Completed
- All code open source with permissive licensing
- Core data (attestations, roles, vaults) stored on-chain and portable
- Offline-first architecture ensuring self-sovereignty over connectivity
- Passkey authentication eliminating wallet/seed phrase barriers
- Modular contract design with graceful degradation
- Community governance via on-chain Hats Protocol roles
In Progress
- Direct EOA submission fallback (zero option for paymaster)
- Self-hostable indexer documentation and tooling
- Privacy-preserving evidence storage (encrypted IPFS)
- Walkaway test simulation — verify communities can operate independently
Planned
- Zero-knowledge proofs for selective work disclosure
- Community-run infrastructure playbook ("Garden Survival Kit")
- Formal CROPS compliance audit of all contract modules
- Cross-layer analysis per EF Mandate Quandary 2 — ensuring no user chokepoints exist across the full stack
Living Resources
This section links to ongoing updates, research, and community discussions about Ethereum alignment and the broader regenerative ecosystem. These are living references — they evolve as the ecosystem does.
Ethereum Foundation
- The Ethereum Foundation Mandate — The full mandate document that this page responds to
- ethereum.org — Ethereum's community-maintained portal
- EF Blog — Official updates from the Ethereum Foundation
- EF Ecosystem Support Program — Grants and support for aligned projects
Regenerative Ecosystem
- Greenpill Network — The broader community of builders and gardeners
- Hypercerts Foundation — Impact certificate standard and marketplace
- Gitcoin — Public goods funding and Gitcoin Passport
- Octant — Public goods staking and epoch funding
- Kernel — Web3 educational community aligned with regenerative values
Research & Standards
- EAS Documentation — Ethereum Attestation Service technical docs
- Hats Protocol Docs — Role-based access control for DAOs
- ERC-4337 — Account abstraction standard
- ERC-6551 — Token-bound accounts standard
- ERC-4626 — Tokenized vault standard
Community Voices
As blog posts, talks, and articles are published about Green Goods' alignment work, they will be added here.
- Coming soon: "CROPS and Regeneration" — How censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security serve environmental communities
- Coming soon: "The Walkaway Test for Impact Platforms" — What happens when the platform disappears?
- Coming soon: "Beyond Crypto" — Bringing Ethereum's promises to communities that need them most
This is a living document. If you've written about Green Goods' alignment with Ethereum's mission, or if you spot an area where we can strengthen our CROPS properties, open an issue or submit a PR. The alignment work belongs to the community, not to any single team.
Next page
Next: Architecture
See how these alignment principles are reflected in Green Goods' technical architecture — from contract modules to the offline-first data layer.
Architecture Overview