🔄About WaterLab

WaterLAB, aka WaterDAO, is short for Water Information Certification Systems DAO LLC, an open-source entity that is autonomously managed by smart contract to better enable Voluntary Water Markets.

Introduction

The global water crisis is intensifying due to climate change, poor water management, and increasing demand. The southwestern United States, particularly the Colorado River Basin, faces severe water scarcity affecting seven states and over 40 million people. By 2030, global freshwater demand is projected to exceed supply by 40%. This problem exists because we believe water just exists. Unlike electricity that must be created (and therefore has real value), we view water as a resource that occurs naturally everywhere, free of any real ‘generation’ cost. We value the distribution of water and the associated infrastructure, but we don’t value the production of water. We deplete surface water and groundwater reserves, forcing water shortages that negatively impact GDP. The solution to water is not using less, it is the opposite; it is recognizing that water is our most critical domestic input and generating more can lift economic productivity. However, producing more fresh water requires investment in technology for regenerating unusable water, whether it’s saline and needs desalination (removing salt) or impaired and needs treatment (cleaning wastewater).

In this context, the WaterLAB ecosystem emerges as an innovative platform leveraging blockchain technology and sustainable desalination to address these challenges. This white paper outlines the key components of WaterLAB, focusing on who we are, our mission, purpose, water credit tokenization, sustainable desalination, and their potential to revolutionize water management and alleviate water scarcity.

Purpose

The purpose of WaterLAB is to better enable Voluntary Water Markets by creating a standardized protocol for classifying and measuring the beneficial attributes of regenerative water. This protocol, mints $WATER (which stands for regenerative water), conveys ownership over the beneficial attributes of regenerative water, such as sustainable desalination. $WATER acts as a transparent, certified, and verifiable water credit for qualified water sources. It is only created when an additive unit of water has been generated from a validated source (1 $WATER = 1 m^3 water).