What is the Impact Oracle?

The Impact Oracle is a transparent, public ledger that catalogs all possible impacts that can arise in a business. It is a constantly updated taxonomy of economic activities (any activity of making, providing, purchasing, or selling goods or services) and their associated price.

IO is open source and available for all to measure against. The prices are defined by decentralized consensus (discussed later) and represent a flexible pricing system. This flexibility reflects the changes in value and impact over time. For example, the change in the price of carbon can affect the price of offsetting in a transaction, the ledger updates this continuously.

How is it used?

The ledger is not just a long list of activities but rather an interactive directory that connects with the digital systems of any enterprise. Companies connect their operational software (such as accounting, procurement, project management, compliance, supply chain, etc.) with the IO. The data is encrypted, analyzed, and scored. The score is used to price the externalities of the given transaction. The costs associated with positive impact are compensated with tokens, while the negative impacts are offset. The producer can adjust their impact or price accordingly and send the contract to a buyer.

The impact is accounted for in the transaction and is calculated from the economic activities associated with the contract*.* The activity is encrypted to protect the data security of any business process (discussed later) while the impact costs are transparent. This creates a system in which goods and services with positive impact become more affordable, and all goods and services are accountable.