Wild Ledger: Proof of Biology Protocol for Autonomous Wildlife Conservation

1. Abstract 🧬

Wild Ledger is a conservation protocol on Polygon that introduces Proof of Biology - a new way for wild animals to generate and control the funding required for their own protection.

By streaming GPS and biological signals from endangered species into a Proof of Biology oracle, the protocol converts verified movement and behaviour into on-chain impact units and programmable cashflows. These cashflows are automatically routed to a Conservation Vault that pays for rangers, veterinarians and critical field operations.

Instead of relying on one-off donations and opaque funding chains, Wild Ledger treats animals as an autonomous wildlife workforce and their data as a scarce, yield-generating digital asset. This whitepaper describes the problem, the Proof of Biology mechanism, the protocol's architecture, token and NFT design, governance, and the security and IP model that make the system difficult to spoof or fork.

2. Motivation & Problem Statement 🌍

Global biodiversity is collapsing, and conservation finance is failing to keep pace.

• Begging-bowl economics. Most conservation is funded through donations and grants. In downturns, funding collapses precisely when ecosystems are most vulnerable.
• Opaque flows. Donors and institutions struggle to see where money goes or how it translates into impact on the ground.
• High overhead. NGOs and field organisations spend a large portion of time and resources on fundraising, reporting and administration rather than direct protection.

At the same time, there is strong growth in ESG and impact-oriented capital, and a maturing stack of Web3 infrastructure that can provide transparent, programmable rails for capital allocation. What is missing is a credible bridge between real animal biology and on-chain economics.

3. Vision: From Charity to Autonomous Wildlife Workforce 🐾

Wild Ledger reframes wild animals from wards to workers.

• Each tracked animal becomes an on-chain economic agent that "mines" its own protection budget simply by staying alive and behaving naturally.
• The protocol recognizes that a wild animal's location, movement patterns and biological signals are a scarce and valuable digital asset.
• Instead of asking for donations to keep an animal alive, the system pays out when the animal proves its biological activity.

This is the foundation of a new category: an economy built by nature, for nature, in which animals generate the cashflows that fund their own guardians.

4. The Proof of Biology Model 🔬

4.1 Concept

Proof of Biology is a verification and accounting model where:

• Input: Real-world telemetry from GPS collars and, optionally, biometric sensors (e.g. heart rate, temperature, motion).
• Verification: An off-chain service aggregates and validates this data, computing metrics such as distance travelled, movement patterns, and other biological KPIs for each animal.
• On-chain assertion: A structured claim - "this animal has performed X verified biological work over period T" - is signed and submitted to a smart contract.
• Outcome: The contract mints internal impact units and unlocks protocol fees which are routed to conservation partners.

In the same way that Proof of Work uses electricity and computation to secure a blockchain, Proof of Biology uses verified animal behaviour to trigger funding flows.

4.2 Design goals

• Non-gameable. It must be economically and technically difficult to spoof or fabricate biological signals.
• Non-speculative core. Impact units (WAI) are internal accounting tokens, not freely traded speculative assets.
• Composable. The mechanism should integrate cleanly with existing DeFi, RWA and data-market primitives.
• Safe for animals. Data must be aggregated and delayed to avoid increasing poaching risk.

5. System Architecture 🛰️

5.1 High-level components

• On-animal devices. GPS collars and, optionally, biometric sensors deployed by partner organisations.
• Data aggregators. Platforms such as EarthRanger (primary), Movebank and Mapotic that receive and normalise telemetry.
• Off-chain Proof of Biology oracle backend. A backend service that:
  • Pulls telemetry from aggregators.
  • Computes daily/periodic movement and other KPIs per animal and per partner.
  • Applies proprietary anti-spoofing and anomaly detection heuristics.
  • Signs validated "mint" payloads.
• On-chain oracle contract (WildLedgerOracle). Verifies signed payloads (EIP-712) and mints internal impact units (MovementToken, symbol WAI) to partner addresses.
• Treasury & Conservation Vault. Smart contracts that receive protocol fees and automatically route a governance-configured share (e.g. 70%) to whitelisted conservation partners.
• Governance (WILDLEDGER). An ERC-20 governance token used to delegate votes and control parameters such as fee percentages, partner onboarding and oracle sets.
• dApp & analytics. User-facing interfaces to explore animals, see impact, support funding and track flows.

5.2 Data flow

1. Ingest. Partner organisations deploy collars; telemetry is streamed into EarthRanger and other aggregators.
2. Aggregation. The oracle backend computes distance and other metrics over a time window (e.g. the previous UTC day) for each animal.
3. Verification. Backend applies anti-spoofing checks, including path plausibility, speed constraints, historical patterns and optional biometric cross-checks.
4. Signing. For each partner wallet, the backend signs an EIP-712 payload specifying the quantity of WAI to mint.
5. On-chain mint. The WildLedgerOracle contract verifies the signature and mints WAI to the partner's address.
6. Economic routing. Protocol fees derived from WAI-linked actions and other revenue sources accumulate in the Treasury, which routes a fixed share to the Conservation Vault.

6. Tokens, NFTs and Economic Design 💹

6.1 WILDLEDGER - Governance and Utility Token

• ERC-20 token deployed on Polygon.
• Total Supply: 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) tokens - fixed, no additional minting.
• Used to delegate and exercise voting power over key protocol parameters.
• May be used in future for governance-gated features, partner curation and access to impact dashboards (subject to compliance).

Token Allocation:

Launch Protections:

• Max wallet size: 1% of supply (10M tokens)
• Max transaction: 0.5% of supply (5M tokens)
• Whitelist-only period: First 60 blocks (~2 minutes)
• Transfer tax: 5% for first 48 hours (reduces to 0%)

6.2 WAI - Internal Movement / Impact Units

• ERC-20 token (MovementToken) minted only by the oracle contract.
• Represents GPS-verified distance and related Proof of Biology metrics for accounting and reporting.
• Not intended as a freely traded speculative asset; used internally for tracking impact between partners, Treasury and Vault.

6.3 Species-Based Token Mining Tiers

WAI tokens are minted using a tiered multiplier system that ensures fair distribution across species with different movement patterns:

Conservation Status Bonuses provide additional multipliers:

• Critically Endangered: 2.0×
• Endangered: 1.5×
• Vulnerable: 1.2×

Formula: Weighted Distance = Raw Distance × Tier Multiplier × Conservation Status Bonus

This ensures a critically endangered rhino 🦏 walking 5km/day generates meaningful tokens (45,000 WAI), while an albatross 🕊️ flying 500km/day doesn't dominate the supply (198,000 WAI). See Species_Token_Mining_Tiers.md for full details.

6.4 NFTs - Biology-linked Digital Collectibles

• ERC-721 / ERC-1155 tokens representing species, herds or individual animals.
• May incorporate biology-driven traits based on Proof of Biology KPIs (e.g. range size, longevity, offspring, stress levels) without exposing sensitive raw location data.
• Provide a mechanism for communities, brands and collectors to support specific species and campaigns with on-chain provenance.

6.5 Revenue and Allocation

Revenue streams may include:

• Proof of Biology protocol fees on km-tokenisation and related actions.
• Subscriptions for live tracking dashboards and impact streams.
• Aggregated, privacy-preserving data/API products (with partner consent).
• Co-branded NFT campaigns and sponsorships.

A governance-configured share of protocol fees is automatically allocated to the Conservation Vault, with the remainder supporting devices, operations, audits and reserves.

6.6 25-Year Mining Emission Schedule

The Mining Rewards Pool (150M WILDLEDGER) is distributed over 25 years with a halving-style reduction:

Reward Distribution Formula:

NGO Daily Reward = (NGO's Daily WAI / Total Network WAI) × Daily Emission

This ensures sustainable, long-term funding for conservation while preventing inflation.

7. Governance 🗳️

The protocol uses a governance + timelock model based on audited OpenZeppelin primitives.

• Governor contract. Manages proposals and voting using WILDLEDGER as the governance token.
• Timelock controller. Enforces delays between proposal approval and execution to allow for review and intervention.
• Role-based access control. Critical roles such as ORACLE_ROLE and VAULT_ADMIN are assigned to the timelock/governor rather than EOAs for production.

Governance is responsible for:

• Whitelisting and off-boarding conservation partners and oracles.
• Adjusting fee percentages and allocation ratios.
• Approving contract upgrades (where applicable) after audits and due process.

8. Protocol Security & IP 🛡️

Wild Ledger is designed to be transparent where it builds trust, and closed where it prevents spoofing and forks.

• On-chain transparency. All treasury flows, Conservation Vault withdrawals, and governance actions are fully on-chain. Smart contracts are open to external review and security audits, and core parameters (fee %, partner whitelist, oracle roles) are controlled by governance with timelocks.
• Business Source License (BSL). The core Proof of Biology protocol is released under a Business Source License. The code is visible for inspection and integration, but commercial forks are prohibited for an initial 2–4 year window. This gives the project a critical head start while still enabling ecosystem trust and contributions.
• Defensive publication. We intend to publish a cryptographically timestamped technical specification of the GPS-to-smart-contract pipeline and Proof of Biology oracle. This establishes prior art, making it difficult for third parties to obtain patents that would restrict the use of this mechanism.
• Trade-secret verification logic. Only the minimal payment logic runs on-chain. The sensitive parts of the Proof of Biology oracle – anti-spoofing heuristics, anomaly detection and cross-checks between GPS and biological signals – are kept off-chain as trade secrets. This reduces the attack surface for data manipulation and makes it significantly harder to clone the full system.
• Data and model moat. As more animals, collars and conservation partners join Wild Ledger, the protocol accumulates a proprietary dataset of real animal movement and behaviour. This data continuously improves our Proof of Biology verification models, creating a compounding behavioural and model moat that cannot be replicated simply by copying code.

Together, these measures create a defensible Proof of Biology oracle stack: open enough to be audited and trusted, but structured so that spoofing, hostile patents and "fork and flip" clones are difficult and economically unattractive.

9. Roadmap (Illustrative) 🗺️

1. Pilot Phase (Testnet).
   • Integrate with initial data aggregators and a small number of conservation partners.
   • Deploy and test the full telemetry – oracle – contract pipeline on a test network.
2. Mainnet Launch.
   • Complete external security audits and formal verification where appropriate.
   • Launch on Polygon with a limited set of partners and species.
3. Ecosystem Expansion.
   • Onboard additional NGOs and regions.
   • Launch biology-linked NFT collections and partner campaigns.
   • Expand data products and analytics dashboards.
4. Protocol Maturation.
   • Iterate on Proof of Biology heuristics and anti-spoofing models using accumulated data.
   • Gradually decentralise oracle operations and governance participation.

10. Risks & Considerations ⚠️

Wild Ledger carries technical, operational and social risks, including but not limited to:

• Technical risk. Bugs in smart contracts or oracle code may lead to incorrect mints or fund routing. Mitigation includes audits, bug bounties and conservative upgrade patterns.
• Data integrity risk. GPS or biometrics can be spoofed, jammed or misreported. Mitigation includes layered anti-spoofing, anomaly detection, and conservative payout thresholds.
• Partner risk. Misaligned or under-performing partners can reduce impact. Mitigation includes due diligence, transparent on-chain flows and governance-driven partner management.
• Regulatory risk. Token design and usage must remain compliant with evolving regulations. Mitigation includes jurisdiction-specific legal advice and clear separation between utility, governance and speculative functions.

11. Conclusion 🌱

Wild Ledger proposes a new primitive for conservation finance: a Proof of Biology protocol where animals themselves, through their verified biology, generate the cashflows needed to fund their own protection.

By combining open, auditable smart contracts with a defended Proof of Biology oracle stack and a growing behavioural data moat, the project aims to create a durable, scalable mechanism for aligning communities, capital and conservation around a single, programmable loop: animals move – biology is verified – funding flows – animals are protected.

Appendix 📎: Website Copy – "Why this is hard to fork"

Wild Ledger is not just a brand; it is a protected Proof of Biology oracle stack. The funding rules and Vault flows are transparent on-chain, but the core engine that turns raw GPS and bio-signals into verified Proof of Biology is guarded by a Business Source License, a defensive publication of our GPS-to-contract pipeline, and trade-secret anti-spoofing logic. As more animals and partners join, we accumulate a unique dataset of real wildlife behaviour that continuously improves our models. Copying the code is not enough – without the data, the verification heuristics and the IP shield around them, it is extremely hard to replicate the protocol at the same level of security and reliability.