Pacific Northwest · Oregon · Washington · Northern California

Good stewardship
deserves recognition.

Small landowners, tribal members, and conservation organizations across the Pacific Northwest have been protecting creeks, restoring forests, welcoming wildlife back to the land, and stewarding coastal estuaries for generations — often at their own expense. LandMark Protocol changes that by turning verified stewardship into real conservation value that communities and businesses need.

20 Founding steward spots
$0 Cost to register
GAIA Issued to all stewards
2026 Oregon coast pilot

The Problem We're Solving

Good stewardship has always
had ecological value.
Now it can have economic value too.

For decades, small landowners, tribal stewards, and conservation organizations have provided clean water, salmon habitat, carbon sequestration, flood protection, and estuary health to their communities across Oregon, Washington, and Northern California — public benefits that nobody paid for. The conservation credit markets that could change this were designed for industrial-scale operators, not the family with 80 acres along a creek, a tribal member managing ancestral forest land, or a watershed council doing active restoration work.

Verification costs that exclude small landowners

Traditional conservation credit verification costs significant money upfront — before a single dollar of revenue. Minimum project sizes of 200–500 acres lock out most family landowners entirely.

Stewardship costs money with no return

Maintaining riparian buffers, planting natives, managing timber responsibly — these actions cost time and money while generating enormous public value. There has been no mechanism to recognize or reward them.

Conservation organizations can't capture their value

Watershed councils, land trusts, and restoration nonprofits do extraordinary work restoring degraded lands. Yet the ecological value they create has no financial pathway back to fund more of it.

Buyers need verified local stewardship

Water utilities, timber companies, and corporate buyers increasingly need auditable proof of watershed stewardship. The supply of high-integrity local credits simply does not exist yet. LandMark creates it.

"We are not extracting value from the land. We are protecting it, restoring it, and passing it on better than we found it. We should be rewarded for that stewardship — not just asked to keep absorbing the cost."
— The founding principle of LandMark Protocol

What LandMark Protocol Does

Verified stewardship.
Real rewards. Local impact.

LandMark Protocol is a blockchain-based platform that makes verified watershed stewardship financially accessible for small landowners, tribal stewards, and conservation organizations across the Pacific Northwest — Oregon, Washington, and Northern California. We aggregate parcels of 20–500 acres into grouped conservation projects, dramatically reducing the cost of verification that has historically excluded small landowners and tribal members.

Every stewardship action — a native planting along a creek, a stretch of stream fencing, a sustainable timber harvest with maintained buffers — is logged, verified by satellite imagery and peer review, and permanently recorded. That record becomes a conservation credit with real market value.

We partner with established conservation organizations and existing credit registries rather than building our own. Your credits carry the credibility of recognized verification standards, opening access to serious buyers — municipal water utilities, timber companies pursuing sustainability goals, and corporate buyers who need auditable local stewardship.

This is not a speculative blockchain project. It is a practical tool for landowners, conservation organizations, and communities who already believe in the work — and deserve to be supported for doing it.

Stewardship first

Every design decision starts with what serves the landowner and the watershed — not what maximizes token value.

Legacy land ethic

We are building on generations of Pacific Northwest land stewardship tradition. Technology serves that ethic — it does not replace it.

Real ecological outcomes

Credits reflect verified actions with measurable watershed impact — not theoretical projections or paper commitments.

Indigenous stewardship honored

Tribal nations and their members have stewarded Pacific Northwest land, water, and salmon for thousands of years. LandMark recognizes that stewardship and builds pathways for tribal landowners to participate fully.

Local roots, regional vision

Piloting in Lincoln County, Oregon. Designed for the full Pacific Northwest coast range — from Northern California to the Salish Sea.

The Protocol

From stewardship action
to conservation credit

No technical expertise required. No upfront cost for founding stewards. Just document the work you are already doing on your land.

01

Register your parcel

Register your land parcel on the blockchain using your county tax lot number. Answer basic questions about your land type, creek access, and stewardship goals. Upload a Google Earth image of your parcel to establish your baseline. Takes about 15 minutes.

Free for founding stewards
02

Log stewardship actions

Every time you plant natives along a creek bank, install stream fencing, maintain a no-spray buffer, host beavers, or manage timber responsibly — log it with a GPS-tagged photo. Peer review and satellite imagery verify your work.

Earn GAIA rewards immediately
03

Sell conservation credits

Your verified actions generate SourceWater and TimberShield credits — purchased by water utilities, timber companies, and conservation buyers who need auditable proof of watershed stewardship. Real buyers, real dollars.

Market-rate verified credits

How the cooperative works

LandMark works like a stewardship cooperative. Each landowner's verified actions contribute to a shared grouped project — pooling parcels across a watershed until the combined acreage qualifies for formal credit issuance. No single landowner needs to meet minimum project sizes alone. When credits sell, revenue flows back to each steward proportionally, based on their verified actions and acreage. The blockchain makes every contribution and every distribution permanently auditable — every participant can see exactly how their share was calculated, with no intermediary controlling the math.

Think of it the way a fishing cooperative or grain cooperative works — individual members contribute what they have, the group achieves what none could alone, and the returns are shared fairly. The difference is that LandMark's ledger is public, permanent, and controlled by no single organization.

What Counts as Stewardship

Actions that create
new ecological value

LandMark rewards stewardship actions that go beyond baseline requirements — protecting more, restoring more, and doing more than current practice or regulation requires. Registry credits require verified additionality. GAIA tokens are issued to all registered stewards.

Riparian restoration

Native plantings along creek banks and riparian corridors, bank stabilization, invasive species removal from streamside areas.

SourceWater credits
→ USFS: Riparian buffer effectiveness in Pacific Northwest watersheds

Stream protection

Stream fencing to exclude livestock, no-spray buffer maintenance, woody debris placement, and pool habitat enhancement for salmon and steelhead.

SourceWater credits

Sustainable timber management

Harvest practices that maintain old-growth characteristics, retain legacy trees, protect riparian buffers, and preserve habitat structure above minimum regulatory requirements.

TimberShield credits

Native planting and reforestation

Tree planting on degraded sites, conversion of non-native pasture to native forest, and restoration of historically forested land.

TimberShield + SourceWater credits
→ USDA NRCS: Forest carbon and reforestation outcomes

Wetland, estuary and marsh protection

Protecting wet meadows, seasonal wetlands, tidal marsh fringes, estuary buffers, and seeps that provide critical water storage, flood attenuation, carbon sequestration, and late-season flow. Private land bordering Oregon's estuaries holds some of the highest carbon storage potential of any habitat type.

SourceWater + EstuaryBlue credits
→ EPA: Wetlands and climate change — carbon sequestration research

Conservation organization stewardship

Watershed councils and land trusts doing active restoration work can register their projects and earn credits for verified outcomes — creating a new revenue stream not dependent on grant cycles.

All credit types

Nature's Most Effective Watershed Restorers

Hosting beavers
is stewardship.

Beavers are the most cost-effective watershed restoration tool in the Pacific Northwest. A single beaver colony does work that would cost tens of thousands of dollars to replicate with machinery and labor — raising water tables, creating wetlands, slowing runoff, filtering sediment, and providing cold, late-season flows that salmon and steelhead depend on.

Landowners who tolerate or actively encourage beavers on their property are providing extraordinary ecological value to their watershed — value that has never been recognized or rewarded by any conservation program.

LandMark Protocol changes that. Beaver hosting — documented with GPS-tagged photos and verified by satellite imagery — counts as a verified stewardship action. The watershed benefits are real, measurable, and ongoing. They deserve to be compensated.

This is one of the most distinctly Pacific Northwest dimensions of what we are building. No global carbon platform is paying attention to beaver hydrology in the Oregon coast range. We are.

Water table elevation

Beaver ponds raise local water tables, keeping soils moist through summer drought and providing late-season streamflow critical for salmon migration.

Wetland creation

A single beaver family can transform a degraded creek corridor into a productive wetland complex in three to five years — habitat that would take decades to restore manually.

Carbon sequestration

Beaver-created wetlands are among the most carbon-dense ecosystems on earth, capturing and holding carbon in waterlogged soils for centuries.

Sediment and nutrient filtration

Beaver ponds trap sediment and filter agricultural and stormwater runoff, significantly improving downstream water quality for communities and fish.

Protocol Preview

What the platform
looks like

A preview of the steward dashboard — where landowners register parcels, log stewardship actions, and track their conservation credits and GAIA rewards.

landmarkprotocol.org/dashboard
7 Founding stewards
1,240 Acres registered
34 Actions verified
12 Credits issued
R
Native riparian planting — 120 red alder Johnson Creek parcel · GPS verified · 2 hours ago
+ GAIA
B
Beaver colony documented — active dam, 3 ponds Siletz Tributary parcel · Satellite verified · Yesterday
+ GAIA
S
Stream fencing installed — 340 ft Bear Creek parcel · Peer reviewed · 2 days ago
+ GAIA
C
SourceWater credit sold — coastal water district Johnson Creek parcel · Verified · 3 days ago
$480

Conservation Credits

Three credit types.
One connected ecosystem.

LandMark Protocol is currently in pilot phase. The following credit framework is under active development with registry partners. LandMark is designed to issue verified conservation credits tied to specific stewardship actions with real ecological outcomes in Pacific Northwest watersheds, forests, and coastal ecosystems. Credit values will vary by type, ecosystem, verified outcomes, and the market they serve — from voluntary carbon markets to watershed mitigation and habitat banking programs.

SourceWater Credits

Watershed and riparian protection actions

  • Riparian native planting and restoration
  • Stream fencing and buffer maintenance
  • Beaver habitat hosting and documentation
  • Wetland and seep protection
  • Water quality monitoring actions
  • Salmon and steelhead habitat enhancement
Pricing: market-rate, determined by verified outcomes and buyer type. Watershed habitat credits in the Pacific Northwest command significant premiums over commodity carbon credits.

TimberShield Credits

Sustainable forest management above baseline

  • Above-baseline riparian buffer retention
  • Legacy tree and old-growth structure retention
  • Extended rotation beyond regulatory minimums
  • Native reforestation of degraded sites
  • Snag and coarse woody debris retention
  • FSC-aligned management practices
Pricing: aligned with verified forest carbon and sustainable timber certification markets. One credit = one metric ton CO₂ equivalent where carbon methodology applies.
Emerging

EstuaryBlue Credits

Tidal wetland, estuary margin, and coastal ecosystem stewardship

Oregon's estuaries — where rivers meet the sea — are home to tidal wetlands that store more carbon per acre than almost any other ecosystem on earth, including old-growth forest. Eelgrass beds, tidal marsh fringes, and forested tidal wetlands along Oregon's coast are scientifically documented blue carbon sinks that are almost entirely absent from global carbon markets.

Private landowners whose property borders or buffers Oregon estuaries — maintaining tidal marsh fringes, protecting estuary water quality through upstream stewardship, and preserving coastal wetland habitat — are providing extraordinary ecological value that no existing program recognizes or rewards.

Oregon is ahead of every other state on blue carbon policy. In 2023 Governor Kotek signed legislation explicitly calling for blue carbon conservation as a climate strategy. The science is maturing rapidly. LandMark Protocol is actively developing EstuaryBlue Credits in partnership with Oregon coastal research institutions — bringing private landowners into this emerging market from the ground floor.

EstuaryBlue Credits are in active development. If your land borders or buffers an Oregon estuary, tidal wetland, or eelgrass bed, we want to hear from you — you may be a founding steward for this credit type.

Who LandMark Serves

Built for every part
of the watershed community

LandMark Protocol creates value across the full range of people and organizations who depend on healthy Pacific Northwest watersheds.

Small landowners (20–500 acres)

Turn the cost of stewardship into a revenue stream. Access conservation credit markets previously reserved for industrial-scale operators. Keep your land in your family while doing right by your watershed.

Tribal nations and tribal members

Tribal stewards have protected Pacific Northwest land, water, and salmon for thousands of years. LandMark opens conservation credit markets to tribal landowners — recognizing and rewarding stewardship that predates every other program by generations. Fee-simple tribal lands and individual allotment parcels are fully eligible.

Watershed councils and land trusts

Register restoration projects and earn credits for verified outcomes. Create a new revenue stream not dependent on grant cycles — funded by the real ecological value you already produce.

Water utilities and municipalities

Purchase SourceWater credits as a cost-effective alternative to filtration infrastructure investment. New York City saved over $4 billion by investing upstream in watershed protection rather than treatment plants.

Timber companies and forest industries

Earn TimberShield credits that support FSC certification and sustainability commitments at lower cost. Turn responsible forest management into a marketable, verified asset with a compelling local story.

Corporate sustainability buyers

Auditable, verified stewardship credits for sustainability reporting — with Pacific Northwest provenance and a genuine community story behind every credit. Local, real, and traceable from Oregon to the Salish Sea.

Future generations

Every verified stewardship action is permanently recorded on the blockchain — an immutable legacy of what was protected, restored, and passed on. The land remembers. So does the ledger.

Oregon Coast Pilot — 2026

Become a
Founding Steward

We are enrolling 20 founding stewards along the Oregon coast to launch the protocol — open to private landowners, tribal members, and conservation organizations. Free registration, a GAIA stewardship bonus issued at launch, and a direct voice in how LandMark develops across the Pacific Northwest.

■  13 founding steward spots remaining of 20
1

Free land parcel registration

Normally requires a small protocol fee. Founding stewards register at no cost during the pilot phase.

2

GAIA founding steward bonus

GAIA tokens will be issued to all registered founding stewards at protocol launch — regardless of registry credit approval status. GAIA is the stewardship participation token, funded by credit sales.

3

Listed as charter founding member

Publicly recognized as one of the original stewards who helped build the protocol from the ground up.

4

First priority on credit sales

Founding stewards receive first access when verified credits become available for sale to buyers.

5

Direct input into protocol development

Help shape the verification standards, action categories, and governance of LandMark as it develops.

Registry credits require actions that go beyond current practice or regulation. Your GAIA founding bonus is issued at registration regardless.

No commitment required · We'll be in touch within 48 hours

Welcome to LandMark Protocol.

You're on the founding steward list. We'll reach out within 48 hours to get your parcel registered. Thank you for your stewardship.