BPE Whitepaper

Abstract

Biosphere is a biodiversity exploration platform. People discover species and habitats, learn through BioQuest, and contribute to nature with actions that can be verified. BPE (Biosphere) is the platform’s reward token: an ERC-20 token on Polygon that is issued only when an eligible activity is verified by Biosphere’s servers.

This document explains what BPE is, how it is issued, the safeguards around it, what is live today and what is still planned. It is a working draft. It is not an offer, an investment proposal or financial advice, and it does not promise any value for BPE.

Why Biosphere exists

Biodiversity is declining worldwide, while most people have few simple, rewarding ways to learn about nature or take part in protecting it. Useful environmental actions — cleaning a beach, documenting a species, helping a restoration project — are rarely recognised, and their results are seldom recorded in a way others can trust.

Biosphere combines three things: knowledge (species, habitats, articles, a glossary), motivation (BioQuest: quests, collections, expeditions, levels) and recognition (BPE rewards for verified contributions). The aim is that people return because learning and acting feel rewarding — not only because of the token.

What Biosphere offers today

• A species catalog and profiles, habitat guides, a biodiversity journal, resources and a glossary.
• BioQuest: a daily identification quest, species mastery, collections, a weekly expedition, badges and explorer levels (XP).
• A Field Scanner that suggests which species is in a user’s photo using an AI model. It gives a qualitative likelihood, never a percentage, the photo is not stored and users can report wrong results.
• Impact Actions: real litter cleanups, species observations and habitat restoration, submitted with photo evidence, checked automatically and decided by a person, with an appeal.
• Sponsored campaigns: organizations can fund a set of Impact Actions with a planned budget and receive a report of what was verified (see How Biosphere is funded).
• Explorer accounts with wallet linking: a user proves ownership of a wallet by signing a free message (Sign-In with Ethereum); no transaction or permission is requested.
• The Earn page, which shows the real BPE balance read from the blockchain and every reward with its status.

XP and BPE are separate. XP measures progress in BioQuest and is never converted into BPE automatically. Only specific, verified milestones can create a BPE reward.

The BPE token

Name / symbol

Biosphere / BPE

Standard

ERC-20 with 18 decimals (OpenZeppelin 5 contracts: capped, pausable, burnable, role-based access control)

Network

Polygon Amoy (chain 80002) during testing. Polygon Mainnet (chain 137) only after the launch requirements are met.

Initial supply

0. There is no pre-mine, no presale and no allocation minted at deployment.

How tokens are created

Only through mintReward(recipient, amount, rewardId), callable only by the Minter role. Every reward has a unique rewardId; the contract rejects any rewardId it has already paid.

Maximum supply

Enforced by the contract (cap). The testnet contract uses 1,000,000 BPE. The Mainnet cap will be decided and published before launch.

Holders’ rights

Holders can keep, transfer or burn their own BPE. BPE gives no ownership, profit share, voting right or claim on Biosphere.

How BPE is earned

Each way to earn BPE is a rule with an amount, limits and requirements. The rules below are read live from Biosphere’s servers. All seven rules are active on the test network (Polygon Amoy) with a provisional configuration: the amounts and limits are test values, can change before any launch and are not active on Mainnet until approved. On top of each rule’s limits, every explorer has a total daily limit across all rules, and the platform has a monthly issuance cap.

Requirements

• An explorer account with a verified email address. A linked wallet is needed to receive the tokens: rewards earned before you link one are saved and sent once you do.
• The activity must be completed after the rule is active (no retroactive rewards).
• Rewards are created and approved only by Biosphere’s servers. Nothing in the browser can create or approve a reward.

Limits

• Per-rule limits (per user per day, cooldowns, per-month totals for the whole platform).
• A daily limit per user and a monthly limit for the whole platform, in BPE.
• The contract’s maximum supply, which no reward can exceed.

Real-world actions

Verified real-world actions — litter cleanups, wildlife and plant observations and habitat restoration — are submitted on Impact Actions. They always require evidence and a human review before any BPE reward is created; automatic checks (reused photos, inconsistent dates, places or quantities) only help the reviewer. A rejected action shows its reason and can be appealed once. The reward per action is fixed, never per kilo, so nobody is encouraged to take risks.

Issuance and safeguards

• Ledger first: every reward is recorded in Biosphere’s database with a status (awaiting wallet, pending, processing, submitted, confirmed, failed, cancelled) and a full audit trail of every change.
• No double payment: the rewardId is derived from the network, the contract, the user and the event. The same event always produces the same rewardId, and the contract refuses to pay it twice — even if Biosphere’s database were lost.
• Safe sending: each transaction is signed, its hash is saved, and only then is it broadcast. After any interruption, the service knows exactly what was sent.
• Single issuer: only one copy of the issuing service can run at a time.
• Automatic stops: issuance waits if the contract is paused, if gas is above a configured maximum or if the Minter wallet is low on gas, and stops if the Minter loses its role.
• Emergency controls: Biosphere can stop issuance on its servers at any time; the Pauser role can pause all BPE transfers on the contract.

Roles and governance

The Admin and Minter are always different wallets, and the contract refuses to deploy otherwise. If the Minter key were ever compromised, the Admin revokes its role and appoints a new Minter. There is no on-chain voting today; decisions are made by the Biosphere team and documented publicly.

Utility

Today BPE can be held in a self-custodial wallet and transferred like any ERC-20 token. There are no uses inside Biosphere yet, and Biosphere does not buy back BPE or set a price for it.

Possible future uses are being evaluated together with the community and partners (for example, recognition, access to special expeditions, or supporting conservation projects). None is promised; each will be announced only when it actually works.

How Biosphere is funded — separately from BPE

Biosphere’s business does not depend on selling BPE. The company plans to earn money from services paid in regular currency, mainly sponsored campaigns: an organization funds a set of verified actions for nature (cleanups, species observations, habitat restoration) with an agreed budget and receives a report of what was verified.

• Campaign money and BPE are recorded separately. BPE is never counted as income, is not sold to partners and is not part of any campaign budget.
• A campaign budget is planned by category (environmental delivery, verification and operations, participant rewards if agreed, Biosphere’s service fee, payment and infrastructure costs) and the money actually received and spent is recorded entry by entry.
• Participant rewards inside a campaign are XP, and BPE only under the rules published on this page; partners cannot buy extra BPE for participants.
• The partner report describes activity verified with Biosphere’s process. It is not an independent audit, a certification or a carbon credit.

Organizations interested in a pilot can find the process on the For Organizations page (/partners).

Tokenomics (draft)

The guiding proposal is simple: BPE is created only as a reward for verified activity. Final numbers are not decided yet and will be published here before any Mainnet launch.

Roadmap

Transparency

• The contract address and every BPE transaction are public on the network explorer.
• The live figures in this document (supply, cap, rewards paid) are read directly from the contract and Biosphere’s reward ledger.
• Each user can see every reward they receive, with its status and a link to its transaction, on the Earn page.
• Changes to this document are dated and versioned.

Risks

• No value is guaranteed. BPE may never have a market price, and if it does, the price can fall to zero.
• Testnet BPE has no intended value, and testnet balances do not automatically carry over to Mainnet.
• Smart contracts can contain errors despite testing and reviews.
• Losing access to your wallet means losing access to your BPE; Biosphere cannot recover it.
• Laws on digital assets differ by country and can change, which may limit or change how BPE works where you live.
• Network fees, outages or congestion can delay rewards.

Legal notice

This whitepaper is for information only and is a draft under review. It is not an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any asset, it is not investment, legal or tax advice, and BPE is not offered for sale. Biosphere is seeking legal and tax advice in the jurisdictions where it operates before any Mainnet launch. If anything here conflicts with the Terms of Use, the Terms prevail.

Questions or concerns: Contact Biosphere. Security issues: Report an issue.