Hi @marek , @sep and @Luis , thank you for your thoughtful contributions.
Broadly, @marek summarises my position with his two points. I could support and see the value of having CO2 credits at a small level in the reserve in the long run. In the short term, I see a higher priority for ensuring a systematic and rigorous approach to introducing new tokens to the reserve.
@sep , I think you make good points around why we might be seeing the price behaviour we are with the MCO2 token. Indeed, the MCO2 market is small and high spreads versus other carbon credit prices are to be expected. It seems to me low liquidity and high spreads are something to be concerned about when considering new reserve assets. Perhaps we should include liquidity and spreads in a parameter list for any tokens to be included in the reserve?
Including MCO2 in the reserve is bold - and I think it’s good to be bold - but I wonder if it would be better in this case to be bold by allocating a (further) percentage of Celo token emissions to buy and burn carbon credits - rather than doing it via the reserve.
The reserve has not yet been able to achieve its target rebalancing towards BTC, ETH and DAI. So, to me, adding another asset - especially of low liquidity and high spread vs other markets - is due careful consideration.
There is a parallel discussion on this forum started by @martinvol (here) about allowing the reserve to accept airdrops of tokens from new protocols. What the MCO2 discussion, and the airdrop discussion, bring up for me is a need for us to have some clear parameters around what to include and what not to include the reserve with respect to quality (liquidity, spreads, etc.).
Let me finish by noting that I understand the MCO2 team are doing careful work, and I recognise there has been extensive diligence of MCO2. Perhaps, with better clarity on reserve asset criteria, we can have a process that is better aligned for everyone and less idiosyncratic.