What if a wetland could hold assets? What if a watershed could earn income? What if a species could have representation in the financial system—not through a charity speaking on its behalf, but through its own autonomous account?
This is not a thought experiment. It is live infrastructure.
the representation problem
Nature has no seat at the table. Every day, decisions are made that affect ecosystems, species, and natural processes—and nature has no vote, no voice, no wallet.
Corporations have legal personhood. They can own assets, enter contracts, sue and be sued. Trusts can hold property across generations. DAOs can govern treasuries through collective decision-making.
But a forest? A river? A population of pollinators? They exist only as externalities—costs and benefits that happen to others, never participants in their own right.
This is not merely a philosophical problem. It is a structural one. If you cannot own assets, you cannot accumulate wealth. If you cannot receive payments, you cannot be compensated. If you have no account, you have no economic agency.
The representation gap is the root cause of the $1 trillion biodiversity funding gap. Nature cannot participate in the systems that allocate capital, so capital flows elsewhere.
the tokenbound solution
Blockchain technology introduced a strange new primitive: the wallet. A wallet is not a bank account—it is a cryptographic identity that can hold assets, sign transactions, and interact with protocols. Anyone (or anything) with a wallet can participate in onchain finance.
ERC-6551, the tokenbound account standard, takes this further. It allows any NFT to have its own wallet. Not a wallet that holds the NFT—a wallet that the NFT is.
This means you can:
- Mint an NFT that represents a natural asset
- That NFT automatically has a wallet address
- That wallet can hold tokens, earn yields, receive proceeds
- The wallet persists as long as the NFT exists
Suddenly, nature can have an account.
anatomy of an ensurance agent
An ensurance agent is an NFT with a tokenbound account, configured to represent and act on behalf of something that matters—a person, a place, a project, or a purpose.
| Component | What It Is | What It Does |
|---|---|---|
| NFT | ERC-721 token | Identity and ownership anchor |
| Tokenbound Account (TBA) | Smart contract wallet | Holds assets, executes transactions |
| Mode | Configuration setting | Controls automation level |
| Identity | Metadata and attestations | Describes what the agent represents |
modes of operation
Agents can operate at three levels of autonomy:
Manual — Human-controlled only. Every transaction requires explicit approval from the owner. This is standard wallet behavior with an NFT wrapper.
Automated — Human plus programs. Scheduled scripts can execute predefined strategies: regular purchases, portfolio rebalancing, yield harvesting. The owner sets the parameters; the system executes.
Autonomous — Human plus AI. Large language models (via ElizaOS integration) can make decisions based on real-time conditions, market data, and ecological inputs. The agent thinks and acts, within defined constraints.
The progression from manual to autonomous is the progression from owning an asset to deploying an actor.
what agents can do
An ensurance agent with a tokenbound account can:
- Hold currencies — $ENSURE, stablecoins, ecosystem tokens
- Hold certificates — Specific ensurance certificates tied to natural assets
- Hold NFTs — Other agents, credentials, attestations
- Receive proceeds — Automatic distributions from the ensurance protocol
- Execute swaps — Trade between tokens to optimize holdings
- Transfer assets — Move value according to rules and permissions
- Interact with DeFi — Provide liquidity, stake, borrow (within constraints)
This is not speculative. These capabilities are live in the ensurance protocol today.
agents that represent nature
Here is where it gets interesting.
An agent does not have to represent a human. Groups in the ensurance system can create agents for anything they define—people, places, projects, or purpose.
A place agent might represent a specific watershed. It holds certificates tied to that watershed's natural assets. It receives proceeds based on the ecological health of its territory. It could even, in autonomous mode, advocate for its own interests through onchain governance.
A species agent might represent a population of migratory birds. It holds assets dedicated to habitat preservation along migration routes. It earns yields that fund conservation efforts. Its decisions could be informed by population data, climate models, and habitat assessments.
A purpose agent might represent a goal like clean air in Detroit or beaver reintroduction in Scotland. It aggregates funding, allocates resources, and tracks progress—not as a charity dependent on grants, but as an autonomous economic actor with its own capital base.
These agents are not metaphors. They are contracts with addresses, balances, and transaction histories.
the philosophical shift
Giving nature a wallet is more than a technical innovation. It is a recognition that every being has its own way of being—and that understanding is not required for respect.
We do not fully understand wetland hydrology. We cannot predict the decisions of a salmon population. We will never completely model the carbon dynamics of a temperate forest.
But we can create infrastructure that allows these systems to accumulate resources, receive compensation for services, and persist across time. We can give them economic agency without requiring them to participate in our cognitive frameworks.
This is not about anthropomorphizing nature. It is about building systems that work for non-human participants—systems where nature can be an actor, not just a resource.
practical applications
for land stewards
Create an agent for each parcel you manage. The agent holds certificates of ensurance for that land, receives proceeds based on ecological outcomes, and accumulates value over time. When you transfer stewardship, the agent (and its assets) can transfer with it.
for conservation organizations
Deploy agents for each protected area, species program, or conservation initiative. These agents become autonomous funding vehicles—receiving donations, earning protocol proceeds, and potentially making decisions about resource allocation.
for impact investors
Invest in agents rather than organizations. An agent has transparent holdings, verifiable transaction history, and programmable governance. You can see exactly where your capital goes and what it does.
for communities
Create agents that represent shared natural resources—a community forest, a municipal watershed, a regional airshed. These agents can hold collective assets, receive payments for ecosystem services, and distribute proceeds to stakeholders.
security and constraints
Autonomy does not mean unconstrained. The ensurance protocol implements a trust hierarchy:
| Trust Level | Who Approves | What They Can Do |
|---|---|---|
| Highest | Owner (human) | Transfer anywhere |
| Medium | User via UI, server signs | Protocol addresses only |
| Lowest | Automation (program/AI) | User's own assets only |
If automation is buggy or compromised, damage stays within the user's own wallets and agents. External transfers require human approval. The system is designed for safety at scale.
Agent NFTs themselves can only transfer between the owner's external wallet and their server wallet—never to arbitrary addresses. This prevents accidental or malicious loss of agents and their accumulated assets.
the future of representation
We are at the beginning of something new.
For the first time in history, we have infrastructure that can give non-human entities genuine economic agency. Not symbolic representation through advocates, but actual participation through wallets, assets, and transactions.
This will not solve every problem. But it opens possibilities that did not exist before:
- Ecosystems that accumulate wealth over centuries
- Species that fund their own conservation
- Natural processes that participate in governance
- Intergenerational stewardship backed by autonomous capital
The $1 trillion biodiversity gap exists because nature cannot participate in the systems that allocate capital. Agents change that equation.
Nature is getting a wallet. The question is what we will do with it.
Explore agents in the ensurance protocol →