---
title: you do not have to build the marketplace
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/you-do-not-have-to-build-the-marketplace
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/you-do-not-have-to-build-the-marketplace.md
subtitle: "a website is not a market. build the pipeline, borrow the pipes"
category: nature-finance
---

# you do not have to build the marketplace

*a website is not a market. build the pipeline, borrow the pipes*

A **nature finance platform** for a city region is the set of pipes behind a local nature market: a pipeline of named projects, an account for each one, something a business can buy, a way to split the payment, and a public record of who paid for what. The first question is whether to build it or borrow it. This post is the honest version of that choice, for a council or combined-authority nature lead, a regional partnership coordinator, and the projects and businesses on either side.

Start with what the market is for. The peat on the uplands of County Durham and Northumberland, the sediment moving down the South Tyne, the heath, the ponds and the street trees all do work for a city region already. They hold water, store carbon, cool streets and keep species in place, whether or not any marketplace lists them. A market is only how the businesses that depend on that work find it and pay for it. Ensurance is one set of pipes a region can use instead of laying its own. Neither the market nor the pipes is the worth of the peat.

:::johnson
**build the pipeline. borrow the pipes.** The places, the projects and the trust of local buyers are the work only your region can do. The accounts, instruments, splits and record already exist.

[see a live city group →](/groups/mumbai?from=guide)
:::

## a website is not a market

When the North East Combined Authority set up phase one of its Carbon and Nature Marketplace, the delegated decision report paid for it with a £65,000 grant from LINC, the Environment Agency's Local Investment in Natural Capital programme. The budget line read "new website (Carbon & Nature Marketplace Platform)". Phase two was approved in December 2025.

The North East did real work: the authority says it launched in June 2025 with 10,000 carbon credits and more than £11m of investible projects. The point here is that the visible part of a market is the cheap part. A website is the part of a market you can see. The cost of a market sits behind it, in parts that keep running after launch day:

| part | what it has to do | what keeps costing |
|---|---|---|
| Pipeline | Find, screen and list projects that match the nature recovery strategy | Officer time and partner time, every year |
| An account per project | Hold money for one named project, separately from the next | Banking, legal setup, reconciliation |
| The instrument | Give the business something to buy that says what it funded | Design, rules, and keeping it apart from regulated units |
| Payment and split | Take a payment and route it to the project, the steward and any fees | Payment provider, finance controls |
| The record | Show who paid for what, once, so nothing is counted twice | A registry or ledger, and someone to keep it |
| Evidence and reporting | Show the work happened and give the buyer a line it can report | Monitoring, reports, an annual cycle |
| Upkeep | Keep all of the above working after the grant ends | A vendor contract or a team |

Only the first row is local. Every region that builds the other six on its own pays for them again.

## the build route: tender for the pipes

The build route is a tender. A council or combined authority procures a market operator, a digital designer, a registry or a platform licence, and often all four. That route works, and regions have taken it with good partners.

Cornwall Council's LINC nature market was announced in March 2025 with EnTrade as market operator and Arup on digital and market design, local reports say. Gaia says it built Cornwall's Natural Capital Exchange, a panel-assessed project portfolio, on its Gaia Enterprise product. Arup went on to acquire EnTrade, which began inside Wessex Water in 2018 and says it does not charge businesses to take part.

Across the Channel, La Rochelle took a third road. Its carbon cooperative, founded in December 2020 with the city and Alstom among nine members, had €300,000 invested in it by Banque des Territoires in 2023, partly for a digital platform to be shared with later cooperatives.

None of these is a client of ours, and none of them is a cautionary tale. The cost is not that their pipes are bad. The cost is that every region pays for its own.

## the borrow route: a group for your region

The borrow route points pipes that already exist at your place. On ensurance, that is a **group**: a namespace in your region's name, such as `.mumbai`, `.boulder` or `.tokyo`, which are live today. Inside it, each project gets its own **agent**, which is an account that holds value in the project's name.

| part | on ensurance today | what stays with the region |
|---|---|---|
| Pipeline | Nothing. This is yours | The strategy, the screening, the partners |
| An account per project | An agent inside your group, one per project | Deciding which projects get one |
| The instrument | A **certificate** line per project; you suggest it and it is created after review. **Coins**, tradable tokens that fund a theme | Which projects are ready to sell |
| Payment and split | Proceeds route to the project's account on a split you set. How a buyer pays today, and whether a council can pay by invoice, is scoped at contact | Who is named on the split |
| The record | Every account, certificate and payment sits on Base, a public ledger anyone can read | Telling your buyers where to look |
| Evidence and reporting | [Natural assets](/natural-assets?from=guide) with a RealValue valuation of what each holds and provides; the program row on the rate card covers MRV (monitoring, reporting and verification of the work) and quarterly reports | What your strategy needs to see |
| Upkeep | The pipes are shared and maintained for every group | Your officers' time on the pipeline |

There are two doors to a group. You can apply, and a person here reviews it; that costs nothing. Or you can create it yourself on the permissionless door at the contract price, which was 10 ETH on 7 October 2026. The clicks, the price and what happens after are in [run a group for what you already care about](/guide/run-a-group-for-what-you-already-care-about?from=guide). This post does not repeat them.

A certificate here is a record that a named buyer funded named work at a named place. It is not a carbon credit, a biodiversity net gain unit, an offset or an investment. A business cannot use it to meet a statutory BNG duty or to claim offsetting.

## a market that does not stand alone

A marketplace built on its own has one region's projects and one region's buyers. Every link to the wider world has to be built later, one at a time.

A group on ensurance starts linked. Your region's accounts sit in the same protocol as every other group, place and cause on it. A coin your region issues pairs with `$ENSURE`, the protocol's working coin, so it trades through the same router as every other coin. An account in any group can hold your projects' coins and certificates, and your accounts can hold theirs. Cross-city groups already gather a theme across places: [urban nature](/urban-nature.syndicate?from=guide), [the water cycle](/water-cycle.syndicate?from=guide) and [pollinators](/pollinator.syndicate?from=guide). A business with sites in three regions can fund each through the same kind of account. Your heath and your river sit on the same pages as every other listed place.

The links are live. The depth between markets is still early, and nothing here promises that another region's buyers will come. What it does mean is that no region has to build its market as an island and then try to connect it later.

## the front end: ours today, or one in your name

A market needs a page a business can open. There are two answers.

**Our front end, live today.** Every group has a page on ensurance.app that lists its agents. The Mumbai group is a working example: [/groups/mumbai](/groups/mumbai?from=guide) lists 22 agents under one namespace. Each agent has its own page, and certificates sit on [the certificate index](/specific?from=guide). A region could open its group and point buyers at that page on day one.

**One in your name, offered.** A site on your region's own domain and brand, reading the same records, so a business sees your region's name and not ours. We build that to order and scope it at contact. We have not delivered one for any region yet, and it is not on the public rate card.

## if your region already has a vendor

Keep it. A group can sit beside it: an account per project that a buyer outside your vendor's reach can pay into. If the two would count the same work twice, pick one record per project and say which.

## who does what

**The region** owns the pipeline and the trust of local buyers. **The project** gets an account in its own name and a certificate line once reviewed, without building a payments setup. **The business** gets a place it can name and a line it can report, without a new vendor for every region it works in.

## what is not live

Said exactly: a front end in your own brand or domain is built to order. Projects cannot list themselves without review. A fiat checkout for a council buyer is not live; how a council or business pays is scoped at contact. Ensurance does not issue BNG units, Woodland Carbon Code or Peatland Code credits, or any regulated unit, and it is not a register entry.

## frequently asked questions

### do we need to build our own nature finance platform?

Not unless you want to own every part. The pipeline and the buyer relationships have to be yours. The accounts, instruments, splits and public record already exist on ensurance and can be pointed at your region through a group.

### what does it cost to borrow the pipes?

Applying for a group costs nothing and is reviewed. If you want it done for you, the public rate card lists an ensurance deployment at $15,000–$50,000 and a program at $1,000–$4,000 a month, each by the size of the town or region. Both are on [our services page](/services?from=guide#finance).

### can a region keep its current market operator?

Yes. A group can sit beside an existing vendor. Agree one record per project so nothing is counted twice.

### will it look like our market or yours?

Today, a group page on ensurance.app. A site in your region's name, reading the same records, is offered and scoped at contact. None has been delivered yet.

## next step

If your pipeline is ready, [create or apply for a group](/groups/create?from=guide). If you want to see the borrow route laid out for your region first, regional partnerships can start from [the regional collaboratives page](/solutions/regional-collaboratives?from=guide&topic=launch-your-own-nature-market), or [tell us the region and the first projects](/contact?from=guide&topic=launch-your-own-nature-market).

## sources

- [North East Combined Authority, delegated decision report](https://northeast-ca.gov.uk/downloads/3583/250404-delegated-decision-report-north-east-carbon-and-nature-marketplace-1-.pdf): £65,000 LINC grant, budget line "new website (Carbon & Nature Marketplace Platform)"
- [North East Combined Authority, marketplace launch](https://northeast-ca.gov.uk/news/environment-coastal-and-rural/north-east-mayor-launches-uk-s-first-combined-authority-led-carbon-and-nature-marketplace): launch on 4 June 2025, credits and investible projects
- [Business Cornwall](https://businesscornwall.co.uk/latest-news/2025/03/new-nature-market-to-support-cornwalls-environment/): Cornwall's LINC nature market, EnTrade and Arup
- [Gaia, Cornwall Council case study](https://gaiacompany.io/case-studies/cornwall-council/): Cornwall's Natural Capital Exchange on Gaia Enterprise
- [Arup acquires EnTrade](https://arup.com/news/arup-acquires-nature-recovery-marketplace-entrade/): EnTrade's origin at Wessex Water and its business terms
- [Banque des Territoires, Coopérative Carbone de La Rochelle](https://banquedesterritoires.fr/transformation-ecologique-la-banque-des-territoires-investit-dans-la-cooperative-carbone-de-la): the 2023 investment and the shared platform
- [Run a group for what you already care about](/guide/run-a-group-for-what-you-already-care-about?from=guide): the two doors and the 7 October 2026 price
- [Our services page](/services?from=guide#finance): the public rate card

## the series

1. [how to launch a nature market for your city or region](/guide/how-to-launch-a-nature-market-for-your-city?from=guide)
2. [what is inside a nature marketplace](/guide/what-is-inside-a-nature-marketplace?from=guide)
3. [what a local carbon market is, and what it leaves out](/guide/what-a-local-carbon-market-leaves-out?from=guide)
4. [why a business funds nature in its own region](/guide/why-a-business-funds-nature-in-its-own-region?from=guide)
5. **you do not have to build the marketplace** (you are here)
6. [launch your region's nature market on ensurance](/guide/launch-your-regions-nature-market-on-ensurance?from=guide)
7. [already run a nature market? add ensurance beside it](/guide/already-run-a-nature-market-add-ensurance-beside-it?from=guide)