One year after its initial launch at Climate Week NYC, the Carbon Data Open Protocol (CDOP) coalition has released Version 2.0 of its open-source data schema, more than doubling its coverage to standardize carbon crediting information across the full project lifecycle.
The 75-member coalition expanded the protocol from its four original pre-issuance categories – Location, Project Approach, Disclosures, and Issuance – to 11 standardized categories. New additions include Crediting Period, Estimations, Co-benefits, Durability and Permanence, and Project Finance.
The expansion was led by market working groups headed by industry firms including Sylvera, South Pole, Kita, S&P Global, and Centigrade.
The protocol aims to solve market fragmentation by eliminating the need for market participants to manually clean, reformat, and reconcile incompatible data points across disparate registries and platforms.
Structural Overhaul Introduces Versioned Status History
Beyond expanding category coverage, Version 2.0 introduces technical architectural updates designed to improve system interoperability and long-term schema compatibility.
Key technical changes include a standardized entity model structured around fixed project, stakeholder, registry, and issuance entities, as well as a forward-compatible architecture that prevents incremental schema updates from breaking existing software integrations.
Crucially, Version 2.0 replaces single, overwritable data fields with a versioned status record. Any subsequent credit status change, such as a reissuance, correction, or rating update, now leaves a permanently auditable, traceable history.
Relevant: NYCW 2025: CDOP Coalition Releases Open-Source Data Model To Standardize Carbon Markets
“This market is only as trustworthy as the data behind it, and until now, carbon markets haven’t had a reliable way to show that a credit’s history is exactly what it claims to be,” said Allister Furey, CEO of Sylvera. “Version 2 of CDOP gives everyone in the value chain a shared way to see how a project or credit has changed over time.”
“CDOP’s Version 2.0 represents the collective expertise and user needs of CDOP’s 75 members and represents a milestone, not an endpoint,” added Josh Henretig, Managing Director at RMI.
The coalition is currently finalizing additional categories covering Additionality, Baseline Scenarios, and Verification Metadata.
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