BlogWhy carbon markets need beautiful toolsDate20 February 2026AuthorRoss Kenyon

On this pageWhy should a registry be delightful?Details show that you careWhat beauty looks like in practiceFunctionality is non-negotiable, but it’s not everythingBeautiful tools are trust signalsThe world is not meant to be only utilitarian

Editor’s note: After writing about why field engineers matter and what scientists actually do, Ross Kenyon is back for a guest post on the value of beautiful tools in carbon markets.“What does the beautiful thing tell you? Well, it tells you the person who made it really cared."— Patrick Collison, co-founder of Stripe

Why should a registry be delightful?At Carbon Unbound in Vancouver a few weeks ago, I was catching up with Ludo Chatoux, Rainbow's CEO, when Aidan Preston from Milkywire walked by. I asked him what he thought of Rainbow’s registry."It's delightful," he said. "Genuinely a pleasant experience."This struck me. We're talking about a platform for entering technical data about carbon removal projects and then issuing carbon credits. Quantifications. Lifecycle assessments. Proof documents. It's fundamentally a glorified spreadsheet, dressed up with some workflows and review processes.Why should it be delightful? Why should anyone care if it's beautiful?The answer, I think, gets at something essential about how carbon markets should work.

Details show that you careThere's a famous story about Van Halen's concert contract rider from the 1980s. Buried in the technical specifications—the stage weight requirements, the electrical loads, the safety protocols—was a clause requiring a bowl of M&Ms backstage with all the brown ones removed.It seemed like a rockstar throwing their weight around. MTV made fun of it. But David Lee Roth later explained in his autobiography:“Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We’d pull up with nine 18-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors—whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through.… So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say, 'Article 148: There will be 15 amperage voltage sockets at 20-foot spaces, evenly, providing 19 amperes … ”'This kind of thing. And article number 126, in the middle of nowhere, was, 'There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.'So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl … well, line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error. They didn’t read the contract. Guaranteed you’d run into a problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening.”The brown M&Ms were a signal. A superficial detail that revealed deeper care, or lack of it.Beautiful tools work the same way.When Rainbow rebranded from Riverse and rolled out a new visual identity, they made choices that seemed small or superficial but actually reflected a commitment to craft. They picked a vibrant purple instead of grayscale. They shipped a website with full bleed background colors—blue, orange, purple— rather than the typical white or black. These same decisions carried over to how they built Arc. They added color to forms and interfaces when many certification platforms look like tax software from 2003.These choices signal something: the team cares enough to make this beautiful. And if they care about the interface, they probably care about the methodology rigor. The data validation. The audit process. The scientific integrity.As Collison put it in the interview quoted above: "If you care about the infrastructure being holistically good, indexing on the superficial characteristics that you can actually observe is not an irrational thing to do."Van Halen treated technical precision as seriously as the music. Photo from Guitar World.

What beauty looks like in practiceKimberly Joly leads Product at Rainbow. She joined in April 2025, coming from a SaaS background into carbon markets. One of the first things she noticed was how depressing most certification platforms were."The feedback we get from a lot of project developers is that other certification platforms are very black and white or grayscale," she told me. "It's a bit depressing. Even when platforms use color, it's often so pale it barely registers."Rainbow went the opposite direction. Not just with their brand—the name itself, the logo, the website—but with Arc, the actual tool project developers use daily."We're trying to incorporate color a lot more," Kim said. "We have a bunch of secondary colors, though I don't know if they can still be called secondary given how many we actually have. But we're trying to integrate them so Arc isn't just grayscale and purple."Arc looks alive.One project developer told Rainbow's team she'd worked with one of the larger, more established registries and would never do it again because "their interface was so bad." She specifically called out how Arc balanced simplicity with the rigor required by certification standards. The interface was simple enough to not be overwhelming, but asked all the right questions and enabled her to gather all the information she needed.This isn't just aesthetic preference. It's about making hard work less miserable. As anyone knows about working in carbon removal, this step of the process isn’t the glamorous part, e.g. hollering at Aidan Preston while wearing sports jackets.Arc tailors questions and requirements to the specific methodology, like this one for BiCRS.

Functionality is non-negotiable, but it’s not everythingHere's something we forget: project developers are people. They have preferences. They notice when software is pleasant to use. They appreciate when someone thinks about their experience."I think everyone wants a beautiful experience as long as things still work in the background," Kim said. "That is non-negotiable. We couldn't even be having this conversation if Arc wasn't delivering value to project developers. But it is, and we're very rigorous in terms of how we build it. So we have the luxury of being able to add this additional aesthetic layer on top of it."She's right that functionality is non-negotiable. But calling beauty a "luxury" undersells it. In a market where project developers have choices—where they can register with different standards, work with different registries, choose different partners—the experience matters.If you had the choice between a very bland tool and a tool that worked the same but with a nicer visual layer on it, which would you pick?"I would always pick the one with a nicer visual on it," Kim said.Of course you would. We all would.And yet most certification platforms are built as if the users don't have preferences. As if they're just data entry machines who don't care about their environment. As if making something beautiful would be a waste of time.

Beautiful tools are trust signalsHere's the bottom line for project developers considering where to register their projects:The tool you'll spend hundreds of hours with matters. The interface where you'll enter your quantifications, upload your documents, answer methodology questions, coordinate with auditors—that environment affects your work.Beautiful tools aren't just nice to have. They're easier to use. They cause less friction. They make tedious work slightly less tedious. They signal that the organization building them cares about details and user experience.And in carbon markets, where you're choosing a partner for a long-term relationship, where trust and competence matter enormously, these signals are rational things to pay attention to.Arc has document libraries with clear visibility indicators. Quantification tools that generate both technical spreadsheets for auditors and beautiful PDFs for investors. Color-coded interfaces that make navigation intuitive. Simplified forms that don't require dozens of clicks to access.But more than any specific feature, it has something else: it shows that Rainbow cares.They cared enough to make it beautiful. They cared enough to think about your experience. They cared enough to build something delightful instead of just functional.As Collison says: "What does the beautiful thing tell you? It tells you the person who made it really cared."In carbon markets, where so much depends on trust, that signal matters more than you might think.Arc automatically generates PDFs for investors (like these) and highly technical spreadsheets for auditors (for a different kind of viewing experience).

The world is not meant to be only utilitarianI'll end with this: the world is ugly enough already. Climate change is depressing enough. The work of building carbon removal infrastructure is hard enough.If we can make the tools we use every day beautiful—if we can inject some joy and whimsy into technical work—why wouldn't we?Beauty isn't frivolous. It's not a luxury add-on for companies that have extra resources to burn. It's a fundamental way of showing respect for the humans using your tools. It's a way of making hard work slightly more bearable. It's a way of signaling care and competence.Rainbow understood this. They built Arc to be not just functional but delightful. Not just rigorous but joyful.And project developers notice.If you're choosing where to register your carbon removal project, pay attention to the tools you'll be using. Ask to see them. Use them. Notice how they make you feel.Because the beautiful thing isn't just telling you that someone cared about the interface. It's telling you they probably care about everything else too.And in carbon markets, that might be the most important signal of all.