Hear me out. On Reddit, the #solarpunk channel is decidedly anti-blockchain. To me, this is totally surprising and against the actual ethos of Solarpunk - to integrate technology for a bright, clean future.
Granted, blockchains don’t have much reputation in alternative circles. And for a good reason. A lot is just linked to scams, get-rich-quick dudes, and speculation, apart from energy consumption arguments.
But blockchain at its core is just a distributed database. One that has no central authority, can not be tampered with, cannot be altered, nor taken down if parametrized accordingly.
This allows - as a potential - to democratize access and value creation. Renewable energy is also fundamentally decentralized. Everyone can participate!
Now, with the costs of renewable energy creation (notably solar) shrunk significantly, and the demand for energy consumption rising heavily, if we only think about the booming electric vehicles alone -
What if people could earn money by generating solar energy and selling directly to vehicles, instead of the grid? I believe this could actually boost renewable energy generation over the roof.
Generators would be rewarded with a blockchain token for the energy generated, while consumers would pay for the energy in those tokens. Therefore speculation would be curbed as the tokens are for a real thing, energy, which on top is a stable unit - kWh.
Of course there are a lot of hurdles here - mostly institutional. Usually, energy is controlled by local authorities. They don’t want to allow anyone access to this market.
Then there is the distribution issue. Energy must be transported to the points of consumption, the charging stations. But due to the decentralized nature, this could actually result surprisingly cheap, as instead of transporting large distances, more charging stations in neighborhoods could reduce those distances. But still, this would require upfront charging stations and distribution investments.
I am an engineer. A dreamer. More often than not, as many many others, the realities of markets and economies clash with such ideals, thrashing generally good ideas.
But I wonder if such a scheme could made be possible. Anyone having some good suggestions? I mean mainly from the economics side. How to design the scheme, how to make it so that it is interesting to everyone? There are already several solar energy blockchains, but they kinda failed to get traction.
For the more radicals - I also dream of a money-less Solarpunk future, but to date, it seems further away than ever, looking at the right wing surge everywhere. Maybe we can build bridges at least from the technological side. Thank you if you got so far. Happy to respond to critique and questions.
I’m not “forgetting” those things, because they’re simply not relevant to what’s being discussed. A web server doesn’t “allow” a traditional database to use any more or less power. A web server is a web server. A firewall is a firewall. They’re not in any meaningful way connected to the transaction layer that we’re discussing. Blockchain validator nodes also sit behind firewalls, if the people running them know what they’re doing.
Again, this is just a handwave.
If your argument is “Public ledger blockchains can be just as efficient as traditional databases”, which is the argument you previously presented, you need to actually demonstrate that.
If your argument is “It doesn’t matter if public ledger blockchains are less efficient, that inefficiency is worth it for the unique benefits they provide” then, first off, why did you make the other argument originally, and second, what have you done to actually show that only a public ledger blockchain can solve the problem you’re describing?
That was never my argument. If you read carefully, there were other arguments I made in context. I just wanted to put it into perspective. Everything uses energy, and comparing things in tech is often very complex because it depends on a zillion factors.
In a blockchain, to make a transaction you need the node and that’s it. In traditional client server model, a database on its own rarely does the job, especially if you talk transactions and banking. Hence why web servers and all the other layers very well account and are relevant to store a transaction, otherwise it just doesn’t happen. I know because I have done this for a living.
What have you done to show it does not? You are only arguing about energy. To date I have yet to see an application where I can send money in sub-seconds to a person in Venezuela which has trouble accessing international markets and censorship by the government. Or creating a tamper-proof land registry which can’t be altered by the government or a rich guy in some developing country. Or a database which can’t be censored, or shut down by a government or some powerful dude. An application which allowed anyone to create money (even if it’s too often misused). Mind you, I am not saying blockchain is good for everything nor that it is the best thing ever invented nor that it does not have problems. Any tech does.
I am sure you will find ways to argue against this, because when someone’s mind is made up there’s little space, but I am not here to convince you, I just stand my ground and make my case. Have a nice evening.
There are literal pages upon pages here of people trying to convince you that you’re coming at this whole thing wrong. Not to mention those chiming in with their upvotes and downvotes (a misuse of that system, sure, but they’re raising their voice none-the-less). Are you really sure that you want to start throwing these particular stones from inside your glass house?