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.
Generators would be rewarded with a blockchain token for the energy generated, while consumers would pay for the energy in those tokens.
Any electricity market should take into account that production and consumption should be balanced at all times.
If I produce today, but there’s not enough consumption of electricity, should I be rewarded with a token?
If I want to consume tonight, spend the token I bought, but there’s not enough production, what’s the token for?
In other words: such a token assumes infinite storage of electricity, a kWh today is the same as a kWh tonight. This doesn’t reflect reality.
I mean they can be priced differently based on time, just like real world electricity prices.
Then I buy the tokens when they’re cheap, hold on to them, and spend them later when they’re expensive?
This sounds like money, except harder. And every time there is a transaction, it takes place on an infrastructure that isn’t free, so there is a necessary cost involved. It seems like this would make it require more effort, have more (breakable) moving parts, and be less efficient than just using money.
In any case you’ll end up with a futures market for energy trading, to coordinate the balance between production and consumption.
I just highlighted the problem of 1kWh = 1 “super duper solar coin”.
But yes, that market can be denominated in whatever way you want. Traditional currency is the status quo.
Blockchain currencies have been part of the status quo for almost 15 years now…
11 years ago the biggest bitcoin exchange in the world was a Magic: The Gathering web forum. This was just before said forum shut down and lost ~850,000 Bitcoins.
I mean the amount of token you get can depend on the current electricity supply.
How does the production side work? I’ve produced monday through saturday, and want to consume on sunday. Do I gain tokens, monday through friday, proportional to the expected production on sunday?
I honestly have no idea. I didn’t think of this. Just was replying to your original criticism with a possible fix.
You should put more thought into this, because without a proof method that relies directly on the amount of power produced then you’re just hoping that people aren’t minting tokens for free.
Good points. I thought to yes, reward every kwh generated. I am not sure how the not-enough-consumption is a severe issue. Is it one at all (given the amounts people would be able to generate in the first place), can it be stored, in batteries or even own vehicles…
The not-enough-production is different, every used token would be destroyed, hence there can’t be more tokens than production. I think…
It’s a big problem, it drives up grid frequency, then starts to destroy devices, start fires, … In current markets, the price of electricity even goes negative at certain times (so you get paid to consume).
It can be stored only in small amounts. The total world amount of batteries can supply germany’s consumption for about one day.
hence there can’t be more tokens than production. I think…
For example: I produced monday through saturday and have X coins. I want to consume on sunday, but there are no producers.
I believe utilities have to pay for excess solar power your panels generate.
So this whole thing is kind of already done with dollars as the token.
Consumer level maybe, depends on the contract between you and your utility provider. Wholesale it’s a different price every quarter hour (at least here in EU), with most power traded as future contracts (so the generating parties know in advance how much to produce).
I assumed OP was taking about the consumer level.
In either case, it seems like blockchain would be an extra layer of complication on something that already exists with no real benefit.
Yes but you are at the mercy of utility companies, who are often very restrictive. You don’t get as much as you would get on the market, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to resell.
What market? I don’t have any way of letting my next door neighbor use the power I generate and not letting my neighbor across the street use it so there still needs to be some sort of middleman/distributor.
Without the utility how would I connect to a grid to sell to others? Who would pay for that and manage it?
Currency, the term you are looking for is currency.
The way you exchange value for goods and services without needlessly attaching an energy wasting puzzel game to it is to not do it!
Just have physical or digital currency in USD or some other real world currency that doesn’t require a blockchain and doesn’t have its amount artificially capped by processing power. It’s a dumb idea made by con men to take money from people.
I agree as long as you talk bitcoin. But blockchains are NOT just cryptocurrencies, and not all currencies work as you describe like bitcoin.
BTW, when we have digital USD, say goodbye to your financial freedom. The government can (and will) tax you whenever they want whatever they want for the reasons they want (we need to save the economy, we need to bail out banks, etc.). They can even shut you down completely by closing access to your accounts. Because they will only allow the use of the digital dollar, because they will have full control. A totalitarian regime’s dream.
Lmao yeah sure, conpared to now, where the government sets taxes and you pay it already? That doesn’t sound much different tbh
You can evade taxe today. And the government does not have direct access to your bank account right now. It will with a digital USD, and because everything will have to run through their digital USD, everything is tracked, and you can’t evade anything. Give it a thought, there is a huge difference.
But…they can already do all of that? And nothing is stopping you from having a secret offshore account in a foreign currency, instead of cryptocoins.
No they cannot. You still have cash today, which also allows for anonymous transactions and which you can stash away. If today they’d try grabbing your money from your account, you could just move it away. That wouldn’t be possible anymore without approval, count on that. A digital USD is totally not the same, they’d probably just ban cash. It will be all nightmares becoming real. Not saying here crypto currencies are a panacea and the solution, just warning of the woes of a digital USD.
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.
Which is completely useless if the data that goes into that blockchain isn’t guaranteed to be correct. And if there’s money in it you can bet your ass that someone will try to game the system.
You’re also glossing over the existing grid that needs money to be maintained while complaining that energy companies want money. Yes, there’s a general problem where society allowed (and partly encouraged) sociopaths to be unrestrained greedy assholes that needs some kind of solution, but not all companies are useless leeches, it’s “just” an all-pervading corruption that needs to be dealt with - and as long as that hasn’t happened, every idealistic solution faces the threat of being corrupted itself.
Can’t disagree, but then why do we think Solarpunk? To have some nice pictures and inspiring stories?
Solarpunk is an anti-capitalist, pro-ecology aesthetic, not a coherent political ideology.
Which is completely useless if the data that goes into that blockchain isn’t guaranteed to be correct.
You’re missing the point of this. It just matters that it’s consistent. The transactions that are put into the blockchain just have to follow the rules of the blockchain and be the same for everyone who reads the blockchain. That’s all that “correctness” means as far as the blockchain is concerned.
And if there’s money in it you can bet your ass that someone will try to game the system.
Blockchains depend on everyone involved trying to game the system. They’re built using game theory to ensure that the most selfish actions for any particular actor are the best ones for the blockchain as a whole.
It just matters that it’s consistent. The transactions that are put into the blockchain just have to follow the rules of the blockchain and be the same for everyone who reads the blockchain. That’s all that “correctness” means as far as the blockchain is concerned.
Still useless for anything that depends on external data, since there can be no guarantee that what has been entered is correct. What’s the point of a consistent record of garbage?
There are lots of uses that don’t depend on external data. The general “digital payments” use case, for example, just requires tokens to be transferred between two accounts on the blockchain itself. People then make use of that information externally however they like.
There are also ways to get external data onto the blockchain in a manner that is reliable enough for some particular purpose or another. A lot of game theory goes into that sort of application. Stabletokens have price oracles, there are prediction markets, “proof of personhood” protocols, etc.
The important things to consider are:
- Blockchains are not ideal for every single application, and that’s perfectly fine. Use the tool that’s best for the job.
- On the flipside, if you’re not familiar with a field then there are probably a lot of nuances and existing applications that you’ll be unaware of. So don’t be too quick to dismiss it either.
This applies to pretty much every field of technology.
You are massively glossing over the energy cost of running any block chain in comparison to traditional database solutions, driving the majority of ASICs to be warehoused in locations with hyper subsidized coal power. The block chain is a solution with awful externalities in search of a problem that’s mostly solved.
Traditional database solutions often don’t consume less, because they are centralized and need to account for all the load. Hence they are fat, difficult to maintain and scale, need backup, and run in energy sucking datacenters where you don’t have control.
Not even speaking of the data. Subject to hacking, manipulation, gated control, data loss, and a myriad of other problems.
Granted, MOST “problems” being thrown blockchains at are non-issues and just a hype hammer looking for nails, but there are genuine use cases where blockchains DOES solve important issues.
They still use far less, bitcoin manages like 10 transactions per second and consumes a staggering amount of power. A normal database running on something using a few watts could handle 10 database updates per second.
Yeah bitcoin is obviously not going to look well there. However, that’s taking one example and apply to everything, which is inaccurate. Like taking a massive Hummer and take its consumption for every (gas) car in existence.
The blockchain I am talking about wouldn’t have such power consumption because it doesn’t use mining. I have made allusions of how that works in other comments.
If you aren’t using a proof-of-work blockchain algorithm then why not just use a regular database instead?
Because the point is to have an open network.
If openness is your concern, then distributed ledgers have already been a thing for decades.
The questions are: What problem are you trying to solve with the blockchain and why wouldn’t a non-blockchain distributed database or a regular database with appropriate access controls be a better solution?
A “database with appropriate access control” is a completely different use case, not appropriate at all for communal and open, transparent use. You need to have admins, you probably need some management organization altogether, admins can change stuff and it’s difficult to prove they didn’t, and a lot more issues.
However, "What problem are you trying to solve with the blockchain " is the fundamental question which needs to have an answer. I (and others) gave a lot of answers spread over all replies. At the core: no authority in control, complete transparency, unchangeable, decentralized (just like a renewable energy grid should be), everyone can participate.
A good idea does not need to convince, so if these arguments don’t answer the question, either it needs better explaining or it is not that good.
I’m sorry but this is absolute nonsense.
A reasonable energy cost for a single transaction on a modern database is about 0.1J. Even factoring in redudancy and backups, if we’re incredibly generous to your argument and multiply that cost by ten, that puts us at 1J. In fact, I’ll be ludicrously generous, I’ll multiply by 100, so 10J per transaction. That’s an absolutely insane cost, but we’ll imagine that we’re doing this as inefficiently as it is humanly possible to do.
The cost per transaction of Bitcoin sits at around 1,000,000,000J per transaction. Yes, 1 billion joules per transaction. To claim that these are comparable energy costs is like me claiming to be as rich as Elon Musk. Even looking at something like Ethereum, you’re still at about 1,000 joules per transaction. Stacked up against our hilariously overestimated energy costs for our traditional database, you’re still 100 times over.
(Source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12599-020-00656-x)
Also, you can’t just blindly ascribe the energy cost of “everything else in the same datacentre” to a standard database driven solution and act as if that’s a reasonable comparison. That would be like me adding the total energy cost of every single building where a validator node for your blockchain is running, even if it’s just someone’s laptop sitting in the corner of a forty story office.
Look, I came into this thread to seriously engage your question, but I cannot let an obvious falsehood like this slide by unchallenged. It is such a gross distortion of the truth that I’m actually struggling to decide if you really believe this, or if you’re straight up trolling.
The obvious falsehood is dismissing each blockchain by using bitcoin as a reference. I am NOT talking about bitcoin-style Proof-Of-Work transactions whatsoever. Also, the article you mention is from 2020, where Ethereum was also running Proof-Of-Work, like bitcoin. It doesn’t anymore. I don’t dispute that bitcoin uses incomparable amounts of energy. If you can’t see what I am talking about then thanks for engaging but let’s not converse any longer.
I addressed all of this in this other reply: https://sh.itjust.works/comment/15924074
Basically, handwaving at “Ethereum is proof of stake now” just isn’t good enough. The difference in scale of power consumption between public ledger blockchains and traditional databases are so vast that even the most optimistic models for reducing their inefficiencies still only get you to “pretty bad” at best.
Your answer isn’t good enough either. Aren’t you forgetting application servers, web servers, load balancers, Cloudflare, firewalls and all that stuff which allow a database to just use 0.1J? Because if we are talking VISA and banking scale of transactions that’s what it takes.
Besides, it’s just missing the point. Traditional databases are good and best at what they do - address traditional problems. Blockchains address different problems, so comparing them for completely different use cases won’t work. You can compare MySQL vs Oracle vs PostgreSQL that way.
Your answer isn’t good enough either. Aren’t you forgetting application servers, web servers, load balancers, Cloudflare, firewalls and all that stuff which allow a database to just use 0.1J? Because if we are talking VISA and banking scale of transactions that’s what it takes.
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.
Besides, it’s just missing the point. Traditional databases are good and best at what they do - address traditional problems. Blockchains address different problems, so comparing them for completely different use cases won’t work. You can compare MySQL vs Oracle vs PostgreSQL that way.
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?
If your argument is “Public ledger blockchains can be just as efficient as traditional databases”
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 actually show that only a public ledger blockchain can solve the problem you’re describing?
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.
I love when anti-crypto ideologues talk about bitcoin like it’s the only option. It’s 2024. Maybe if you didn’t spend the past 15 years mindlessly hating, you might understand there are better options now.
From your own outdated article:
the energy consumption of PoS blockchains is several orders of magnitude lower than that of PoW. It is primarily for this reason that the community of the cryptocurrency with the currently second-highest market capitalization, Ethereum,
is trying to switchswitched from PoW to PoS. Other cryptocurrencies, such as EOS, Tezos, and TRON – all of which feature in the Top 20 cryptocurrencies in terms of market capitalization – are already successfully using PoS.The most rosily optimistic estimates of proof of stake’s reduction in Ethereum’s energy costs (that I’ve seen) put it at a 2000x reduction. That means that in theory, if all of those gains were realised, and if we start with the numbers I previously cited, Ethereum might hit the same energy cost per transaction as a pretty inefficient traditional database setup.
Except that transaction rates are fixed in public ledger distributed blockchain systems (because every validator node has to have time to clock in with their results), so as the network scales up the cost per transaction also scales up. I’m actually doing Ethereum a favour by using old numbers there, because it’s final cost per transaction prior to the proof of stake switch was certainly much higher than it was at the time of that snapshot.
Traditional databases scale in a way where the economy of scale works for you rather than against you. The bigger you get, the lower your cost per transaction even as your total costs increase. Blockchains anti-scale; the cost per transaction goes up as the network gets bigger.
Modern blockchains like Ethereum don’t use ASICs and don’t consume any more energy than a normal database would. They use proof-of-stake rather than proof-of-work.
Perhaps I’m too tired to understand your meaning here (it’s late), but blockchain isn’t crypto currency. It’s a distributed ledger, and was around long before crypto. It’s not completely immutable either as the hard fork of Ethereum proved.
Blockchain could be used to record energy transactions, but the question is why would you want to? What benefit does it add?
Btw homeowners in parts of Australia are already receiving credits for the excess solar power they generate. There’s no need to manufacture a new system to enable that functionality.
Once again, I’m tired. Perhaps I’ve misunderstood your reasoning.
It’s not an open market though. It’s gated and you are at the mercy of the local authorities, which often are very restrictive and difficult. It’s not even possible everywhere. Plus, you don’t get paid the market price, as they naturally want to maintain their monopoly and want to scoop.the profit of reselling.
While all the maintenance costs are still up to you.
It’s not an open market though. It’s gated and you are at the mercy of the local authorities, which often are very restrictive and difficult.
Utility services are natural monopolies.
Are you proposing that people build a totally independent electrical grid that somehow isn’t regulated by local authorities?
Communal, local infrastructure. Not a grid spanning vast areas, although it could. Look, this might totally not be the way to do it, but essentially to achieve independence we need to break up those monopolies. Otherwise we will always be enslaved to the powers that I thought we wanted to replace. Energy and food independence as well as communal land management I think are fundamental requirements for that - whatever the means, I subscribe. Otherwise I don’t see how a Solarpunk future can be even envisioned.
Blockchains (if used correctly) are good at breaking up such monopolies. But it’s just tech. People need to want and do it. So whatever people say :)
Communal, local infrastructure. Not a grid spanning vast areas, although it could.
Then why does it need a global management system? If it’s all local, why not use a local database and save the expense of distributing it?
Look, this might totally not be the way to do it, but essentially to achieve independence we need to break up those monopolies.
Independence from what?
If you’re talking about independence from having to share electricity services with other people then you can just go off the grid, no blockchain necessary.
If you’re talking about independence from utility providers then you’ve crafted a tautology, as the only way to achieve independence is to be independent.
If you’re talking about independence from for-profit grid service utilities, then making every home an independent participant in the real-time electricity market will only compound the problem.
Otherwise we will always be enslaved to the powers that I thought we wanted to replace.
Those powers would still exist. Replacing the utility-scale grid operators with a local electric homeowners’ association doesn’t solve the problem, it just moves it closer to home. You still have to deal with the cost of building and maintaining the grid, as well as constant negotiation with all providers and consumers to ensure that the grid will remain stable.
Energy and food independence as well as communal land management I think are fundamental requirements for that - whatever the means, I subscribe.
Adding blockchain makes those goals more complicated to achieve for no benefit.
If you want energy and food independence, you can just do that.
Blockchains (if used correctly) are good at breaking up such monopolies. But it’s just tech. People need to want and do it. So whatever people say :)
False. Blockchains, as a feature of Capitalism, create monopolies. If they broke them up, then the tech bros would have already replaced the banking system with them. What actually happened is that the existing banking system started using crypto too, so now most blockchain-based value is held by an extremely small number of obscenely wealthy folks.
That’s incorrect. Blockchains are not a feature of capitalism. Cryptocurrencies (mostly) are. The only reason why they haven’t been able to replace the banking system is that they live in a purely digital realm. What can you do with some digital tokens which you have obtained bypassing the government and powers? Not much. If you want to buy a house, or a car or anything substantial, you have to legalize your earnings, essentially mooting the very thing the “revolutionaries” thought they were doing (bringing down the banking system). So, they moved to do DeFi and other “virtual” stuff (basically a Casino), pretending they never meant to do that.
I still believe blockchains have potential, but I agree with most commentators here, not for the wrong use cases. And my own idea seems to be the wrong use case. Alas, my goal was to increase and incentivize solar energy generation while giving control to people and communities, more than what utility companies allow us to do.
This sounds like a solution looking for a problem. We know how to build green infrastructure. Many countries have done it. China has shown how it’s done, many other countries have done a lot too, albeit using Chinese inputs.
Also if your solution does not allow for debt, it will be unnecessarily slow in the rate of growth. Building green infrastructure is a great example for positive use of debt.
money-less Solarpunk future
Don’t read that channel, but it sounds like another unworkable socialist utopia.
As for the title, current crypto miners love running their operations near hydro power plants - not because ecology, but because economics of such power plants make it really cheap.
Whole thing is a complex matter - there’s really nice coverage by Sabine Hossenfelder
Thaaank you for a different view on things, finally. To be honest, I am myself also a bit a critic of bitcoin - most of the bitcoin green talk is green-wash, after all…However, the thing is that blockchains and cryptocurrencies are still relatively recent science.
And the ONE single thing which moved me to write this post and share my idea, even if it was shattered (I don’t mind if it just not good enough), was one of the phrases in that video: “…SPEED UP THE TRANSITION TO RENEWABLE ENERGY, BECAUSE ENERGY IS MONEY”. That is exactly my thesis, and my whole thinking (now several years!) revolves around how to make it actually real. If renewable energy was literally money, then there would be no inflation, things should work much more stable, because you can’t print energy out of thin air!
So first of all thank you, and if you have more resources around how renewable energy is money, but especially, how to make it literally money (less so about bitcoin though), I’d immensely appreciate!
Renewables are an invisible revolution that everyone seems to be ignoring. I don’t know why, but if you look at the numbers, solar alone grows at staggering rate of ~20-25% EACH YEAR. This is a massive, exponential growth that won’t slow down until some limiting factor kicks in (either resource availability or price of electricity falls down)
Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics
This is GLOBAL. This has nothing to do with ecology, I’ve run some rough estimations few years ago - solar is CHEAPER than fossil even in temperate climate. Similar story with the wind power - well managed renewable power plants print money, it’s a good business.
That said, this is about electricity production, fossil fuels are still unmached for transportation and this isn’t going to change any time soon
Solarpunk is embedded in leftist thought, and the endgame would include becoming a moneyless society. There’s various debates on how to get there from here.
Does crypto help with the transition? I would say no. It requires hooking up more renewable energy just for the sake of money.
Blockchain is an accounting system first, which happens to underpin a lot of the crypto money space. But it has nothing to do with money per se.
In a future moneyless society, is everyone free to consume as much as they want? Maybe that works, I don’t have an answer, but maybe it’s also an option to just account for everyone’s consumption (maybe in absolute terms, e.g. kWh?), and apply some limits. The disregard of limits is probably the first culprit against sustainability, and this society is not the first in failing there.
Generally, the aim is to rely on mutual aid and community. People don’t consume beyond the system’s ability to support them because their neighbors take a dim view of that, and they rely on their neighbors for a lot. Of course, this would take a significant change in how we do things under capitalism.
Having a chain of hashes that need to be verified and created doesn’t seem to have any application that would move us there. The issues to solve are largely social, not technical.
Your reasoning is sound and consistent. I am not going to argue against that because I have thought for a long time the same way.
But I strongly doubt, having got older and observed a lot how the world works, that this is going to happen in any foreseeable time frame. Even if I would myself wish it was that way.
We are a huuuge minority thinking that way. People are blinded by ever more distraction, consumption, goods, and also extensive travelling all over the world. They all WANT that, even if it’s an illusion making them unhappy in cases. I am not religious, but do you know the tale of Noah? He basically was telling people that something was coming, but they all ignored him. They were (and will be) dancing as long as the music plays.
So if you think we are magically turning people’s minds towards that - I don’t think that will happen, ever. The only way will be a total societal collapse, but that will be ugly, and I don’t think in that scenario we will get to utopia.
Now you may say it’s exactly people like me who prevent this from becoming real. Maybe, but I am tired of being accused things for problems I didn’t create, and feeling bad about being realistic about how I think things could unfold.
It’s as realistic as your scenario to think that using technological means can get us to a Solarpunk future. In fact, Solarpunk is a lot about technology, but technology at the service of all people and not just a few. THAT is the social issue. And it has persisted through all ages and empires, because it is agnostic to technology.
Maybe we are all just helpless dreamers, and any of this whatsoever will happen. I think we should just be sympathetic of each other and not dismiss too much ahead of time.
You are also using a device to debate here, and that is a technological tool. You have an idea what is behind the Internet, with all its devices and the accumulated consumption? We could say if it’s only social then we should organize in real life and don’t waste time online?
But you need folks to work with you today, so you use what is available. I don’t care if whatever I think about today will be obsolete in x years, nobody can predict the future. I am also only just trying to contribute to get us there, not to be right.
OK, but how does a chain of verified hashes help us get there? No matter if that’s going to happen tomorrow or in 100 years?
I don’t know! Maybe it does, maybe not. I am not claiming it does. I like to think about what COULD. Maybe THIS is not the way, I never claimed it does, I am thankful for all replies, which help honing my thinking. But someone may have a brilliant idea.
Then I think you’ve answered your initial question: people don’t talk about it because there’s no apparent way it can help. If someone does come up with a good idea, then that will change. Until then, there isn’t much to talk about.
Frankly, I don’t think that will happen. Blockchain has been around a while now and its usefulness as currency is dubious, and its usefulness for anything else has failed to emerge on any scale.
Would it be possible for a bad actor to connect a gas powered generator and get more tokens?
Great question. This can be prevented by technological means. Basically, “minting” of the coins would happen at the generation devices. There would have to be some cryptographical means of preventing misuse.
For your info, this is known as ‘hand waving’
At that point the devices could just report without the use of cryptocurrency and we could use normal money, it would also have less power usage because no mining is happening.
I just can’t really visualize the advantage of cryptocurrency here, it increases power usage, cost, and complexity.
There’s no mining here. The generating device “mines” the token when it generates the energy.
The word “mining” is misleading. It actually refers to the process of bringing a coin into existence. There are many ways to do that, one is by running math puzzles by CPUs which is energy intensive (like what bitcoin does). Generating energy itself could be another way, therefore there’s no waste.
But why would we need a blockchain for that?
A blockchain that uses proof-of-work would waste far more energy than it would save, just on doing the accounting. What blockchain do you propose using that would have a minimal transaction cost, in watts and in coin?
If we’re talking about local charging of EVs, I guess that would be a little like putting a gas pump in my front yard for my neighbors to use. Probably going to hit zoning issues if you open that up to general commercial use.
How does a ‘solar energy blockchain’ know where the electricity used to run it comes from? There’s no difference between 120v ac coming from a generator or coming from the grid, or coming from a solar array.
Here’s an idea. How about instead of paying money to buy a token that you then buy electricity with you just… Buy electricity. You can have a distrubuted system without the silly tokens that’s how stuff like torrents work. Or better idea go through some sort of central (maybe government!!) agency which has enough power to enforce people are fairly paid for the power they sell to what I’m going to call “the grid”.
Anyway fun fact my Grandpa, almost 2 decades ago plonked some solar panels on his barn and was able to sell the extra power to their utility provider. They lived so far out into the boonies that their neighbors literally kept and sold cows for a living so I’d like to assume pretty much anybody can do the same.
Wasn’t this tried years ago? I forget the name of the coin/chain.
Because crypto is a scam.
I can’t blame you for this sentiment because there is a lot of scamming. So is the current monetary system btw, even at a bigger and blunt scale.
Crypto is just math, what people do with it is something different. It’s a tool, and it can be used for good as for bad.
Crypto does not offer any real value other than to scam people it is a shit sandwich.
Crypto is just math
Then crypto is already involved in the electrical grid…
Please explain the scam.
FWIW I agree that capitalism is a scam but I think crypto is a slight improvement over imperial currencies.
Sure here you go. Crypto can’t be actually used for money. It has no intrinsic value and since the price fluctuates so rapidly it can’t be used at store checkouts because the store owner can lose their shirt in the time it takes to convert the crypto garbage to real money. The only value that it has is the added value of other suckers adding their money to the pyramid scheme. Bitcoin and all its little scam buddies are a piece of shit that needs to be flushed.
There are a type of tokens called stablecoins that are specifically designed to have a consistent price over time. Use those for your store checkouts.
Crypto is just capitalism with fewer safety nets. No FDIC insurance on deposits and no SEC to prevent scams and fraud.
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.
If you’re cutting out the grid, how do you propose getting electricity generated by solar to the EV? In your system do they have to come to my house and plug into my solar array when its sunny to collect their purchase? Or are you expecting the grid to deliver it, but not expect any compensation for grid capacity consumption, transmission and distribution of the electricity?
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.
I’m a generator. Why would I want a token to buy electricity I already have a surplus of for my EV? How do non-solar EV owners get tokens? Does your system propose non-solar owners buy tokens on the open market with real money (dollars/euros) from solar generators? If I’m spending dollars/euros to buy tokens, why don’t I just use my dollars/euros to buy electricity for my EV instead?
My fundamental hope was that with this idea solar energy generation would be boosted by some order of magnitude, and that people and communities would own the infrastructure and not be dependent on any government agency. Solarpunks say a lot that Solarpunk is about communities and people, and for such a vision, I thought that independence (self-reliance?) is a major requirement. However, after reading a lot of very thoughtful responses, like yours, I already came to the conclusion that it won’t work in the way I explained. But I wanted to honor the time you took to respond.
The idea about the tokens would be that you could go to any community doing this thing, and use them there. They would not be confined to where the energy was generated. You generated in a LA neighborhood but spent somewhere in NYC. Even in Seoul or Kuala Lumpur, because they are kWh and not USD, so there’s that utility. Consumers need to buy anyways, right? Of course the only reason to why they would buy tokens instead of paying in USD is if it would be cheaper, or if it offered some kind of other surplus utility or ease of use - for example if the tokens can also be used to pay your energy bill, or any other good. Which requires that those tokens somehow become widely accepted.
None of these criteria seem to be properties of the design I propose, and various people have already pointed out serious flaws or areas for improvement. So I guess the idea was noble but not so feasible :) Thanks!.
I disagree with your original position, but it appears even that too has evolved. I appreciate you taking the time to reply. Thank you.
Successful in accomplishing what?
Precisely my thought. I’ve yet to see an application of block chain that hasn’t already been solved by some other technology.
Bitcoin is the only inflation resistant currency I know of.
It’s not a very useful currency if deflation is making people hoard it…
The current situation, where those closest to the issueing party of new currency reap the biggest reward, also sounds not very usefull. Therefore I do applaud alternatives, be they not perfect.
What do you mean, “alternatives”? This sounds like a distinction without a difference.
A little inflation is a good thing. The deflationary cycle is awful.
I can turn this around. I have yet to see some of the characteristics of blockchains being solved by some other technology. You may say it’s irrelevant because they are useless, and I am not going to argue against that. But it’s a technology and as such has potential. Maybe not today, maybe never. It’s like Solarpunk. We don’t know if it will ever be real.
Sure, if blockchain was created first then it would be novel instead of novelty.
There’s application in responding to requests for information quickly, in a mesh network, perhaps in presence of malactors. For example the medical records of injured US soldiers are stored in and delivered using a block chain solution.
There’s application in a hypothetical currency free from the corruption of governance. For example, an orange President couldn’t print gobs of money during a pandemic, devaluing your currency, then hand that money to corporations.
There’s application in responding to requests for information quickly, in a mesh network, perhaps in presence of malactors.
Online databases already exist and have been handling requests for information quickly for longer than there has been an internet, and always in the presence of bad actors. What problem is there, specifically, that the blockchain would solve?
For example the medical records of injured US soldiers are stored in and delivered using a block chain solution.
No they arent, the DoD did a study that said it might be useful for that purpose if they can solve the challenges with scaling, interoperability, and integration with legacy services.
There’s application in a hypothetical currency free from the corruption of governance. For example, an orange President couldn’t print gobs of money during a pandemic, devaluing your currency, then hand that money to corporations.
No there isn’t. Unregulated currencies are still subject to corrupt governance, the only difference being that the governance isn’t nominally accountable to the electorate. Literally nothing has stopped Elon from printing scam tokens for his pump and dump schemes and keeping the extracted value for himself.
This is what happens to IT professionals when the centralization of textbook design is no longer appropriate the situations. All they’ve got is a hammer. So, everything’s a nail, even if it means lying.
So you think cryptos “solve” the same problem as paper money? A distributed open network is just the same as some rich bros printing paper?
Sometime the point is not to solve a new problem but to improve a fundamentally broken “solution”.
Rich bros print the crypto currency with no accountability.
Governments print real money.
FTFY
I am not talking cryptocurrency but blockchains. And governments don’t print real money, they just print money you think is real, because they force you to. And there are crypto currencies which are not printed by rich bros. However, the same way as community currencies like LETS or mutual credit, they have just limited impact. I just say this because the all-round attack “it’s all garbage” simply is not true.
So you think cryptos “solve” the same problem as paper money? A distributed open network is just the same as some rich bros printing paper?
No and yes.
Money was created to improve upon the barter system by adding a standard unit of value. Paying salaries no longer needed stores of salarium, the state just prints money to pay for services and taxes it back to prevent the currency from inflating.
The problem that crypto solves is that rich bros don’t like the state monopoly on the creation of money. It’s not an actual problem, they just want a legal means of committing fraud.
Sometime the point is not to solve a new problem but to improve a fundamentally broken “solution”.
How is it an improvement?
In allowing people generating solar energy to be fairly rewarded. Schemes today are at the mercy of the utility companies. Basically, to incentivize people to generate more solar energy than is already happening. Think of roofs.
I realize this is only meaningful if for some (I guess economic) reason they get more through that than through selling to the grid.
How would this generated electricity be transferred to the purchaser? So I generate 1 kW of power and get one of these tokens. I put that token up for purchase. Somebody buys that token entitling them to 1 kW. Now how does that 1 kW go from me to them? If the answer is the power company, now you need to rope them into this scheme and I’m not seeing any reason at all why they would do that.
So we should waste perfeclty good electricity to mine some blackchain … for what reward? Some meme currency?
There’s no mining. Only a few blockchains require mining today. The energy generation IS the mining. Every kwh which has been generated would just issue a token. Sorry if that sounds mumbo jumbo, but these are actually blockchain technology characteristics.
I’m failing to understand what problem the blockchain would solve that isn’t already solved more efficiently by a regular database…
Not all blockchains work via mining
The blockchain solves one problem: trust. Do we really have that problem in normal energy markets?
People who buy and sell energy would need to trust each other and the middle man in between them. If they have trust issues, using a blockchain could make sense. As far as I can tell, the current system doesn’t suffer from a lack of trust, so what would the blockchain do in this case?
I actually have to disagree with the notion that blockchain (meaning distributed public ledger blockchain for these purposes) solves the trust problem. I’ve yet to see an example where this is actually true.
What public ledger blockchains do is move trust to somewhere off-chain. Consider a common example that’s used by advocates; tracking a banana from source to sale. The blockchain is supposed to create a completely untamperable record that proves the banana in your hands was ethically sourced. But in order for that to actually work, there has to be some way to prove that the banana in your hands corresponds to the record on the chain. And that proof can only come from human verification at each step of the process. So the trust is still there, it’s just in the humans verifying the accuracy of the records rather than in the records themselves. Which is basically how the current system works.
And you’ll find this same problem with basically any and every application of public ledger blockchains as a solution to problems of trust. In the vast majority of cases, sooner or later these trustless, decentralized systems will ultimately defer to trust in a central authority. How do you know your Bored Ape NFT is the real one, and not a copy minted by someone else on the same chain against the same image? You check it with BAYC through OpenSea or whatever platform they’re using. Ethereum has been forked multiple times. How do we know the current “Ethereum” is the true and real version of the ledger? Because the Ethereum Foundation says so.
These systems only solve trust in the same way that sweeping all your trash under the rug “solves” cleaning your apartment.
Thanks for taking the time to explain this. Turns out there’s always more nuance to these things.
