#FridaysForFuture what about the crypto community?
Climate change is a topic that has been around for many years, and today March 15th kids from all over the world went on a global climate strike. The movement named #FridaysForFuture began with Greta Thunberg a 16-year-old environmental activist who started this movement on August 2018 and started skipping school on Fridays to protest outside Sweden´s Parliament. Greta Thunberg is currently nominated for Nobel peace prize
She recently attended The World Economic Forum in Davos. CCN reports, “While many delegates at the World Economic Forum arrive in their private jets, 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg took a 32-hour train from her home to Davos. She's also been camping out, trading a luxury hotel stay for a tent in 0 degrees Fahrenheit.”
Watch Thunberg´s speech at Davos
According to CNN, “The demands of students vary from country to country, but one common thread among them is that countries cut greenhouse gas emissions. Strikers in Australia are fighting against a controversial coal mine project and are demanding a full transition to renewable energy by 2030. Among the demands of the UK, protesters are lowering the voting age to 16. Kids in the US want a radical transformation of the economy.”
I’m pretty sure many have heard about the consumption of energy that is involved with cryptocurrency.
Have you ever heard of proof of work in cryptocurrency?
Proof of work makes it extremely difficult to alter any aspect of the blockchain; such an alteration would require re-mining all subsequent blocks. So, proof of work is a pretty big deal in cryptocurrency.
Miners and their computer power generate proof of work. They are sometimes coming together with other miners to create a mining pool to increase the chances of mining blocks in the blockchain. All this to win over the transaction fees that users have to pay. The more power you burn, the more chances miners have to win over transaction fees. This Process besides being a great idea behind cryptocurrency to validated transactions in this decentralized system is also receiving many allegations saying that the amount of energy used to make cryptocurrency work is outrageous.
Digiconomist compares bitcoin energy consumption with other countries: “The entire Bitcoin network now consumes more energy than a number of countries, based on a report published by the International Energy Agency. If Bitcoin was a country, it would rank as shown below”.
Others believe that the solution to this problem is proof of stake. According to Investopedia, “The proof of stake (PoS) seeks to address this issue by attributing mining power to the proportion of coins held by a miner. This way, instead of utilizing energy to answer Proof of Work puzzles, a Proof of Stake miner is limited to mining a percentage of transactions that is reflective of his or her ownership stake. For instance, a miner who owns 3% of the Bitcoin available can theoretically mine only 3% of the blocks". This alternative is criticized by many because those who own more crypto have a better chance to mine. I understand the discontent, but in contrast, in proof of work, some join forces to win over transactions which can also be unfair for miners left out of the mining pools.
Not everything is negative:
Bitcoin and it blockchain technology have opened a spectrum of possibilities; many different companies are fascinated with blockchain and are beginning to implement it for different solutions.
According to Cryptobriefing, “Yale openlab, the university’s incubator for disruptive new technology, has just received a $150K grant from Social Alpha Foundation, to develop decentralized carbon emissions tracking tool. Yale University, which has recently been expanding its use of distributed ledger technology, will execute the project between two of its branches: the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale, and the Yale Center for Business and the Environment.
According to the university’s experts, the scale and rate of climate change is moving at which the present models of mitigation are insufficient. That’s where decentralized tech comes in to streamline the process.”
Other efforts have been made within the crypto world to address this issue such as renewable energy and solar mining farms. On the other hand, whether or not you believe in proof of work or stake, we must admit that there is a whole lot of power being used for cryptocurrency transactions to work. Nonetheless, I believe this technology is the future, and it should keep on working towards being sustainable. I also think crypto is still in its early stages so how can we ask for everything to be solved when It hasn't even reached its full potential.
Hope you enjoyed it, feel free to comment.