[-] holon_earth@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah that is the single most important issue why the whole project is probably flawed. It was addressed in some other comment by some other thoughful commentator in a slightly different way. I know Ethereum (and other PoS chains) pretty well too, and I understand permissionless.

It shouldn't be authorized. Ideally, through the energy meter, only solar (and other renewable) energy generated should be able to mint the coins. There should be some kind of protocol or consensus mechanism that would accomplish that. I guess no such protocol exists :) Thanks!

[-] holon_earth@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 weeks ago

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!

[-] holon_earth@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 weeks ago

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!.

[-] holon_earth@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 weeks ago

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. I know very well how the electrical grid works, as my primary education was electrical draftsman, so I understand all your points and I agree - although for some of them, there can be solutions - that's what engineering is about. But as there are fundamental flaws in this design, there's no point in delving deeper. Thanks!

[-] holon_earth@slrpnk.net 0 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah this is the best critique in all the answers. I was aware of most of these issues, and I hoped that by sharing the idea, ways to improve it and make it viable would emerge. I was thinking that the same way solar energy can be metered and sold today (after all, you can't lie about having generated energy you haven't, can you?), the infrastructure issues could be addressed (being the meter the actual node, and possibly as some kind of light node, which wouldn't have to store the whole chain). The most important goal however was to boost decentralized solar energy generation, and make it profitable to individuals and self-organizing communities, instead of relying on our slow, gating institutions. Think of shanty-towns in the tropics which could suddenly be contributing to a cleaner world while also resulting to be better off (some credit scheme or something would be required for their investment costs, of course). If this idea doesn't reach those goals, it's useless.

I still believe blockchains have potential but this is maybe not the best use case. Thanks!

[-] holon_earth@slrpnk.net 0 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[-] holon_earth@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 weeks ago

Yep, real blockchain know-how here. I answered to this partly here I think (if I am linking correctly) https://slrpnk.net/post/17009217/13027204. The real issue there is how would anyone be prevented to register a new private key as a validator. Hard-wiring that into the hardware creates new problems. So I guess this is the argument where it all could fall apart, just technically. Thanks.

[-] holon_earth@slrpnk.net 0 points 2 weeks ago

I thought the same way as validating in Proof-of-Stake works: The devices have a private key (yes there are issues there about securing them for non-authorized access, but they can largely be addressed like also nodes do) which is registered on the blockchain. Then only these registered devices can issue coins. This is critical and there might be a lot of ways this could be hackable, which could or could not be mitigated. However I thought it's not more of a challenge than running say an Ethereum or any other node.

[-] holon_earth@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

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.

[-] holon_earth@slrpnk.net 0 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[-] holon_earth@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[-] holon_earth@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 weeks ago

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.

-55

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.

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holon_earth

joined 2 weeks ago