From one of the main Ethereum clients, to Polkadot to Substrate; Parity has become exceptional at developing successful open-source blockchain projects. Their latest effort Substrate provides a framework to easily create custom blockchains. Building on cutting-edge technologies like Web Assembly, Substrate also offers automated on-chain upgrades.
We were joined by Gavin Wood, who was previously co-founder and CTO of Ethereum and founded Parity. We talked about the early Ethereum days, how Parity got started, Substrate, Polkadot and his views on on-chain governance.
Topics discussed in this episode:
The genesis story of EthereumWhy Gavin prefers reasoning from first principles to readingHow Parity shunned Silicon Valley principles to build an developer-driven companyWhy they decided to work on a scalable blockchain from scratch instead of improving EthereumAn overview of SubstrateThe relationship between Substrate and PolkadotHow Substrate allows switching consensus in a live blockchainWhy Ethereum’s governance process is centralizedPolkadot and the case for on-chain governance
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Epicenter is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Sƒbastien Couture, Meher Roy & Sunny Aggarwal.
Bithub Africa has started using off-grid solar power to mine bitcoin and ethereum. John Karanja, the founder and chief executive officer of the small Kenyan mining operation, hopes to spread the technology to the rest of the continent while exposing the lie that cryptocurrency mining poses a danger to the environment.
Also Read:
Clean Cryptocurrency
“We are using solar energy in a similar manner to traditional power sources to test its reliability as a source for cryptocurrency mining,” Karanja told news.bitcoin.com in an interview on Oct. 30. “We are still analyzing the data, but what we can already see is that the blockchain economy is certainly incentivizing innovation in the renewable energy industry globally.”
John Karanja
has laid out a series of interconnected cables and devices at its small mining facility in Nairobi. An inverter connects to a battery, which is patched through to a controller that is linked to a 200-watt solar panel. The PV module is fixed to the roof at an angle to maximize solar capture. “We are using a standard (solar) panel that generates enough to power a small network node that runs the blockchain software,” Karanja said.
In a separate demonstration video on , a Kenyan news site, he explained the setup in more detail. “Essentially what we have here is that the nuc computing device is integrated to the controller to generate the tokens on the protocol,” he said.
Founded in 2015, Bithub.Africa is a commercial blockchain accelerator that is driving the adoption of blockchain technology and solutions across Africa. The company also focuses on building systems that facilitate access to financial services and energy through public blockchain projects and open protocols such as bitcoin.
In addition to its solar-powered cryptocurrency mining operations, Bithub Africa also extracts litecoin and ripple using conventional sources of electricity, with only minimum air-conditioning needed to keep the mining rigs from overheating. Its payments unit is aided by two bitcoin Lightining nodes, which are collectively capable of supporting three million transactions per second.
Unfounded Environmental Claims
Off-grid solar panels are already lighting up many homes in urban and rural areas across Africa. And now they are also creating new businesses in cryptocurrency mining, on a continent that boasts an excellent solar resource.
With bitcoin mining facing criticism from environmental activists for allegedly consuming too much electricity, new business models that utilize renewable energy to generate digital coins could help to neutralize such concerns, however untrue. Renewables are also generally cheaper than electricity derived from coal-fired power plants, which still dominate in Africa’s nascent bitcoin mining industry. They can ease concerns about the high cost of electricity and computing power.
Karanja is opposed to the hullabaloo. “Recently there has been a lot of angst focused on bitcoin mining being a major contributor to global warming due to its extrapolated energy use based on current trends,” he said via email. “We disagree that this is the case. In fact, we believe the converse; that it will spur innovation in sustainable energy solutions.”
One challenge that Bithub Africa could encounter with renewable power sources is the issue of intermittency. Solar power is dependent on reliable, sunny weather. When the sun is not shining, it can be bad for business, as the company’s cryptocurrency mining rigs have to run continually, non-stop. Some solar systems, however, can provide power in bad weather by using energy stored in batteries.
Karanja believes that the jury is still out on the potential scalability of solar-powered cryptocurrency mining. That’s largely because the technology is in the early stages of development, he said.
“However, if you look at solutions that scale in Africa, they tend to be organized in a localized and peer-to-peer manner, as this is the main way societies are organized,” he said. “We plan to increase adoption by educating and resourcing skilled engineers who will test and deploy the solution across the continent.”
What do you think about using renewable energy to mine cryptocurrency? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock.
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remains the poster boy for the cryptocurrency market, while it’s also the most famous application of the ground-breaking blockchain technology. This should not distract from the diverse nature of blockchain, however, which has the potential to disrupt numerous markets and is expected to achieve a cumulative value of $16 billion by 2024.
Blockchain certainly has considerable potential in the wider financial markets, with banks and lenders keen to integrate this technology to drive greater efficiency and transparency across the board.
One example of this exists in the form of , which has built a blockchain-based protocol to reform how everyday financial transactions are completed. But how does this work, and what does it mean for consumer credit across the globe.
How PumaPay is Seeking to Reform Consumer Credit
At the heart of this project of two core objectives; namely the reformation of credit transactions in the modern economy and the introduction of cryptocurrencies into the consumer mainstream.
In terms of the former, the company’s product is built on the premise that today’s credit and debit cards are unfit purpose in the prevailing economic climate. This may seem like an unfair assertion, particularly given the recent diversification in this space and the emergence of bad credit products and cards that cash back or lucrative sign-on bonuses.
However, the PumaPay system has been developed using open-source technology, which enables merchants and users to pull funds out of a customer’s account with express consent. This would replace the outdated method that sees shoppers push money to a retailer, before the cash flows through a long line of intermediaries as part of a process that can take days to complete.
This would also leverage the secure and transparent nature of blockchain to excellent effect, reforming the payment process withoutplacing customer’s hard-earned money at risk.
What are the Benefits of This and What do They Mean for the Financial Market?
In addition to being quicker and more secure, this type of platform also offers considerable .
More specifically, it creates a scenario in which the number and volume of transaction fees can be reduced dramatically. This reduces the cost of everyday financial transactions for allparties, with customers poised to benefit considerably over a concerted period of time.
This advanced platform is also scalable and extremely flexible, with the introduction of cryptocurrencies creating an additional payment option for customers and merchants across the globe. As a result, customers will be able to execute cryptocurrency payments both on- and offline, creating instantaneous transactions that carry next to no fees.
So what does this mean for current debit and credit cards and the financial sector as a whole? In simple terms, it provides a challenge to the status quo, providing a reform of the typical payment process along with its associated fees and delays.
While neither PumaPay or similar startups yet in a position to consistently challenge market leading names such as , there’s no doubt that the new platform could emerge as the modern standard for completing payments.
The question that remains is whether PumaPay will successfully drive this change or an existing provider will quickly integrate blockchain technology into their core products?
