Long time lurker, and not in blockchain anymore but interested in the tech. Given Elon Musks recent tweets I have been thinking of something that can resolve the issue this is posing to you.
This idea is simply this - its a blockchain that is designed to run where/when there is surplus renewable power available locally.
In areas where there is a lack of renewable power compared to demand, a 'shed load' feature is enabled on nodes/mining computers, which may rely on an oracle feed. Mining is disincentivised here.
For example, the block rewards may only be paid out when a 'proof of renewable power surplus' is provided, in addition to proof of work, or stake or some hybrid of them.
To make the network more efficient mining computers must not operate or compete on block chain tasks during these periods of insufficient green energy.
Of those that may be eligible, a randomised lottery may be used to preselect miners from a pool to go ahead and compete to mine, being as close to optimal a trade off of security and efficiency.
The thing about renewable power is that with additional data about weather and power forecasts from external data feeds its possible to anticipate when power will not be available and so certain tasks can be booked in.
I believe an algorithm can also be used to allow mining rigs to have additional uses, so lower power requiring tasks may be operated on for example on providing computing resources to scientific problems, when there is intermediate power availability. Proof of contributing there may increase the rewards given when mining on the blockchain. The advantage of this I hope is to increase the useful work done for every kWh and revenue to incentivise enough miners to keep the network secure. I believe we would also need a means to ensure that the network is also geographically spread so no country can dominate the network and this also means more renewable power availability because its always sunny somewhere. I believe reaction time from certain nodes could be used to identify the approximate distance and over time, some sort of proof of history and trust is built up with computers that participate.
So whats the key selling point?
From the green perspective, the system primarily uses the excess power of renewable generators and this means that the overall revenue for installed renewable generation is increased as compared to the absence of the network, yet this consumption does not compete with other users. In other words, it pays for increased renewable capacity and its displacement of fossil fuels, by increasing the total revenue of green producers without conflicting with normal electricity use.
Perhaps smart contracts with local utilities could also be enabled to acquire surplus power at lower rates. And this may even be a requirement to receive block rewards.
In the event of a network having too few miners or groups of miners that may be harmful to the security of the network, some others can be brought on line elsewhere by broadcasting higher rewards to them. Some kind of governance system is required for this, perhaps similar to Tezos.
Going a bit further, with one billionaire stating he only wants to deal with 'virgin' bitcoin that he has mined himself using green power, potentially the danger of non fungible bitcoin that is worth a different amount for ordinary users verses the privileged, to stop this in the future perhaps it may be possible to identify (without doxing) wallets that meet KYC requirements as proven by one of the existing identity tokens, and preset it so if you choose you can only interact with these, and possibly have a feature that hides the prior history except to certain users, i.e. you, and a third party (a licensed authority if they request) as possibly determined by something like Kleros, that could grant certain users with that visibility (i.e. Police, Tax etc). You could choose not to do this of course, but I think we all know where this is all heading anyway.
I don't know the tech needed to do all this, I'm mixing and matching features of other blockchains, with my limited understanding.
But if I was to set this up, I might establish an airdrop, claimable, based on the BTC wallet distribution at a snapshot but with a penalty applied to the biggest wallets and possibly a partial redistribution of them to smaller wallets with a history of use, and maybe this redistribution might go with the KYC component. This also could incentivise use of the blockchain beyond a store of value.
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