Ask HN: Criticize my idea for a carbon negative cryptocurrency

7 points by aferran8 4 years ago | 7 comments

Hi HN.

Here is an idea for a cryptocurrency I have been toying with for a few days: It can use any consensus algorithm that doesn’t require huge amount of energy as the number of user grows (so no Proof of Work). When a new block is added, part of the coins that get generated are sent to a few fixed wallets. These wallets would be well known by all the nodes (so nodes can all validate that these are the right addresses) and would belong to a select few non-profit organizations that actively work in environmental restoration/protection (e.g. https://edenprojects.org/ or https://theoceancleanup.com/), carbon capture (e.g. https://climeworks.com/) and other related fields (e.g. https://www.catf.us/), I haven't really thought of which organization to give to, this list is just an example. Each non-profit would need to publicly declare that they own these wallets to ensure that the coins aren't being taken by a third party. The list of organizations/wallets could change over time, and would be selected by the community, probably with a formal process where anybody can create a proposal, then people can vote on them.

Here are a few questions that I have: - Are there any similar project already existing? I'd be happy to contribute to an already established project. - What are the problems you can foresee with this idea? - In particular, what are potential security issues here, how can I make sure no attacker can add custom addresses to this list? - Do you have any improvements to this? - Any pointer to an appropriate blockchain tech to build this on? I assume it would take far longer to implement it from scratch.

foerbert 4 years ago |

Not an expert on blockchain or anything really, so I'm just spitballing here.

It's an interesting idea in the sense that you'd have this enforced community-giving where the individual decisions about the giving are removed from the matter itself. I'm not sitting there looking at my bank account and wondering how much to give, and how. Instead I can look at it more abstractly. That's interesting.

But I think there's many problems.

The first real bulk of people to jump in will probably be those looking for a payday. However you'll be diverting coins from them, reducing their payday. You'd have to convince the self-interested that the coins they are giving up end up providing so much value to their other coins that it's worth it. This seems ripe to set up an even worse chicken-egg problem than usual.

The voting process. The only thing I can come up with is to basically run it based on coins held, unless you want to get into the business of confirming identities and all that. Again you end up with those most financially invested in the system being the ones with the control. How do you get them on-board with the idea, lest they decide to give to no non-profits?

About the only answer I've got here, which dovetails with the voting thing, is to just bake the addresses in and use hardforks to change em. This protects from attacks and also protects the community from, well, you.

However the main problems I foresee are all things that significantly reduce the thing I find most interesting about the concept - that being having the ability to remove the whole donation thing to a more abstract sort of problem. But if all the people with the power are the ones with the most financial stake, it's no longer really that abstract.

f0e4c2f7 4 years ago |

That's a really interesting idea to use crypto as a way to fight climate change rather than exasperbating it. I think you're really into something there.

Rather than using dedicated wallets and a new coin another approach you might consider here are NFTs. The "Save Thousands of Lives" NFT that pg bought comes to mind here as the model.

http://www.paulgraham.com/nft.html

wmf 4 years ago |

Donating coins that are worth zero doesn't accomplish anything.

itake 4 years ago |

> The list of organizations/wallets could change over time, and would be selected by the community, probably with a formal process where anybody can create a proposal, then people can vote on them.

If one of the organizations chooses to no longer exist, or is acquired by another organization, or loses access to their wallet, the community may fail to find a consensus of what wallet address to send the funding to.

meiraleal 4 years ago |

There are many "trying" it, like https://treedefi.com/ - it uses pancakeswap fork of uniswap and is very easy to setup a clone.

przeor 4 years ago |

those orgs will dump free coins for usd

Avtomatk 4 years ago |

I do not have data to support what I say but I believe that fiat money pollutes more than any cryptocurrency...

Just think about the printing of money, the transport of it, the construction of banks, all the bills they issue, the energy that is spend within the same bank, many countries have a relatively active national currency (that means mining)...

In the case of cryptocurrencies you are only spending electricity and production of graphics cards ....

I also think that the bitcoin algorithm is Shit inefficient, but certainly crypto pollutes a lot less than fiat money.