No they cannot. You still have cash today, which also allows for anonymous transactions and which you can stash away. If today they’d try grabbing your money from your account, you could just move it away. That wouldn’t be possible anymore without approval, count on that. A digital USD is totally not the same, they’d probably just ban cash. It will be all nightmares becoming real. Not saying here crypto currencies are a panacea and the solution, just warning of the woes of a digital USD.

You too are conflating blockchains with cryptocurrencies using proof-of-work. This is simply not what blockchains are.

That’s incorrect. Blockchains are not a feature of capitalism. Cryptocurrencies (mostly) are. The only reason why they haven’t been able to replace the banking system is that they live in a purely digital realm. What can you do with some digital tokens which you have obtained bypassing the government and powers? Not much. If you want to buy a house, or a car or anything substantial, you have to legalize your earnings, essentially mooting the very thing the “revolutionaries” thought they were doing (bringing down the banking system). So, they moved to do DeFi and other “virtual” stuff (basically a Casino), pretending they never meant to do that.

I still believe blockchains have potential, but I agree with most commentators here, not for the wrong use cases. And my own idea seems to be the wrong use case. Alas, my goal was to increase and incentivize solar energy generation while giving control to people and communities, more than what utility companies allow us to do.

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!

I am not talking cryptocurrency but blockchains. And governments don’t print real money, they just print money you think is real, because they force you to. And there are crypto currencies which are not printed by rich bros. However, the same way as community currencies like LETS or mutual credit, they have just limited impact. I just say this because the all-round attack “it’s all garbage” simply is not true.

I can turn this around. I have yet to see some of the characteristics of blockchains being solved by some other technology. You may say it’s irrelevant because they are useless, and I am not going to argue against that. But it’s a technology and as such has potential. Maybe not today, maybe never. It’s like Solarpunk. We don’t know if it will ever be real.

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.

If your argument is “Public ledger blockchains can be just as efficient as traditional databases”

That was never my argument. If you read carefully, there were other arguments I made in context. I just wanted to put it into perspective. Everything uses energy, and comparing things in tech is often very complex because it depends on a zillion factors.

In a blockchain, to make a transaction you need the node and that’s it. In traditional client server model, a database on its own rarely does the job, especially if you talk transactions and banking. Hence why web servers and all the other layers very well account and are relevant to store a transaction, otherwise it just doesn’t happen. I know because I have done this for a living.

what have you done to actually show that only a public ledger blockchain can solve the problem you’re describing?

What have you done to show it does not? You are only arguing about energy. To date I have yet to see an application where I can send money in sub-seconds to a person in Venezuela which has trouble accessing international markets and censorship by the government. Or creating a tamper-proof land registry which can’t be altered by the government or a rich guy in some developing country. Or a database which can’t be censored, or shut down by a government or some powerful dude. An application which allowed anyone to create money (even if it’s too often misused). Mind you, I am not saying blockchain is good for everything nor that it is the best thing ever invented nor that it does not have problems. Any tech does.

I am sure you will find ways to argue against this, because when someone’s mind is made up there’s little space, but I am not here to convince you, I just stand my ground and make my case. Have a nice evening.

Your answer isn’t good enough either. Aren’t you forgetting application servers, web servers, load balancers, Cloudflare, firewalls and all that stuff which allow a database to just use 0.1J? Because if we are talking VISA and banking scale of transactions that’s what it takes.

Besides, it’s just missing the point. Traditional databases are good and best at what they do - address traditional problems. Blockchains address different problems, so comparing them for completely different use cases won’t work. You can compare MySQL vs Oracle vs PostgreSQL that way.

I don’t know! Maybe it does, maybe not. I am not claiming it does. I like to think about what COULD. Maybe THIS is not the way, I never claimed it does, I am thankful for all replies, which help honing my thinking. But someone may have a brilliant idea.

The obvious falsehood is dismissing each blockchain by using bitcoin as a reference. I am NOT talking about bitcoin-style Proof-Of-Work transactions whatsoever. Also, the article you mention is from 2020, where Ethereum was also running Proof-Of-Work, like bitcoin. It doesn’t anymore. I don’t dispute that bitcoin uses incomparable amounts of energy. If you can’t see what I am talking about then thanks for engaging but let’s not converse any longer.

A “database with appropriate access control” is a completely different use case, not appropriate at all for communal and open, transparent use. You need to have admins, you probably need some management organization altogether, admins can change stuff and it’s difficult to prove they didn’t, and a lot more issues.

However, "What problem are you trying to solve with the blockchain " is the fundamental question which needs to have an answer. I (and others) gave a lot of answers spread over all replies. At the core: no authority in control, complete transparency, unchangeable, decentralized (just like a renewable energy grid should be), everyone can participate.

A good idea does not need to convince, so if these arguments don’t answer the question, either it needs better explaining or it is not that good.

Communal, local infrastructure. Not a grid spanning vast areas, although it could. Look, this might totally not be the way to do it, but essentially to achieve independence we need to break up those monopolies. Otherwise we will always be enslaved to the powers that I thought we wanted to replace. Energy and food independence as well as communal land management I think are fundamental requirements for that - whatever the means, I subscribe. Otherwise I don’t see how a Solarpunk future can be even envisioned.

Blockchains (if used correctly) are good at breaking up such monopolies. But it’s just tech. People need to want and do it. So whatever people say :)

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.

Can’t disagree, but then why do we think Solarpunk? To have some nice pictures and inspiring stories?

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.

So the primary reason I wrote this post was not to talk about something I am convinced of as a solution, but exactly for people to drill holes and fire everything they have at it. If I don’t have the answers, it would not work in real life. So first of all tI am grateful to everyone who is chiming in.

There is a fundamental aversion in Solarpunk circles towards blockchains. I don’t want to change that, nor argue against that. The crypto space has earned this aversion all by themselves. There is obvious abuse and misallocation through these concepts.

I am an engineer. I have fought all my life to get a balance between my affinity to tech and the harm we are doing to the planet. But - we can’t just all get back to be farmers, can we? I love Solarpunk because it inspires to get to that balance, where we don’t need all to go back to bare basics, but use technology for a harmonious life with our host planet.

Technology is a big word. Can we demonize technology in general? Is the Internet bad? Are EVs bad? Are solar panels bad (think of what it takes to create them!). I am sure that is not an issue here, or so I hope.

Blockchains. Again, blockchains are just data structures. Fundamentally, numbers linked to other numbers. Yes, they require energy, but so does the entire Internet. You wouldn’t blame the Internet as a whole just because it’s used for capitalist maximalization, much more than blockchains are being used for that? Should we stop using it because big corps make most of their money nowadays through the Internet?

Blockchains are also just tools. Yes, most stuff is anti-thetic to Solarpunk. Notwithstanding, I (and many others) believe it has potential to bring about some change. They are fundamentally a more democratic tool because they lower the barrier to entry. Everyone can participate, and nobody can take that away from you. We can argue about democracy too, as democracy per se is a very abstract concept as well, and there are no absolutes nor silver bullets. Every community of any scale has to work it out for themselves, but it’s blatantly obvious that what we call today Democracy is a farce.

Associating crypto-technology to “crypto-capitalist tech fetishism” exclusively, however, is, excuse my counter-pun here, which I also present without personal affront, not understanding the technology as such. There are donating platforms built with crypto. There are also dedicated crypto-leftist groups, check out https://www.reddit.com/r/cryptoleftists/ or their discord channel. There are bioregional and regenerative finance projects who channel resources to people doing great (solarpunk) stuff on the ground. There are a lot of many more great ideas based on crypto. A lot of them fail to get attraction, a lot fail altogether as a project, a lot are too idealistic, a lot just fall under the radar, and a lot are useless. A lot could be done without blockchains, or not at all.

I was not trying to convince anyone that this solar crypto stuff IS Solarpunk, I only tried to get feedback to the question if it is a feasible project with some beneficial properties, these being for example to communally govern resources, and providing income to people (what if shanty-towns would have their solar roofs. A game changer for them) while further boosting solar energy generation. Frankly after reading some replies it doesn’t look like. I don’t mind if people say it is or not Solarpunk, or all the other (always welcomed) dismissing and rejecting critique. The aim was to try to identify if there is merit in even trying. And it looks there isn’t, purely based on practical and economical criteria, like some you did point out in your reply.

“Communal, shared infrastructure” is an abstract concept as well. There is a tension rarely talked about, and it is if this means we need to go back living in small village-like communities only. It often sounds like that. Is that really the end game? I am not sure. In that case yes, blockchains and a whole lot of other stuff are superfluous. However, I assume most people writing here live in cities, with a romanticized ideal of what it means to live in small close-knit communities, because they never actually had the chance to do that. I have. And I have lived in cities. The population share living in cities is constantly growing. Most city people want to continue living in cities. So what we do? Can “Communal, shared infrastructure without growth” as a concept be applied to all scales? Maybe it can, and blockchains could be a powerful tool to mediate the transition to that, due to their unique characteristics of accountability, transparency and decentralization.

Or maybe not. That’s totally fine.

Your reasoning is sound and consistent. I am not going to argue against that because I have thought for a long time the same way.

But I strongly doubt, having got older and observed a lot how the world works, that this is going to happen in any foreseeable time frame. Even if I would myself wish it was that way.

We are a huuuge minority thinking that way. People are blinded by ever more distraction, consumption, goods, and also extensive travelling all over the world. They all WANT that, even if it’s an illusion making them unhappy in cases. I am not religious, but do you know the tale of Noah? He basically was telling people that something was coming, but they all ignored him. They were (and will be) dancing as long as the music plays.

So if you think we are magically turning people’s minds towards that - I don’t think that will happen, ever. The only way will be a total societal collapse, but that will be ugly, and I don’t think in that scenario we will get to utopia.

Now you may say it’s exactly people like me who prevent this from becoming real. Maybe, but I am tired of being accused things for problems I didn’t create, and feeling bad about being realistic about how I think things could unfold.

It’s as realistic as your scenario to think that using technological means can get us to a Solarpunk future. In fact, Solarpunk is a lot about technology, but technology at the service of all people and not just a few. THAT is the social issue. And it has persisted through all ages and empires, because it is agnostic to technology.

Maybe we are all just helpless dreamers, and any of this whatsoever will happen. I think we should just be sympathetic of each other and not dismiss too much ahead of time.

You are also using a device to debate here, and that is a technological tool. You have an idea what is behind the Internet, with all its devices and the accumulated consumption? We could say if it’s only social then we should organize in real life and don’t waste time online?

But you need folks to work with you today, so you use what is available. I don’t care if whatever I think about today will be obsolete in x years, nobody can predict the future. I am also only just trying to contribute to get us there, not to be right.

Yeah bitcoin is obviously not going to look well there. However, that’s taking one example and apply to everything, which is inaccurate. Like taking a massive Hummer and take its consumption for every (gas) car in existence.

The blockchain I am talking about wouldn’t have such power consumption because it doesn’t use mining. I have made allusions of how that works in other comments.

There’s no mining here. The generating device “mines” the token when it generates the energy.

The word “mining” is misleading. It actually refers to the process of bringing a coin into existence. There are many ways to do that, one is by running math puzzles by CPUs which is energy intensive (like what bitcoin does). Generating energy itself could be another way, therefore there’s no waste.