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How to reduce energy consumption amid the popularity of Crypto
Electricity has become an integral part of everyday modern life. It is used to feed our bulbs, appliances, trains and even to load electric vehicles. Globally, its use increases rapidly with the development of various economies worldwide. Therefore, there is a growing need for energy which in turn continually feeds the demand for electricity generation. For years, most of the electricity consumed on a global scale has been generated by three energy sources: fossil fuels, nuclear and hydroelectric. Renewable energy sources such as photovoltaics (solar energy) offer an alternative, albeit small, to a share of world electricity. However, our energy sources can have significant environmental impacts.
Mining Cryptocurrency, then Versus Now
In 2009, to be precise, Bitcoin mining was nothing but a profitable hobby for many killing enthusiasts. Miners could exploit their CPUs to extract Bitcoin because they were sufficient. It was possible because the only hardware needed for the extraction was a simple computer and the number of miners was significantly low. In fact, in the initial stages, Hal Finney and Satoshi were the only ones to extract BTC through the simultaneous use of multiple computers. Satoshi has extracted 1,000,000 Bitcoins in the first week of the project, courtesy of several computers.
At that time, the difficulty of extraction was extremely low. However, over time, the problem has increased dramatically thanks to the Bitcoin rules and the change in new and advanced data mining hardware. In the beginning, people would use central processing units (CPUs) to extract BTC. The CPUs represent the electronic circuits inside a computer.
In 2009, a miner would generate bitcoins at a rate of 50 per block. Gradually, people made the transition to GPU extraction that was convenient and profitable to use. Because of this, GPU mining has become extremely popular and in 2011, people have started using them. Shortly thereafter, the difficulty of extraction increased and, in June 2011, people began to use FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays). Shortly thereafter, in 2013, the FPGAs gave way to the Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), which made the BTC mining sector more active.
Currently, the Bitcoin mining process requires approximately 73.04 TWh of computational power to solve complex mathematical equations in the year. This equates to about 0.33% of total global electricity consumption. A Bitcoin transaction consumes an average of around 916 KWh of electricity that could power around 31 US households. Mining is no longer profitable for individual miners because the creation of specialized drilling rigs is expensive to buy and operate.
For example, he would set a single Bitcoin min of about $ 15,861 to extract a bitcoin in the Cook Islands near New Zealand. The cost rises to about $ 16,209 in the Solomon Islands located near Papua New Guinea. The prices of the extraction of a Bitcoin increase further in Bahrain, Niue and South Korea with amounts respectively of $ 16,773, $ 17,566 and $ 26,170.
Mining activities generate huge electricity bills through energy consumption and cooling (and this is on top of the cost of mining equipment and, today, a structure to house your rows and towers of machines). It is estimated that the current BTC network will consume around 2.55 gigawatts (GW) of electricity annually, which is enough to power an entire country. For the context, the entire state of Ireland consumes an average of 3.1 GW of electricity.
Possible consequence of the high consumption of non-renewable energy
Greenhouse gas emissions
The most noteworthy impact of the increased use of non-renewable sources is the production of greenhouse gases, mainly CO2, which many believe may contribute to climate change (although most of this is a politicized hype). Different types of non-renewable energies produce different levels of greenhouse gases. For example, coal provides the highest amount of CO2 emission. It is important to note that CO2 is a plant food (and plants produce oxygen), is what every breathing creature emits when they breathe out, and climate change (formerly Global Cooling, formerly Global Warming) is not agreed by scientists to be caused by Human activity, since there are a host of other factors probably much more influential, such as solar cycles. It is also worth noting that climate change has always occurred, with warmer and colder periods, and what has been assumed in the last decade is a small percentage of what humanity has seen, without l & # 39; industry. The world's forecasts that ends in a disastrous way in a few years if we do not do something politically have fallen to the ground.
It is worth noting that the above factor will also depend on the efficiency of engines using these fuels and filter systems to reduce emissions. Modern technology can produce very efficient, low-emission engines that use fossil fuels.
Creating tokens (PoW / PoS / DPoS)
Proof-of-Work (PoW) is a term that is usually used to indicate the type of concept used by the Bitcoin network to validate and add transactions to the blockchain. It involves the use of ASICs in the mining industry to solve complex mathematical algorithms otherwise known as PoW problems. Although PoW is excellent against cyberattacks, it has a great limitation on the high consumption of electricity. In addition, mining platforms require higher computing hardware that is expensive to achieve. Some of the projects that use the PoW consensus algorithm include Bitcoin, Monero, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Bitcoin Cash, Zcash, Litecoin and DogeCoin. Ethereum aims to make the transition from PoW to PoS through the Casper protocol.
Proof-of-Stake (PoS), on the other hand, is an alternative way of validating transactions or blocks. It has been designed as an alternative to the PoW process that consumes an immense amount of energy. Unlike the test of work, the coins are no longer extracted but are counterfeit or minted. Block validation is performed by a select group of individuals known as validators. They are chosen on the basis of the age and the amount of the stakes held in the blockchain network. Some of the projects that use the PoS algorithm include Dash, QTUM, NEO, NavCoin, Stellar Lumen, Zcoin and Stratis.
The advantages of the PoS system include:
Less expensive hardware is required.
Transaction times are much faster.
It is energy efficient as it does not consume a lot of energy.
The delegated Proof-of-Stake, otherwise known as DPoS, is a new alternative protocol to the PoW and PoS consent algorithms. It is generally considered the most decentralized model of consensus today. This is mainly due to the fact that every token holder has a certain influence on what happens in the network. DPoS uses the power of the approval vote of the parties concerned to promote the consensus in a fair and democratic way. Projects using DPoS include, among others, Lisk, Ark, Rise, Tezos, OxyCoin, Shift, Lightning BTC and EOS.
Conclusion
Blockchain projects around the world can help reduce energy consumption by adopting alternative routes in the cryptocurrency mining process. First, blockchain projects can switch from the PoW system to the PoS system, which is much cheaper and uses less energy. Secondly, cryptocurrency miners it can make the transition to cleaner and friendlier renewable energy sources like solar energy. Finally, blockchain networks can incentivize miners to use renewable energy resources by offering additional rewards to those who use them.
Guest Post by Pawel Towczzk
My name is Paweł Tomczyk. I am a technology enthusiast and one of the first to adopt. I am the contributor to the blockchain ecosystem and in various ranges of funds. I specialized in marketing and Fintech for six years. Today I am the founder of Cyberius (www.cyberius.com), specialized in content creation and crowdfunding.
