10 Years on from the launch of Bitcoin and it has had a meaningful impact worldwide, helping to decentralise payments and spawning a number of cryptocurrencies and blockchain based companies. However, this innovative technology currently uses as much power as a medium sized country, with the closest currently being Singapore. Consuming over $2bn of electricity annually and with the location of most server farms being in China this is primarily powered by coal which gives Bitcoin a titanic carbon footprint.
Bitcoin uses a Proof of Work (PoW) system, some other cryptocurrencies have reacted to the environmental and cost issues of powering their blockchains with plans to introduce lower power proof of stake system (PoS). These systems still require every node that votes on the consensus algorithm to be run on an independant server. This either reduces the voting population or causes further environmental and cost issues.
“In order to rise from its ashes, a Phoenix must first burn” Octavia Butler
Bitcoin was groundbreaking in resolving a number of issues with digital storage and transfer of value, but it has created an increasing amount of ash in our worldwide economy. However what if there was a way of reaching consensus using a large number of devices that are already in use, connected via the world’s largest network and have excess resources that are currently being wasted?
This is exactly what JSEcoin does across its pool of publisher and platform mining customers. Utilising SHA256 hashing across approximately 10-15k devices at any one time, using a small amount of excess resource from each to reach consensus and secure the blockchain.
To achieve this the team have built a web platform, desktop and mobile applications which when mining consumes less resources than a video advertisement.
Using the platform mining as an example there are 144,000 tokens distributed each day, with a draw every 30 seconds where 50 winners receive 1 JSE coin. Throughout December 2018 an average of 3000 customers were using the system at a time, therefore 144,000/3000 meant that on average each customer received 48 tokens per day for their excess resources that would otherwise have been wasted.
This provides a number of benefits.
- Increased distribution to gain more stakeholders
- An entry point for new users to improve adoption
- A method for webmasters to monetise their content
A JSEcoin user can capitalise on their excess resources whilst they work on their laptops, play with their phones or teach their children to code on a Raspberry Pi.
The system does not require a high powered device and therefore is inclusive for people of all incomes and geographies, giving them the opportunity to join the blockchain revolution which they may otherwise have been excluded from.
This forms an important part of the JSEcoin ecosystem which is built primarily to help publishers monetise their content, however the team strongly believe that this can be achieved through being an ethical company and by helping the environment by utilising a system that has no impact on the environment. With further traction, with some people switching from power hungry blockchains to JSEcoin, the companies environmental impact could be a net positive!
With the upcoming launch of the ad exchange this means that the company now have green mining, fee free transfers on the JSE blockchain, merchant tools to allow subscriptions and items to be bought with JSE alongside the world’s largest blockchain ad exchange…
