W0/1 — PechaKucha
For the final major project I have teamed up with David as we were both interested in developing the previous project, Brixstop. Before we had decided on continuing with the topic of blockchain we had different ideas. However, after the tutorial with John, we thought it was a good idea to take it further.
Fig 1. FMP topic ideation. Image by Sue and David.
Re-centralisation
Today, blockchain is most used in the financial services industry, including thousands of cryptocurrencies in Europe in specific. Decentralised cryptocurrency does have benefits for developing countries or places (based on Grand View Research). However, we found that most of the current cryptocurrencies were not originally created with this intention in mind, but rather as a means of profit and investment.
I saw consensus mechanisms as the key to build a decentralised blockchain as it relies on individuals and removes the governance. But in fact most of them relied on monetary values such as tokens and incentives to maintain the network without considering other values. Moreover, due to the high competition with earning incentives it has made the individuals to build mining pools and farms. Based on the research by Schinkckus (2020), more than 50 percent of the Bitcoin mining happens in China, taking over the majority of the entire blockchain network. From this we can see the consensus mechanisms are running a risk of re-centralisation. From this, we want to explore consensus mechanisms without purely monetary aspects and encourage myriads of other potential values.
I saw consensus mechanisms as the key to build a decentralised blockchain as it relies on individuals and removes the governance. But in fact most of them relied on monetary values such as tokens and incentives to maintain the network without considering other values.
Fig 2 and 3. Current blockchain application. Image by David.
Environmental Issues
Moreover, due to the high competition with earning incentives it has made the individuals to build mining pools and farms. Based on the research by Schinkckus (2020), more than 50 percent of the Bitcoin mining happens in China, taking over the majority of the entire blockchain network. From this we can see the consensus mechanisms are running a risk of re-centralisation. From this, we want to explore consensus mechanisms without purely monetary aspects and encourage myriads of other potential values.
Additionally, not only the re-centralisation problem rises up but it connects to health issues around the mining farms. Bitcoin (PoW), Ethereum (PoS) were responsible for more than 10 million tonnes (t) of CO2 emissions for approximately two years. For example, one single Ethereum transaction is equivalent to a US household watching youtube for 10,000 days. I thought with any emergent technology, there needs to be careful consideration of its environmental impacts on society or at least it should be raised to the users what is happening around us.
Fig 4. Environmental Issues around consensus mechanisms. Image by Sue.
Exploration
As a result, our project was brief was defined - to find a way to mitigate the monetary aspect of blockchain focusing on consensus mechanisms essentially. Also to consider a sustainable viewpoint throughout the project. We did find an example called Hyper Ledger that does not use any monetary aspect so our plan is to look for related examples later.
My interest was heavily on exploring a way to visualise and materialise the blockchain in diverse styles while David's focus point was on diverse research methods and discovering emerging interactive technologies. For our potential outcome, we are considered interactive installation, both in a physical and digital way. We imagined blockchain being externalised as a network like installation or a platform with an additional diagram that visualises the current blockchain system, supporting the outcome. These ideas were to create a blockchain demo which people can interact with or even experience in real life. The second concept was more focusing on materialising and addressing the environmental issues of blockchain in a systematic way.
Fig 5 and 6. Mood board and Potential Outcome ideas. Image by Sue.
Presentation and Feedback
From the PechaKucha presentation, we gathered a lot of feedback. The feedback we have received was mostly regarding the target audiences and questions of the methods of materialisation. Specifically, who we are specifically talking to or inviting to the project. Where are people? Who is it for? We needed to figure out how we would bring the human element into this picture more and needed to think about what we are going to prioritise during the project.
Fig 7. PechaKucha Presentation. Image by Sue.
Value of Blockchain
To begin with, we wanted to know the background story more about the blockchain founders, especially what their values were while building. We found a youtube channel that has 3 hour long interview videos with Lex Friedman. I watched a conversation with Sergey Nazarov who has developed a smart contract for Chainlink. Nazarov says today people are reliable on the big brand and logos and are interacting with on the regular basis of any kind of agreement. He believes it gives people confidence to transact through the government, however he thinks, fundamentally it is only a paper agreement with a legal framework behind it which is very opaque and vague at the end. As an alternative, Nazarov believes through smart contracts people now have mathematical agreements, secured with encryption. He calls decentralised infrastructure powered agreements and it brings value of trust minimisation with algorithms.
Fig 8. Brief categories of consensus mechanism. Image by Sue and David.
Fig 8 and 9. Values from Blockchain founders. Image(s) by Sue and David.
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Bibliography
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPXTmVdlyoc&t=78s&ab_channel=LexFridman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNdhgOk4-fE&t=1514s&ab_channel=LexFridman
Schinckus, C. (2020) ‘The good, the bad and the ugly: An overview of the sustainability of blockchain technology’. Energy Research & Social Science, 69. doi: 10.1016/j.erss.2020.101614.
Memon, M. et al. (2018) Blockchain Beyond Bitcoin:Blockchain Technology Challenges and Real-World Applications, International Conference on Computing, Electronics & Communications Engineering (iCCECE), pp. 29 - 34, doi: 10.1109/iCCECOME.2018.8658518.