But oft-cited statistics show Bitcoin proof-of-work transactions use energy at rates higher than some nations. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which made headlines as they exploded in use in the digital art market, similarly nudge our already beleaguered climate further toward apocalypse (this was discussed at the DWeb meetup this past May). as overblown or realistic, it is certainly true that, as with any new and growing tech, there is significant energy use from decentralization technology.
The basic pattern is the same across the technologies: proof-of-work is an inherently and intentionally energy-inefficient process that is the basis for Bitcoin’s stability as a currency; as the value of the currency rises, mining (which performs the energy-intensive proof-of-work process) becomes financially incentivized; high energy consumption increases carbon emissions, oil and coal extraction and burning, and so on. And so, decentralized web technology contributes to the destruction of habitability phone number database on our planet. Most articles you’ll find about this discuss cryptocurrency and NFTs, but our use case of decentralized and highly duplicated file storage isn’t immune. Aren’t we asking for more files to be stored on more servers, with more aggregate uptime and thus more energy use?
In this context, do we now need to protect the environment more directly from the decentralized web?
The Decentralized Web principles released earlier this year by the Internet Archive, DWeb Nodes, and other members of the Decentralized Web community include.
Regardless of whether you see the projections
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