I skimmed the article and I don’t get it. Doesn’t sound like a positive development overall?
Does anyone understand what this will mean if they actually implement it?
And what is a carbon negative blockchain supposed to be?
I’m at a loss as to how this can be carbon negative. It might not be as bad as your crypto flavour of blockchain but how does it reduce carbon?
I smell green-washing.
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I read one of the links (Why Decentralization Matters. We’ve forgotten there’s a better way to… | by Chris Dixon | OneZero) and I agree with the views on how much better the internet would be using decentralized protocols instead of the walled gardens the big players are presenting to us these days … I also skimmed the article on Celo (A Carbon Negative Blockchain? It’s Here and it’s Celo. | by Celo Foundation | The Celo Blog | Medium) which sounds a lot more like BS than the first article -.- and I still don’t get it. So it doesn’t use as much energy and they plant trees. That’s it?
Elizabeth Hargrave has already disassociated herself.
Nothing that they’re saying they want to do would benefit from being “on a blockchain”. But it will bring in money from greedy stupid venture capitalists. But enough people now know how terrible an idea anything cryptocurrency-related is that they’ll lose customers. (And Indiegogo already has the “dodgy fly-by-night scam” market sewn up.)
Celo claims to be proof-of-stake, but it runs on Ethereum, which isn’t. Here is some of the stuff they were saying in February.
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I’ve seen some reasonable applications for block chain (proof of grain purity, traceability of whiskey barrels) where people put value in trust of information but this seems about as crazy as NFT’s.
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The Carbon Negative Concept: make so much money that you can pay a different company to plant trees or capture and store carbon from the atmosphere.
Ethereum is currently proof-of-work but is transitioning to proof-of-stake in the near (2ish years?) future.
But, yeah… there’s nothing about “decentralized protocols” that makes sense in their usage. If it’s not a cryptocurrency, it’s hard to ensure there are enough nodes out there committed to validating the blockchain (if you aren’t paying them, why would they use their time/energy to do the work? This is why most blockchain applications are cryptocurrency-based). So, fine, you build it on the back of someone else’s blockchain? Ethereum would be possible (and, as mentioned above, eventually be proof-of-stake), but that costs money (well, Ethereum) to insert blocks into the chain.
This, to me, is a cry for help from Kickstarter; somehow they aren’t making enough money and so they are grabbing at straws.
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I am not up to date on blockchain. What exactly is proof of stake? (https://proofofstake.com/ has a lot of text that is a lot of fluff and little information)
The classic consensus method on Blockchains has been “proof-of-work”. In this model, all nodes in the network can work on the same transaction at the same time. The transaction is a “hard crytpographic puzzle” that must be bruteforced; the node that finishes the work first, gets the (monetary) award. So if you have 1000 nodes, each node is spending an amount of energy (E), so the total power consumption for one transaction is, roughly/crudely, 1000 * E (some nodes use more power than others, etc, etc), but the work done only actually took 1 * E, so the blockchain wasted 999 * E.
Proof-of-stake says, instead, each node must offer up tokens from the blockchain, which is held by the blockchain protocol and cannot be used in transactions while staked; each token is a lottery ticket for being selected to perform the work needed. This time, there’s no cryptographic puzzle and the lottery winner merely, with their token at risk of being lost for fraudulent activity, validates the information and adds the block to the chain. The energy usage is way lower than before, and only 1 node is chosen to do the work. So what was 1000 * E is now, dramatically <E
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It’s more than two years since they first claimed that. 
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I find this hilarious from an outside who doesn’t know the innards of Kickstarter as a company.
Kickstarter is a platform where they let legit fundraisers and scammers both to use their platform without effort from their part and they get a cut - regardless of whether the fundraiser follow through or not. Unless, they struggle against competitors that is.
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Well, I’m guessing the worldwide shipping/logistical nightmare has been interfering with their unlimited profits, at least for KS projects featuring physical products (which, I assume, accounts for the majority of their revenue). So as they see red numbers, I’m sure they’re scrambling to find some black numbers to go with them.
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I’m sure there is effort (and cost) associated with creating and running the site (and associated apps). If they did not provide a service, they would not be in business. There are competing platforms (indiegogo, gofundme, gamefound…) that you can choose if you don’t like Kickstarter specifically. Like eBay, Etsy, and others, they all take “their cut,” because that’s the best (and most logical) revenue stream. Do you think they should be run like non-profit? (While there are crowdfunding platforms that cater to non-profits, I don’t know if any are themselves non-profit.)
Every tech service has cost.
The point isnt that they are making money. My point is that I find the idea hilarious that Kickstarter are struggling with revenues.
I think you failed to see my point. I suggest you re-read it.
I think they may see competition rising. Projects going to other platforms and growth slowing.
Diversifying and blockchain may simply be a move to appease investors/stockmarket.
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It was after all straightforward bribery.
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Well no surprise there really… money will do money things.
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Some rich people do have a lot of money to bin off for no reason.
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must be nice. If that’s anyone around here, I can provide a Swift address…
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