Supriya Chakrabarti, University of Massachusetts Lowell

It seems like every week, another rocket is launched into space carrying rovers to Mars, tourists or, most commonly, satellites. The idea that “space is getting crowded” has been around for a few years now, but just how crowded is it? And how crowded is it going to get?

I am a professor of physics and director of the Center for Space Science and Technology at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Many satellites that were put into orbit have gone dead and burned up in the atmosphere, but thousands remain. Groups that track satellite launches don’t always report the same exact numbers, but the overall trend is clear – and astounding.

Since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik – the first human-made satellite – in 1957, humanity has steadily been putting more and more objects into orbit every year. Over the the second half of the 20th century, there was a slow but steady growth, with roughly 60 to 100 satellites launched yearly until the early 2010s.

But since then, the pace has been increasing dramatically.

By 2020, 114 launches carried around 1,300 satellites to space, surpassing the 1,000 new satellites per year mark for the first time. But no year in the past compares to 2021. As of Sept. 16, roughly 1,400 new satellites have already begun circling the Earth, and that will only increase as the year goes on. Just this week, SpaceX deployed another 51 Starlink satellites into orbit.

Small satellites, easy access to orbit

There are two main reasons for this exponential growth. First, it has never been easier to get a satellite into space. For example, on Aug. 29, 2021, a SpaceX rocket carried several satellites – including one built by my students – to the International Space Station. On Oct. 11, 2021, these satellites will deploy into orbit, and the number of satellites will increase again.

The second reason is that rockets can carry more satellites more easily – and cheaply – than ever before. This increase isn’t due to rockets getting more powerful. Rather, satellites have gotten smaller thanks to the electronics revolution. The vast majority – 94% – of all spacecraft launched in 2020 were smallsats – satellites that weigh less than around 1,320 pounds (600 kilograms).

The majority of these satellites are used for observing Earth or for communications and internet. With a goal of bringing the internet to underserved areas of the globe, two private companies, Starlink by SpaceX and OneWeb together launched almost 1,000 smallsats in 2020 alone. They are each planning to launch more than 40,000 satellites in the coming years to create what are called “mega-constellations” in low-Earth orbit.

Several other companies are eyeing this US$1 trillion market, most notably Amazon with its Project Kuiper .

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h2t9Oyg2o0?wmode=transparent&start=0]

A crowded sky

With the huge growth in satellites, fears of a crowded sky are starting to come true. A day after SpaceX launched its first 60 Starlink satellites, astronomers began to see them blocking out the stars. While the impact on visible astronomy is easy to understand, radio astronomers fear they may lose 70% sensitivity in certain frequencies due to interference from satellite megaconstellations like Starlink.

Experts have been studying and discussing the potential problems posed by these constellations and ways the satellite companies could address them . These include reducing the number and brightness of satellites, sharing their location and supporting better image-processing software.

As low-Earth orbit gets crowded, concern about space debris increases, as does a real possibility of collisions.

Future trends

Less than 10 years ago, the democratization of space was a goal yet to be realized. Now, with student projects on the Space Station and more than 105 countries having at least one satellite in space, one could argue that that goal is within reach.

Every disruptive technological advancement requires updates to the rules – or the creation of new ones. SpaceX has tested ways to lower the impact of Starlink constellations, and Amazon has disclosed plans to de-orbit their satellites within 355 days after mission completion. These and other actions by different stakeholders make me hopeful that commerce, science and human endeavors will find sustainable solutions to this potential crisis.

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Supriya Chakrabarti, Professor of Physics, University of Massachusetts Lowell

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Benjamin Dean, Columbia University

Companies around the world are exploring blockchain, the technology underpinning digital currency bitcoin. In this Blockchain unleashed series, we investigate the many possible use cases for the blockchain, from the novel to the transformative.

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Ethereum, a network designed to extend blockchain technology to uses beyond crypto-currencies, has been gaining traction around the world.

Billed as “a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts…without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference,” Ethereum has been enthusiastically embraced by organisations like Microsoft, IBM and Azure.

How then does the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars get stolen in one day, from an individual account?

This is the situation that those affiliated with The DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) awoke to on June 17 as transactions were made from their Ethereum account to an account whose owner is unknown.

It was a timely reminder that sometimes “smart” technology acts stupidly. Bitcoin suffered a near-death experience in 2014 when the equivalent of US$450 million in bitcoins went missing after Mt. Gox declared bankruptcy. Ethereum now faces a similar moment.

Important lessons about the risks, true capabilities and need for better governance of blockchain networks unfortunately have to be learned once again.

How Ethereum and The DAO work

Started in 2014 by teenage programming prodigy Vitalik Buterin, the Ethereum network is unique for its pioneering use of “smart contracts”. Just like regular contracts, terms and conditions are developed and agreed upon by consenting parties. What makes them supposedly “smart” is that, when the conditions of the contract are met, the contracts execute automatically.

The DAO is an online, investor-directed venture capital fund built on the Ethereum blockchain network. The DAO’s goal is to collectively channel investment into new projects, similar to the way that crowdfunding works, but using Ether, the crypto-currency that underpins Ethereum. It uses specialised code (based on Ethereum’s Solidity language) to allow its members to execute automated investment decisions.

The DAO has no single leader, though there is a group of overseers who are elected by holders of special DAO tokens (which people purchase with ether). Voting rights are determined by one’s DAO token holdings.

After raising 10.7 million ether (the equivalent of US$120 million in May 2016) in an initial crowdfunding effort, one of the biggest in history, hopes were high for The DAO.

Then, on June 17, crisis struck. An unknown person or group of people funnelled out about one-third of The DAO’s ether holdings the equivalent of between US$45 million and $77 million (the value depends on whether one uses the pre- or post-incident ether market price).

Within days, the market price of ether crashed around 50%. A good deal of soul searching for both projects has been underway ever since.

Smart thieves or dumb programming?

In the fallout of the incident, much was made about how The DAO was “hacked”. Upon closer examination though, The DAO was not hacked at all. The attacker(s) used two features of The DAO’s specialised code to siphon out ether in amounts small enough to not result in the destruction of their DAO tokens.

Moreover, The DAO’s terms and conditions do not permit theft or fraud. In short, it is perfectly legitimate to do whatever a smart contract’s code permits, even if this is beyond the original intention of those who wrote the code.

Like all technologies, “smart contracts” are dual use and might be used in ways that their creators did not intend. The complexity of the technology only compounds this issue.

When considered in this context, not only is what occurred above board (though not in the spirit of The DAO), funnelling money out of The DAO’s account ironically turns out to be a feature, not a bug.

Important decisions now face the Ethereum community. The fate of the network and the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars hang in the balance.

Sensibly, a backstop mechanism was built into the Ethereum network for incidents such as this one. The account holding the (mis)appropriated funds (a so-called Child DAO) has been frozen for 27 days and soon the Ethereum community will hold a referendum of sorts, “voting” on what course of action to pursue. This will determine whether holders of DAO tokens will be able to recoup their lost ether, or see it remained locked in limbo forever.

Lessons for blockchain enthusiasts

This episode introduces nuance to Ethereum’s pitch on enabling applications to run “without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference”. Similar claims are made by the promoters of crypto-currencies and blockchains more generally.

Smart contracts may run exactly as programmed but this does not mean that they will run as the creators intended. The DAO incident demonstrates how the complexity of these contracts is outstripping the comprehension of the people who wish to write them. This in turn introduces bugs and vulnerabilities, some of which are known, but others will only become known when something goes wrong.

While the Ethereum network’s users might be decentralised, certain features of the network are not. For instance, the decision as to what changes will be made to the code as a part of the upcoming referendum is determined by a small group of Ethereum developers. The check on this concentration of control is that 51% of nodes in the network must agree to the changes.

However, a 51% threshold is not ideal given the network’s tendencies towards centralisation. The difference between the Ethereum blockchain network vs a referendum is that the former is not “one person, one vote” it is “one node, one vote”.

For Ethereum, there is no telling how many people control how many nodes. This is because the account holders are pseudonymous. What is known is that the distribution of ether holdings is heavily skewed across accounts. At present, of a total of 440,741 accounts, the top five Ethereum accounts alone possess 25% of the total outstanding ether. Moreover, the distribution of mining is also not uniform. Three mining pools currently occupy more than 50% of Ethereum’s mining capacity. Amassing 51% of the required resources for control becomes relatively easier under such a configuration. For Bitcoin, where votes are determined by the distribution of mining, and mining is similarly distributed, the ability to game the network is even greater.

Smart contracts require smarter governance

If blockchains are to be sustainable in the long run, serious consideration of appropriate governance mechanisms is needed.

A skewed distribution of mining power and crypto-currency holdings is combined with pseudonymity of account holders and a strong incentive to game the system. This has all the makings for deceptive, unaccountable, fraudulent, and self interested decision making.

Until hard questions around governance of blockchains are asked, and solutions implemented, we should brace ourselves for more incidents like that which has befallen The DAO. At stake is not just the fate of projects like Ethereum but the future potential of blockchain technology more generally.

Benjamin Dean, Fellow for Cyber-security and Internet Governance, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jason Potts, RMIT University and Ellie Rennie, RMIT University

When there is a rapid growth in any of the crypto-currencies and assets such as Bitcoin, Ether, Zcash and others, many will call it out as a bubble. Indeed, on a relatively short time scale it clearly looks like a bubble.

The entire crypto-currency market capitalisation currently stands at around US$100 billion; it was US$60 billion one month ago. But Bitcoin was worth 1/100 of a US cent in June of 2009, 7 cents in June 2010, and US$7 in June of 2012.

Recently all eyes were on Ether. Over a 90 day period, Ether appreciated twice as quickly as Bitcoin did in late 2013, when Bitcoin crashed to around 35% of it’s highest value. Aside from the 2013 crash, Bitcoin has experienced smaller crashes many times since, but is now worth double its 2013 high.

In the longer term, these are fluctuations around a strong growth trend. Crashes will cause some to abandon the field. But signals of longer term growth in these crypto-currencies and assets point to a possible emergence of a new type of market, through the building of a new economic infrastructure.

Ether is the token of the Ethereum blockchain, a platform that runs “smart contracts” through a distributed online ledger that records transactions. It’s second only to the crypto-currency Bitcoin in price. Some believe it will one day overtake Bitcoin (a process dubbed “The Flippening”).

Price hikes not the sign of a bubble

Fundamental aspects of the technology that underpins crypto-currencies and assets are causing people to re-imagine, and then enact, new ways of creating and exchanging value online.

The key difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum is that you can use Bitcoin for payments, but you can use Ether to automate any number of processes using smart contracts.

While many use cases for Ethereum are still at the proof-of-concept stage, it is now attracting the attention of major banks, businesses and governments, all interested in the potential of the technology to provide greater efficiency and transparency in transactions. That normalisation has collapsed the implicit risk premium attached to this technology.

Venture capitalist Albert Wenger describes the current activity in crypto-currencies and assets as “fat protocol investing”. To explain what this is, take the example of the underlying internet and web protocols (TCPI/IP and HTTP), used to build and run websites. These are not able to store value – therefore they are “thin protocols” in Wenger’s terminology. So instead, people invest in companies that make software (applications) and hardware that rely on these protocols.

Companies such as Google and Facebook made a fortune by collecting and storing data generated by users through their online interactions. Meanwhile, users, and the developers who created internet and web protocol, received nothing in return. Blockchain is a “fat protocol” because it can be monetised, including incentives for developers but also for users. For example, the creator of JavaScript and co-founder of Mozilla Brendan Eich, recently released an Ethereum-based web browser through which users can be paid for the attention they give to advertisements.

What is making crypto-assets and currencies appear bubbly is the way in which many of these new platforms and applications have raised money through what are called initial coin offerings. An initial coin offering (a word play on ‘initial public offering’) is a mechanism by which developers sell the tokens associated with their platform to the public. Depending on the structure of the offering, buyers can usually then trade the tokens, creating secondary markets. As the founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, has noted, no-one has figured out the right model for these offerings.

This could be due to the immaturity of the Ethereum platform and ecosystem (which started development in 2013 and went live only in 2015). What we’re observing here is a new economic infrastructure being built and coming online. In tweets on Tuesday, Buterin distanced himself from initial coin offerings, stating he would no longer agree to be an advisor.

So while the current speculation in crypto-assets should make us pause, this is not speculative like tulips, or gold mining stocks. It is speculative like building a new city, in that infrastructure needs to be developed first before you get to see who moves there.

A further point to note is that investment bubbles are actually useful and important mechanisms for building new technologies because of the way they concentrate speculative resources on a new technology to facilitate exploration.

There is an enormous effort proceeding to building new crypto businesses and infrastructure on the Ethereum platform. If this platform does indeed begin to carry large parts of the global economy as predicted by Deloitte, a business consultancy, then it’s still massively undervalued.

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These comments should not be construed as offering personal financial advice.

Jason Potts, Professor of Economics, RMIT University and Ellie Rennie, Principal Research Fellow, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Corina Sas, Lancaster University

Bitcoin reached a huge new peak in value in June 2017, when one unit of the virtual currency was worth US$2,851 (£2,208), up from around US$600 just a year earlier. More than 10m people worldwide are now thought to own bitcoin and more than 100,000 merchants accept it for goods (not counting all those using it to sell drugs and other illegal items on the black market).

Part of bitcoin’s appeal for many of its users is the lack of centralised control or regulation by any government or bank. Instead it relies on a technology known as blockchain to underpin and secure transactions. But research my colleagues and I have conducted suggests that the lack of any social trust in the way blockchain operates poses a challenge for bitcoin’s further spread.

Blockchain is a public database that records digital transactions. These are validated by computers working within a worldwide network that solve complex coded problems. Whereas traditional bank transactions are authorised by financial institutions and controlled by governments through taxation and contracts between parties with known identities, blockchain is decentralised, unregulated and anonymous.

In our studies of blockchain’s users we found that these features appeal to bitcoin users because of increasing distrust of financial institutions and governments. The technology empowers people to regain control over their money, with no restrictions over where and when they can send it.

But our findings also indicate that two core aspects of blockchain’s design – the fact that transactions are anonymous and irreversible – pose significant challenges to the social trust among its users. Anonymity has an obvious appeal for people looking to avoid government control. And irreversible transactions were built into blockchain’s original design as a positive feature to address banks’ privilege of reversing transactions, even when the contract states that they were final.

But in practice, these features are a problem for many people. Most people are used to relying on the reputation of a seller to decide whether or not to buy from them – and the ability of the financial and legal system to help them if something goes wrong. But neither of these things are possible through blockchain.

Paper trails have their advantages

Most transactions don’t just involve moving bitcoin from one electronic wallet to another. In practice, they are often part of a larger, two-way transactions where both parties send and receive assets such as bitcoins, real world currency or physical goods.

The issue is that the blockchain only records the movement of bitcoin, not the movement of other currencies or goods. Because there is no authority to complain to, this raises a major risk that users could fall prey to dishonest traders who fail to deliver their side of the deal.

In our latest study, we interviewed 20 bitcoin users recruited from five online groups from Malaysia, most of them with more than two years experience of using bitcoins. Our research indicates that more than 50% of participants would prefer blockchain’s transactions to be regulated and identifiable, so that transactions can be either reversed or the dishonest trader legally sanctioned.

This shows there is a tension between the freedom and empowerment of blockchain’s unregulated nature, and the lack of security that most people are accustomed to receiving from traditional financial institutions. If this is not addressed, such tension may limit the spread of bitcoin beyond its current base. It could even reduce the number of bitcoin users involved in such two-way transactions, as more people become aware of the risks of dishonest traders. In contrast, the use of blockchain for one-way transactions such as remittance payments will continue to grow, as they are less affected by dishonest traders.

What can be done?

Even bitcoin’s current users still operate largely under the traditional mindset of centralised and regulated currencies. Bitcoin advocates may need to find ways to encourage users to develop a new mental approach to unregulated blockchain technology.

But developers could also build tools to address some of bitcoin users’ concerns. For example, there may be a way to record whether the real-world elements of bitcoin transactions are also verified, authorised and stored on the public ledger. Electronic wallets could be linked to a reputation file that users could view before agreeing to a deal, much like sites such as eBay allow consumers to rate sellers. And new mechanisms built on top of the irreversible blockchain protocol could enable individual two-way transactions to be reversed.

Without doing something to tackle these challenges, the very thing that caught people’s attention about bitcoin in the first place could end up stifling its growth and eventually consigning it to history.

Corina Sas, Senior lecturer, Lancaster University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Morgan Bazilian, Colorado School of Mines and Dolf Gielen, Colorado School of Mines

Two important events hosted by the United Nations are coming up that are widely hoped to help address what the U.N. calls the “dual challenge” – fighting climate change and ensuring that poorer countries can develop sustainably. Energy is a central theme in both.

For the first time in 40 years, the U.N. General Assembly is convening a global summit of world leaders focused solely on energy. If all goes as planned on Sept. 24, 2021, and in meetings surrounding the summit, they will consider a road map that includes tripling investment in renewable power and making affordable modern and clean energy available to everyone everywhere within the decade.

The second event is the U.N. climate conference in November, where negotiators representing nations around the world will be asked to ramp up their countries’ efforts to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. At a closed-door meeting on Sept. 17 in the run-up to that conference, the U.S. and European Union plan to announce a new effort in at least one area, according to Reuters: a global push to cut methane emissions by nearly one-third by 2030. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that comes from leaking oil and gas infrastructure, coal mines, agriculture and landfills.

This year’s climate summit will be the first to assess progress toward meeting the 2015 Paris climate agreement, and there are some remaining sticking points in how nations will meet their promised targets. Resolving these will be important for the credibility of the agreement and the willingness of developing countries to commit to further progress.

As climate policy experts with decades of experience in international energy policy, we have identified four strategic priorities that would help provide the foundations for success in both the energy and climate change domains.

What has been achieved so far?

Despite the ambitious goals in many countries, the world’s greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise. The year 2020 was a brief exception – emissions fell significantly due to the global pandemic – but that trend has already reversed as economies recover.

The statements released by world leaders after the recent G7 and G20 meetings underlined recognition of the problem. Still, very few countries and companies have detailed plans and budgets in place to meet their own high-level goals.

4 strategic priorities

Getting energy and climate policies worldwide headed in the same direction is a daunting task. Here are four strategies that could help countries navigate this space:

1) Deploy carbon pricing and markets more widely.

Only a few countries, states and regions currently have carbon prices that are high enough to push polluters to cut their carbon dioxide emissions. The climate negotiations in Scotland will focus on getting the rules right for global markets.

Making these markets function well and transparently is essential for effectively meeting the many net zero climate goals that have been announced by countries from Japan and South Korea to the U.S., China and the European Union. These include rules on the use of carbon offsets – they allow individuals or companies to invest in projects that help balance out their own emissions – which are currently highly contentious and largely not functional or transparent.

2) Focus attention on the “hard-to-decarbonize” sectors.

Shipping, road freight and industries like cement and steel are all difficult places for cutting emissions, in part because they don’t yet have tested, affordable replacements for fossil fuels. While there are some innovative ideas, competitiveness concerns – such as companies moving production outside regulated areas to avoid regulations – have been a key barrier to progress.

Europe is trying to overcome this barrier by establishing a carbon border adjustment mechanism, with emission levies on imports similar to those for European producers. The Biden administration is also exploring such rules.

3) Get China and other emerging economies on board.

It is clear that coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, needs to be phased out fast, and doing so is critical to both the U.N.‘s energy and climate agendas. Given that more than half of global coal is consumed in China, its actions stand out, although other emerging economies such as India, Indonesia and Vietnam are also critical.

This will not be easy. Notably half of the Chinese coal plants are less than a decade old, a fraction of a coal plant’s typical lifespan.

4) Focus on innovation.

Support for innovation has brought us cutting-edge renewable power and electric vehicles much faster than anticipated. More is possible. For example, offshore wind, geothermal, carbon capture and green hydrogen are new developments that can make a big difference in years to come.

Who leads in developing these new technologies, and which companies, will reap important economic benefits. They will also support millions of new jobs and economic growth.

Luckily, investors are actively supporting these technologies. More investors are starting to believe in energy transitions and are putting their money into developing the associated technologies. Still, increased government support for research and development funding can catalyze these efforts.

An opportunity also exists to broaden innovation efforts beyond technology, to a systemic approach that includes dimensions such as market design, social acceptance, equity, regulatory frameworks and business models. Energy systems are deeply interconnected to social issues, so changing them will not be successful if the solutions focus only on technology.

Not one solution

It is likely that U.N. energy and climate deliberations over the coming months will continue to move in fits and starts. The real work needs to take place at a more practical implementation level, such as in states, provinces and municipalities. If there is one thing we have learned, it is that mitigating climate change will be a long slog, not a one-off political announcement or celebrity endorsement. It requires much more than simply repeating platitudes.

Politicians need to show that the many energy transitions emerging are good for economies and communities, and can create long-lasting jobs and tax revenues. While it’s uncontested that the benefits of greenhouse gas mitigation far exceed the cost, it is not always easy to marry this with short-term political cycles.

This article was updated Sept. 16, 2021, with the expected methane announcement.

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Morgan Bazilian, Professor of Public Policy and Director, Payne Institute, Colorado School of Mines and Dolf Gielen, Payne Institute Fellow, Colorado School of Mines

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Timothy McCallum, University of Southern Queensland and Luke van der Laan, University of Southern Queensland

There are ways to improve the online ledger blockchain by taking some security notes from banks. If people could use both two-step verification and spending limits on the blockchain, this would reduce any economic loss from cyber attacks and in turn encourage more users.

The blockchain is a global network of computers that run the same blockchain software. Transactions on the blockchain are currently limitless and there is no one governing body. Introducing security measures could demonstrate a level of predictability in the blockchain that could build more trust.

At the moment there are third-party sites that perform transactions with the blockchain on your behalf. They are owned and managed separately from the blockchain itself, and this presents a single point of failure.

These sites, like Kraken, Changelly and Shapeshift, allow people to purchase, as well as exchange, blockchain assets. Activity on these sites includes purchasing Bitcoin with US dollars or exchanging Bitcoin for Ethereum assets.

Current flaws in the system

The blockchain ecosystem is by no means perfect. Many people shy away from using it due to its perceived volatility. There is no “code of conduct” protocol for the blockchain at the moment and it’s likely there never will be.

In addition, creating and maintaining blockchain software is arduous and managed by only a few people globally. These software developers, who are the trailblazers of this technology, are being disadvantaged by constantly being forced to respond to malicious attacks.

There have been many malicious attacks on the blockchain including the very recent attack on a third-party online wallet. In this attack, an unknown user was able to hijack the third-party site and redirect all transactions to their account.

These and other malicious attacks have made blockchain assets either temporarily unavailable or permanently unrecoverable. It’s for these reasons that the solution to secure the blockchain can’t be owned and managed by third-parties, and must be part of the blockchain itself.

Security measures like the ones we’re proposing may reduce the severity and speed of any malicious attacks. Lowering the bounty for malicious attacks could also prove to be a disincentive for this behaviour.

Bank style security for blockchain

The mechanisms we use to build trust in the traditional financial institutions could be coded into the blockchain.

It’s unlikely that a blockchain user will use the technology to spend 100% of the assets in their account, with no notice whatsoever. This is why hacks of these accounts are so obvious, just as they would be if your bank account was suddenly drained.

Adjustable spend and transaction limits currently protect mainstream bank account users from one malicious transaction. There is no reason the same kind of consumer protection cannot apply to cryptocurrency users.

In order for this to work, the blockchain needs to verify that you are the legitimate user of the account, who is wanting to raise and lower spending limits for the purpose of transferring funds.

We propose this could work via voice authentication. This is where a blockchain user performs a transaction on the blockchain and is subsequently prompted to provide a single-use vocal passphrase – this is the second step in the two-step verification process.

This would be similar to the program Captcha, but with one unique twist. Captcha is designed to discern legitimate users of the internet from online robots. It works by generating a one-time image of letters and numbers that the user has to type correctly to proceed. Captcha can verify if you are human, but is unable to verify your individual identity.

Using the human voice with this type of technology could be more commonplace in the future. It’s also less complex than other types of biometric verification, which require sophisticated infrastructure such as retina- and iris-scanning hardware.

More importantly, the human voice shares blockchain attributes. Your voice and your public blockchain key are both public and unique.

At present there is no guarantee of holding blockchain assets without disruption of some kind. Providing security in the blockchain would convert into a degree of predictability in the technology. If this was shown to work in the long term, it would also create trust.

Obviously, we trust traditional currencies. For example, laws provide a promise that a $20 note will result in a mutual exchange of goods and services to that value. So once a degree of predictability is established in a blockchain, there will also be new business opportunities from traditional markets, such as insurance in case of sudden undue economic loss.

It’s in the interests of the majority stakeholders of blockchain to consistently look for responses and improvements that reduce the limitations of the technology. A malicious attack, intent on bringing down the architecture of blockchain technology, would unfairly relegate the blockchain to a history as another ponzi scheme.

Timothy McCallum, Director USQ Student Guild, Blockchain Programmer, Doctoral Candidate USQ, University of Southern Queensland and Luke van der Laan, Senior Lecturer (Foresight) and Director; Professional Studies, University of Southern Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Rob Gowers, Anglia Ruskin University and Jukka Aminoff, Anglia Ruskin University

The value of one bitcoin recently hit a record high of US$3,025, a staggering rise of over 200% in value this year alone.

Aswath Damodaran, professor of finance at the New York University, known as Wall Street’s “dean of valuation”, has said that among the younger generation, digital currencies have replaced gold as a choice of investment and that, sooner or later, currencies such as bitcoin and ethereum will compete against nation-state paper currencies.

So could bitcoin become a popular currency and decrease the popularity of euros, dollars, pounds, roubles and others? For anything to be seen as “money” it needs to meet three functions – a store of value, a measure of value and a medium of exchange. Bitcoin’s volatility shows that it is an infant in meeting these three criteria, but has the potential to do so.

However, digital currencies like bitcoin are just one application of the blockchain technology that makes them possible. Blockchain, as the BBC explains, is:

a method of recording data – a digital ledger of transactions, agreements, contracts – anything that needs to be independently recorded and verified as having happened. The big difference is that this ledger isn’t stored in one place, it’s distributed across several, hundreds or even thousands of computers around the world. And everyone in the network can have access to an up-to-date version of the ledger, so it’s very transparent.

Blockchain combines the security of cryptography, the storage and transmission of data in coded form, with peer-to-peer networks to create a shared database of transactions that is trusted, yet controlled by no one.

If blockchain finds uses in various industries we could see a more digitally integrated global economy, something that could enhance economic growth and decrease poverty.

Huge potential

In business today, we still require trusted administrators to manage and record the numbers and databases – auditors, supervisory boards and so on. The potential of blockchain is that it offers the chance to “distribute” these digital ledgers to others through a network of computers across the world. It could actually dispense with those businesses that are based on trusted relationships – such as banking, auditing, solicitors, even aspects of government. For example in Sweden, Georgia and Ukraine property registers are being moved on to the blockchain.

In finance, people rarely lend directly to each other, hence the need for banks as trusted go-betweens. The beauty of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin or ethereum is that they remove the need for the trusted third party, using instead an encrypted, secure database. This has huge implications for any business that requires the verification of payments and performance of contracts – that is, most businesses.

The beauty of blockchain is that something can be unique and stored digitally with ease, without needing an equivalent in the real world. For example, things like contracts, wills, deeds and share certificates might only require a piece of code stored on the blockchain that represents the exchange. Instead of a trusted intermediary verifying transactions, the computers of the shared network of bitcoin users themselves perform the verification at no cost to those involved in the transaction.

Truth and trust

This verification process holds the seeds of change across huge numbers of industries. The distributed ledger – the blockchain – offers the chance to enhance truth and trust in every system to which it is applied. It can prove who owns what at any given moment. Anything that currently exists to verify contracts, ownership, payments and even performance can be shifted to the blockchain.

This would transfer power away from those who currently manage or verify transactions – a seismic change to the way the world currently operates. As with any power shift, those holding power are reluctant to surrender it. The “winners” in this scenario will come from existing companies rather than start-ups, given that for this new system to work, it requires buy-in and trust – existing brands already have this advantage.

So what are blockchain’s main advantages? By performing the functions of record keepers and managers it would enhance decentralisation, reduce the amount of intermediaries involved and provide an alternative to how value can be stored. Physical as well as digital assets could be uniquely verified online to prove ownership.

As transactions stored on the blockchain could be independently verified and traced, it would be easier to fight crime, counterfeiting and fraud, reducing systemic risk in the financial system. A distributed digital ledger would make it near impossible to change or falsify data, because data would have to be altered across all the related “blocks” in the digital chain, so any tampering would be exposed. Consequently associated costs would fall, enhancing economic growth and prosperity.

A dramatic disruption is happening already in the financial industry: the world’s largest custodian bank, BNY Mellon, is using a blockchain based platform for government bond settlement. And one of the Bank of England’s research focus areas is based around financial technology or “fintech” and how it affects the way markets and society function.

Another benefit would be to make micropayments possible digitally. A country such as India, where huge number of people still do not have access to banking, could experience profound economic change if brought within their reach, helping them save, borrow and plan for their future.

Taking back our privacy

The online marketing and advertising industry has feasted on data generated by internet users, and social media platforms such as Facebook – with more than two billion users – Google and Amazon collect considerable amounts of individualised data on us to target adverts at us. Blockchain could enhance our online privacy, by allowing us to store our digital footprint on our own unique blockchain and control who has access to it. Rather than these massive organisations building up records of our tastes and preferences, this data would be decentralised and within our own control.

Blockchain could enhance entrepreneurship in developed and developing countries, breaking down barriers built from embedded bureaucracy and corruption by providing a means to bypass existing power structures. For example, the digital ledger Everledger is tracking a real-life object – diamonds – to prove their provenance and ownership. As a result, trust in the system is enhanced.

When the internet came into being, it was a disruptive, game-changing force for many industries – blockchain technology holds the same potential. In moving trust from the current “verifiers” to a distributed blockchain system, the world could see a massive shift in power to the masses – a truly revolutionary idea.

Rob Gowers, Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Management, Anglia Ruskin University and Jukka Aminoff, Visiting Honorary Professor, Anglia Ruskin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

David Glance, The University of Western Australia

Bitcoin relies on the participation of people and organisations to act as the “bankers” of the system. Called Bitcoin miners, they effectively record each transaction on a ledger called the Blockchain and in return, they are awarded with bitcoins. The process of mining is to do a series of calculations to discover a specific number, and the first one to do so gets the reward of 25 bitcoins (valued at approximately US $10,500). In order to increase their chances, Bitcoin miners have large numbers of computers with specialised hardware that consume significant amounts of electricity. The entire Bitcoin system has been estimated to use about 350 Megawatts of electricity which is the same demand as 280,000 US homes.

For miners, electricity usage is the majority of the cost of producing bitcoins and this is why China, with its relatively low energy costs, has become the country of choice for this type of operation.

The economics of Bitcoin mining only make sense if the price of Bitcoin is maintained. Around July 18th however, Bitcoin will go through a process whereby the reward allocated to Bitcoin miners is halved. This happens every 4 years and was added into the design of Bitcoin as a way of slowly reaching the limit of the total number of Bitcoins to 21 million. The design also assumes that as the production of new Bitcoins from the mining process slows down, the incentives for mining will be made up by adding transaction costs to the process.

Of course, unless the price of Bitcoin goes up, more pressure will be put on Bitcoin miners to continue operating after their profits have been slashed. Although anything could happen, Bitcoin miners could potentially decide that mining an alternative cryptocurrency like Ethereum might be easier than continuing with Bitcoin.

The uncertainty of what will happen after Bitcoin goes through this “halving” process has already had one significant casualty. Bitcoin Group, an Australian Bitcoin mining company was hoping to list on the Australian Stock Exchange this year but last month abandoned its plans for an IPO. The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) didn’t believe that Bitcoin Group could assure its capital adequacy after the Bitcoin halving process and so clearly ASIC at least didn’t think that the price of Bitcoin was going to go up as a result.

The truth of the matter is that nobody really knows what will happen. On the one hand, there will be fewer bitcoins being generated each day and some people have argued that this will create a shortage of supply that will drive prices up. This of course assumes that supply of bitcoins is constrained in any way which it is not clear that it is. On the other hand, Bitcoin miners will be making fewer bitcoins and may have to sell more bitcoins to pay their expenses which could drive the price of bitcoins down. Ultimately, if the process of mining bitcoins becomes too unprofitable, they will stop altogether and switch to another cryptocurrency and this would largely spell the end of Bitcoin.

Unfortunately, predicting anything about Bitcoin is made more difficult because of a number of factors involved in how the mining process works and ultimately what is actually driving the Bitcoin market. Given that Bitcoin is largely an experiment in creating a novel form of currency, the uncertainty is unsurprising. The designers of Bitcoin possibly expected that the community would be able to respond to knowledge gained as the experiment ran, but that hasn’t turned out to be the case. Instead, the Bitcoin community has been fractured with an ongoing argument of how to modify one aspect of the Blockchain, what size the blocks that make it up should be.

Given that achieving any sort of compromise on this question proved so difficult, the interest in cryptocurrencies is rapidly shifting away from Bitcoin to the Blockchain and to other currencies like Ethereum. Ethereum is like the version 2 that Bitcoin should have had. It has a range of new features that make the Ethereum Blockchain capable of supporting so-called “smart contracts” but more importantly, it is moving away from the extremely wasteful mining process of Bitcoin to another system that promises to be much more efficient. Given that by 2020, Bitcoin is predicted to be globally using more electricity than the entire country of Denmark currently does, a more efficient system can not come too soon.

The halving is another bump in the technological and social experiment that has been the evolution of Bitcoin. Whether it derails the project entirely will only become apparent in the months that follow.

David Glance, Director of UWA Centre for Software Practice, The University of Western Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Marcus O’Dair, Middlesex University

In the decade and a half since Napster, it’s got harder for musicians to make a living, at least from recorded music. Falling CD sales, illegal downloads, the low payments from legal music streaming platforms, and a shift towards buying single tracks rather than whole albums all play their part.

Recently, a number of music industry projects have turned to a particular technology as a possible solution to these problems. These include Mycelia, launched by singer, songwriter and producer Imogen Heap, and Dot Blockchain Music, launched by PledgeMusic founder Benji Rogers. Then there’s Ujo Music, Blokur, Aurovine, Resonate, Peertracks, Stem and Bittunes, which already claims users in 70 countries. What links these projects is that they all are based on blockchain.

Blockchain is the software that underpins bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Comprised of blocks of data cryptographically chained together in chronological order, it has two key features. It is immutable: data cannot be modified. And it is distributed rather than centralised: many exact copies are maintained independently of each other.

Blockchain technology has been touted as the answer to problems facing industries as diverse as banking, the diamond trade, online gambling and fashion – even how we govern society. How might it help musicians?

Owning it

The first problem facing musicians comes down to the fact that no comprehensive database of music copyright ownership exists. There are several databases, but none features every track in existence, and when a track appears in more than one database the details don’t always match up. The blockchain, as Vinay Gupta put it in a recent talk, is both database and network. If music copyright information were stored on the blockchain, via a cryptographic digital fingerprint (like a barcode), then up-to-date information could be accessible to all users, rather than being held by particular gatekeepers.

Getting paid

The second problem is payments. Listeners can access tracks immediately with a click, yet according to a Rethink Music report it can take years for royalties to reach those responsible for making the music. Smart contracts, implemented on the blockchain via software, could split royalties in agreed proportions as soon as a track is downloaded or streamed. Such micropayments might not be feasible with current systems, but systems built around using cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin could facilitate payments in fractions of pennies.

Shining light into black boxes

Third, the mechanism by which royalties are calculated and paid is often opaque. Some revenue ends up in a “black box” beyond the reach of the artists and songwriters to whom it rightly belongs. In a culture of confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements, artists (or their managers) cannot properly audit their payments if they are not certain how much they are due.

Funding the future

The final issue is cash, required upfront to help musicians create new music. It’s often said that artists no longer need record labels, but funds are required to compete commercially – and that still usually means the backing of a substantial label, especially one of the three remaining “majors”: Sony, Universal and Warner.

The transparency offered by blockchain technology could help attract new funders, including investors currently put off by the difficulty of seeing a clear route to profitability for musicians. It could also see the emergence of “artist accelerators” similar to those available for tech start-ups, where early support is rewarded by a stake in future income, monitored and paid automatically via smart contracts. The same transparency and traceability could encourage crowdfunding, with artists issuing shares to be cashed in against future earnings.

Possible risks and possible rewards

This is new technology and new terrain. Away from the music industry, another blockchain-related project called The DAO (a “decentralised autonomous organisation”) crowdsourced millions of dollars of funding, only for the site to be hacked and the money stolen. Bitcoin survived a similar crisis when millions were stolen during the Mt Gox scandal, so while this won’t spell the end for blockchain technology it is a reminder of the risk, as well as the potential.

Blockchain has the support of banks and even some governments, and there has been significant investment in a number of industries, including music: Stem, a company that tracks and organises revenue from streaming platforms, raised a reported US$4.5m earlier this year. Certainly some claims made of blockchain are inflated, but blockchain does have the potential to transform the music industry.

We have to consider, though, whether this is the right way of looking at it. For one thing, there isn’t a single music industry – sometimes, wrongly, assumed to be synonymous with the record industry – but multiple music industries. Blockchain technology would not necessarily affect them all in the same way. In any case, the fact that change could happen is no guarantee that it will. There are considerable barriers to overcome, from issues with the cryptocurrencies themselves to concerns over the integrity of the data, as well as the resistance of industry figures who perceive this new technology as a threat.

Perhaps we should not ask whether blockchain technology has the capacity to change the music industry (singular). Instead, we should ask whether the will to change exists and, if so, where; how the considerable barriers to adoption might be overcome; and what the effects, both positive and negative, might be on a number of music industries.

With my research colleagues at Middlesex University, in a report and at a panel discussion in London, these are the questions we’re asking. But it’s only the start.

Marcus O’Dair, Senior Lecturer in Popular Music, Middlesex University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Joshua D. Rhodes, University of Texas at Austin

President Joe Biden has called for major clean energy investments as a way to curb climate change and generate jobs. On Sept. 8, 2021, the White House released a report produced by the U.S. Department of Energy that found that solar power could generate up to 45% of the U.S. electricity supply by 2050, compared to less than 4% today. We asked Joshua D. Rhodes, an energy technology and policy researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, what it would take to meet this target.

Why such a heavy focus on solar power? Doesn’t a low-carbon future require many types of clean energy?

The Energy Department’s Solar Futures Study lays out three future pathways for the U.S. grid: business as usual; decarbonization, meaning a massive shift to low-carbon and carbon-free energy sources; and decarbonization with economy-wide electrification of activities that are powered now by fossil fuels.

It concludes that the latter two scenarios would require approximately 1,050-1,570 gigawatts of solar power, which would meet about 44%-45% of expected electricity demand in 2050. For perspective, one gigawatt of generating capacity is equivalent to about 3.1 million solar panels or 364 large-scale wind turbines.

The rest would come mostly from a mix of other low- or zero-carbon sources, including wind, nuclear, hydropower, biopower, geothermal and combustion turbines run on zero-carbon synthetic fuels such as hydrogen. Energy storage capacity – systems such as large installations of high-capacity batteries – would also expand at roughly the same rate as solar.

One advantage solar power has over many other low-carbon technologies is that most of the U.S. has lots of sunshine. Wind, hydropower and geothermal resources aren’t so evenly distributed: There are large zones where these resources are poor or nonexistent.

Relying more heavily on region-specific technologies would mean developing them extremely densely where they are most abundant. It also would require building more high-voltage transmission lines to move that energy over long distances, which could increase costs and draw opposition from landowners.

Is generating 45% of U.S. electricity from solar power by 2050 feasible?

I think it would be technically possible but not easy. It would require an accelerated and sustained deployment far larger than what the U.S. has achieved so far, even as the cost of solar panels has fallen dramatically. Some regions have attained this rate of growth, albeit from low starting points and usually not for long periods.

The Solar Futures Study estimates that producing 45% of the nation’s electricity from solar power by 2050 would require deploying about 1,600 gigawatts of solar generation. That’s a 1,450% increase from the 103 gigawatts that are installed in the U.S. today. For perspective, there are currently about 1,200 gigawatts of electricity generation capacity of all types on the U.S. power grid.

The report assumes that 10%-20% of this new solar capacity would be deployed on homes and businesses. The rest would be large utility-scale deployments, mostly solar panels, plus some large-scale solar thermal systems that use mirrors to reflect the sun to a central tower.

Assuming that utility-scale solar power requires roughly 8 acres per megawatt, this expansion would require approximately 10.2 million to 11.5 million acres. That’s an area roughly as big as Massachusetts and New Jersey combined, although it’s less than 0.5% of total U.S. land mass.

I think goals like these are worth setting, but are good to reevaluate over time to make sure they represent the most prudent path.

What are the biggest obstacles?

In my view, the biggest challenge is that driving change on this scale requires sustained political will. Other issues could also slow progress, including shortages of critical solar panel materials like polysilicon, trade disputes and economic recessions. But the engineering challenges are understood and rather straightforward.

Natural gas, coal and oil provided almost 80% of primary energy input to the U.S. economy in 2020, including electric power generation. Replacing much of it with low-carbon sources would also require retooling most major U.S. energy companies.

Such a shift is likely to meet resistance, although some energy companies are starting to expand that way. The Biden administration plans to use the Clean Electricity Payment Program, a provision in the $3.5 trillion budget plan pending in Congress, to create incentives for electric utilities to generate more power from carbon-free sources.

Studies like this solar report also assume that a lot of supporting infrastructure that’s essential to fulfill their scenarios will be available. According to the Solar Futures Study, the U.S. would have to expand its electric transmission capacity by 60%-90% to support the levels of solar deployment that it envisions.

Building long-distance transmission lines is very hard in the U.S., especially when they cross state lines, which is what a massive solar deployment would require. Unless some agency, such as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, is empowered to approve new transmission lines, this kind of expansion might be almost impossible.

One potential solution is gaining traction: building transmission lines along existing rights of way next to highways and railroad lines, which avoids the need to secure agreement from numerous private landowners.

How would the current system have to change to support so much solar power?

Our power system currently gets about 59% of its electricity from coal and natural gas. These resources are generally, although not always, available on demand. This means that when utility customers demand more power for their lights or air conditioners, the companies can call on these types of plants to increase their output.

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Moving to a grid dominated by renewables will require utilities and energy regulators to rethink the old way of matching supply and demand. I think the grid of the future will need much higher levels of transmission, energy storage and programs that encourage customers to shift the times when they use power to periods when it’s most abundant and affordable. It also will require much greater coordination between North America’s regional power grids, which aren’t well configured now for moving electricity seamlessly over long distances.

All of this is feasible and will be necessary if the U.S. opts to rely on a solar-heavy, decarbonized electricity grid to cost-effectively meet future demand.

Joshua D. Rhodes, Research Associate, University of Texas at Austin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.