Will the Gains of Blockchain Technology Outweigh Its High Energy Cost?
How can this decentralized digital ledger ever pay back its investment?
First, there was the computer. Then came the internet, and with the two came databases. You can’t see them, but they run our lives. The complete Internet is in some way a futuristic highway with interconnected databases. Banks use databases to track our money, Facebook stores your cat videos in databases, your grandmother might even know how to use an excel sheet.
And then came Blockchain technology. This innovative technology will build further where the database development stopped. Internet connections speeded up, computer brainpower became faster and faster as we find ourselves opening the door of AI and Quantum computing.
Behind this door is a landscape of millions of connected data points, storage and compute power, connected by wires and wifi. Small lights buzzing everywhere and immense heat. Most of the fibre cables lead to 20 high skyscrapers. The centralized servers of Amazon, Facebook, Google and alike. But when we look closer to the ground, in that vast sea of data arise chains of blocks without any hierarchy. When we zoom in even closer, they seem to eat away the fundamentals of the big skyscrapers.
