When I tell people I’m running a validator for a blockchain dedicated to ecological regeneration, sometimes I get comments like “I thought Regen Network was about ecological regeneration – so what does cryptocurrency have to do with it? And why so many computers? I hear Bitcoin is destroying the Earth! I bet you’re gonna destroy the Earth too! What are you gonna validate then???”
I’m looking for ways to explain to my family and friends why validators matter in the context of the Regen Network system, and how we’re not going to eat the planet (like Bitcoin). Perhaps this has been obvious to some folks. I jumped in trusting that the system makes sense , and now in practice I’m starting to understand. I wonder if other folks have other ways of understanding, or details to correct or clarify my understanding.
Regen Network as a system seeks to lower the cost of data collecting and verification, and increase trust in that collected data. Regen Network also offers a platform to make agreements related to that data, and those agreements need to be stored in a trustworthy way. Since the data and agreements are not (nor cannot be) all stored on paper, computers are a viable option.
This means someone has to operate the computer, and everyone else has to trust that the computer is operating correctly and honestly, and trust the person operating the computer. Trusting a single person or organization to run the system would probably lead to corruption – the temptation and ability to secretly falisfy the data and agreements would be too great.
So, we can create a diverse, distributed group of teams who each operate a node that can generate transactions, and copies and verifies the data of the entire network. This makes falsifying the data much more difficult, and offers lots of redundancy for the network. Sounds like a great solution! Each computer operated by a team is called a “validator”, and sometimes the team is also called a “validator”.
Simply responding to the power usage aspect. I know that at one point the folks at Chorus One were talking about the idea of a proposal that al validators power on Cosmos is offset by verified carbon credits. Despite the fact that we use so much less than other blockchains, both here at Regen Network and on Cosmos, my feeling is that it is imperative that we offset our impact as a blockchain so that we are setting the example for the space, walking the walk, and assuaging some of the concerns that people have about blockchain being back for the earth.
There are two ways that I can think of to go about this.
That validators do this one by one, and the community supports them by delegating to them.
We pass some sort of community resolution whereby we use community funds to purchase and retire the offsets.
The second one gets us there much more quickly, though may offer less in terms of capacity growth for each validator to understand and engage with their own impact!
Patogit - great post. Playing a critical part in securing the world’s first? publicly governed ecological ledger is, in and of itself, deeply supporting of ecological regeneration - even with the energy consumed. So thank you and all the other validators for stepping forward to support this essential service. On another note - LOACOM validator is part of LOACOM the company and our daily work is providing strategy, marketing and communications support to better world companies around the world. We see our validator services in the ‘better world blockchain’ space as another critical tool and infrastructure to support the regenerative movement.
Interesting thread !
Business of running validator’s to secure a network has a little impact on our planet, obviously, even if it’s a little impact.
This can change really fast with the growth of all networks in some years.
Thinking about this now is a real topic.
On my side, I think as validator’s, our role will be to use a portion of our return to help scale actions around regen network.
By this, everyone can have an impact on the ecological regeneration.
I don’t think validator’s as the time to create action by themself, so this is why I think they can participate to it by returning to people acting with Regen Network some of their returns.
That’s a great idea and encouraged.
AND, I believe that it has already been coded in to Regen Ledger that some percent of all block rewards and fees go into the community fund for exactly this purpose. @anilcse@gaia@Gregory_Regen can you confirm that for us?
Is there a way that we can view that pool via the block explorer?