Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?

[Hubus]

Hello,

I'm still a cryptocurrency newbie, especially technically, but I have often found ideological discussions about Bitcoin and Altcoins, and, of course, also some interesting arguments and inspirations.

Although the Bitcoin will probably win over other cryptocurrencies, I favour learning, developing, evolving systems, so I would regard second generation altcoins as the better ones in principle.

I looked around a bit and found many altcoins which "want to do good" and some claiming to be environmental-friendly. Some seem to want to do good just by being nice ("Karma" coin etc.   ), some seem to have (or want to have) some contact to the solar energy industry or other renewable energies etc., which might be an advantage and might be good for the believers (faith seems to me the only thing which most of the second generation altcoins are based on, therefore, IMHO they could die very easily).

BUT for me, the main argument for an environmental-friendly altcoin remains the energy-efficiency. In this respect, in my opinion there might be two phases: The current phase where the coin lives in a small niche, and, more importantly, a second phase where we should assume a wide adoption and a widespread usage and therefore many transactions etc.

There are some short threads about energy efficiency already, but it is from the miner's view, which is not my priority here, but could give important facts:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=566582.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=198191.0

So what are, in your opinion, the "greenest" coins and why?

Mainly by energy-efficiency, but also regarding other advantages and progresses like anonymity, security, transaction speed, rewards for users, etc. etc.

Can we make a list and verify it? E.g. I have read about some claims that coins like

Next NXT,
Peercoin,
Blackcoin BLK,
Energycoin ENRG,
Solarcoin SLR,
...?

claim to be energy-efficient / environmental friendly / "sustainable" etc. Can you confirm or falsify this? Can you further the list?

And there are more "decentralized" coins (POS, proof of stake), or coins with special Hash algorithms which seems to be energy-saving, like for example

Maidsafe,
Vanillacoin,
Deepcoin,
Clams
...?

(I just found a thread on the POS coins: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=455692.0 and https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=458726.0 - is this really THE solution when millions of end-user computers use it?)

Is a distributed network-POS coin always more energy-efficient than other solutions (POW) in an assumed widespread usage?

What are the important parameters to identify an environmental-friendly coin?

Additional question: How energy-efficient is the current fiat currency / credit-card / banking system? How much energy does the existing banking industry (plus the users) eat up with their transactions?

Last but not least, please tell me if this discussion already exists in another thread here - I am sorry then, but I did not find it yet.

[HCLivess]

NXT out of these. It is also the most transparent and advanced one.

[Hubus]

NXT out of these. It is also the most transparent and advanced one.

OK, I lack the knowledge to verify if this is "the best" and only one. Then the other characteristics would come into the equation next (e.g. some kind of "fairness", which perhaps includes no premining etc.).

What would be the possibilities to make it even better? Just even better algorithms and personal user hardware or any other tricks?

[cassius69]

NXT out of these. It is also the most transparent and advanced one.

OK, I lack the knowledge to verify if this is "the best" and only one. Then the other characteristics would come into the equation next (e.g. some kind of "fairness", which perhaps includes no premining etc.).

What would be the possibilities to make it even better? Just even better algorithms and personal user hardware or any other tricks?

nxt had one of the most unfair distributions in the history of mankind. so 'fairness' is not one of that coins strong suits.

[3x2]

Nodecoin is pretty good too. Based on Node.js and transaction speed is faster than any other coin.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=590421.0

[Nautica]

the most energy efficient ones are definitely proof of stake coins, since their consensus algorithm doesn't rely on any intensive computation

[iGotSpots]

MMXIV and BALLS are tied. 10k uses a bit more resources because of the faster maturity

[Amph]

the one that don't need traditional pow mining, but it's based on pos system

[DrGrid]

Gridcoin - Proof of Stake 2.0 (Blackcoin) base with a mechanism to reward work being done towards BOINC scientific research projects.

[HalFinneysBrain]

Any fully Proof of Stake coin.  No energy is wasted. 

[EvilDave]

NXT out of these. It is also the most transparent and advanced one.

OK, I lack the knowledge to verify if this is "the best" and only one. Then the other characteristics would come into the equation next (e.g. some kind of "fairness", which perhaps includes no premining etc.).

What would be the possibilities to make it even better? Just even better algorithms and personal user hardware or any other tricks?

nxt had one of the most unfair distributions in the history of mankind. so 'fairness' is not one of that coins strong suits.

Yeah, distributed by advertising for investors over a period of 2 months on this forum, so that 73 ordinary BTT users/crypto investors got in on the ground floor.
No-one was whining about unfair distribution the day before the NXT blockchain went live, but as soon as it's successful.........the distribution becomes 'unfair'
I wasn't one of the lucky 73, but I'm certainly not going to bitch them up out of jealousy and butthurt because I wasn't lucky/smart enough to be one of them.

NXT has amazing tech, and is still a good-looking investment. Never forget that all of crypto is pretty much experimental right now.
If you guys have any NXT you don't want...send 'em my way.


Getting back to somewhere on-topic, there's a paper on NXT energy efficiency as compared to Bitcoin:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J8uhdshu9epGRrQHBaloGc4itdvuAHZDAUtNDjOhz-8/edit?pli=1


and I suggest that the OP takes an in depth look at how the Proof of Work and Proof of Stake systems work, especially in terms of energy use. 

 

[Daedelus]

*snip*
 (e.g. some kind of "fairness", which perhaps includes no premining etc.).

Define "fairness" please.

[Hubus]

*snip*
 (e.g. some kind of "fairness", which perhaps includes no premining etc.).

Define "fairness" please.

You are right, it's difficult. Environmentalists are often categorized as politically "left", so I meant a distribution so that everyone regardless of wealth can participate and manipulation by wealthy owners should not be possible or easy. Anyway, the environment does not know any categories, so it may be that some "capitalist coins" are more environmentally friendly than others who claim to be "green" but do not have any strong facts to backup their claims. I thought, NXT might be such an example. Anyway, do explicitly "green" coins have some real advantages for the environment?

An Ideal Reserve Clearinghouse, which can fully confirm globally in 500ms, currently only requires a 64-bit half-core with 500MB of RAM that can run Ubuntu 14.04 or equivalent.

No other currency can provide this kind of global certainty at these speeds for such little resources.

Do you mean NXT?

Getting back to somewhere on-topic, there's a paper on NXT energy efficiency as compared to Bitcoin:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J8uhdshu9epGRrQHBaloGc4itdvuAHZDAUtNDjOhz-8/edit?pli=1


and I suggest that the OP takes an in depth look at how the Proof of Work and Proof of Stake systems work, especially in terms of energy use.  

I don't know if I can do it "in depth", but yes, I should learn more about this.

Without knowing too much: Is there the possibility that a widely distributed end-user-system consumes more energy (millions of machines) than some specialized and centralized powerful servers? But anyway, the end users always have to use their machines. Only that in the first case, their processors would have to do more work. But I assume, this additional processor work is quite small.

One thing is for sure: If you just want to save and keep your money, a paper wallet is quite energy-friendly... (you could even print it on someone else's printer, so that you do not have to have a printer, which consumes energy and resources in production...) ;-) ...A paper wallet even needs less paper than a suitcase full of money...

[EvilDave]

Yup, it is entirely possible that a de-centralised system will consume more energy than the equivalent centralised system.
De-centralisation requires more redundancy and excess system capacity than the equivalent completely centralised system.

Paper wallets are useful, but you have to remember that the function of both BTC 'Proof of Work' mining and NXT 'Proof of Stake' forging is to secure their respective networks,  validate transactions and create their blockchains......without miners or forgers, no crypto-currency can function.


Thinking about 'green' coins: it's a pity that environmentalist thinking is seen as 'left', I'm of the opinion that as we all have to live on a fragile mudball floating in an unfriendly universe, we should really look after the mudball as well as we can. It's in our own best interests as a species.....really.

The main claim that NXT (and other PoS coins) can make for being environmentally friendly is their energy efficiency. Without the need for energy intensive PoW mining calculations, PoS systems use massively less power. The NXT paper posted above came up with figures that suggest that NXT uses less than 1% of the power needed to run BTC, assuming both currencies had the same transaction volumes.

[fundomatic]

I'm bias,

but BitShares DPOS (delegated proof of stake) economy of securing a blockchain was what determined its current design.

http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/DPOS_or_Delegated_Proof_of_Stake

edit:
Here's the discussion on the economy of DPOS (but the images has gone somewhere).
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=5564.0

[Ingatqhvq]

All proof of stake coins are  environmentally friendly altcoin.
Like NXT, qora.
but not every one like pos coins, they claim pow is the only way to keep decenterised.

[speedy1987]

Every POS coin is energy efficient. POS is the future.

[Daedelus]

An Ideal Reserve Clearinghouse, which can fully confirm globally in 500ms, currently only requires a 64-bit half-core with 500MB of RAM that can run Ubuntu 14.04 or equivalent.

No other currency can provide this kind of global certainty at these speeds for such little resources.

Do you mean NXT?

NXT, like all other Proof-of-Stake cryptocurrencies, consumes seconds for full confirmation with some risks still not yet solved.

The Ideal Reserve consumes almost always only 500ms, mostly due to the time consumed by data circumtransmitting the globe.  

The Ideal Reserve is not at risk of a Clearinghouse possessing more than half of the processing power or more than half of the total issue.

Have you shown a whitepaper on this or just keep spamming claims? Latency is the speed limit for confirmations in a decentralused network. If you can get all the world to agree concensus in 500ms, suggests to me you are talking about a decentralised system.

[Daedelus]

So it is closed source? And somehow solves problems latency... How can some set up 300-3000 nodes (to get a somewhat realistic network topology) all over the world to test your claims?

I have no doubt you can send a message across the world and it be received by another node in 100s of milliseconds. But to reconcile 300 nodes every 500ms with each of the other node in the network to get consensus/agreement between all sounds... imaginative.

I'll put this in the "Sounds good but scam until proven otherwise" category for now  

[HCLivess]

NXT