6: Carbon Question with Alison Filler

Women, Wealth, & Web3

19-07-2022 • 28 mins

What is a carbon-neutral blockchain, and why does it matter? What’s the price of maintaining a trustless global monetary system? Is there a case to be made for crypto energy use to justify this freedom?

We know that climate change is real and that we’re causing it. For the environmentally-conscious person, investing in cryptocurrency and participating in blockchain projects can bring serious hesitation because of Bitcoin’s mining and proof of works’ energy-intensive reputation.

Today’s guest is Alison Filler, Community Lead at Climate Collective. She joins us to explore the topic of using blockchain technology responsibly and share her insight into how we can support blockchain projects genuinely focused on using the technology to solve climate problems.

In this conversation, we talk about regenerative finance (ReFi) and what makes it environmentally friendly, why proof of work blockchain systems are energy intensive, the implications of Ethereum’s plans to move to proof of stake, how to spot greenwashing and find worthwhile projects to participate in, and more.

Highlights

Welcome Alison Filler

Alison’s work in the NGO space

How Alison was introduced to regenerative finance (ReFi)

What is ReFi, and what makes it beneficial for the environment?

The actual price of a free, trustless global monetary system

Key considerations for choosing an environmentally-conscious coin or platform

What it means for Celo to be a carbon-negative blockchain

Why it’s a big deal that Ethereum is moving from proof of work to proof of stake

How carbon-neutral blockchains enable founders to build more sustainable protocols and products

Filtering out the projects that are genuine versus greenwashing

Examples of projects working on climate change using blockchain technology

How to evaluate the legitimacy of climate-focused blockchain project

Key terms

Proof of Work (PoW): A blockchain consensus mechanism that relies on a mining process to maintain the network. PoW blockchain systems are more decentralized and secure than most networks but typically struggle to achieve the network scalability needed for global adoption and are highly energy intensive.

Proof of Stake (PoS): A blockchain consensus mechanism that incentivizes participants to stake native coins in a network of validator nodes. While still a recent innovation, PoS networks are already proving they can be faster and more scalable than PoW blockchains and are more energy efficient.

Definition source: https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/

Connect with Alison Filler

Climate Collective Website https://climatecollective.org/

Climate Collective on Twitter https://twitter.com/clim8collective

Celo Website https://celo.org/

Connect with Eve Wealth DAO

Go from crypto-curious to crypto-confident with the DeFi Curious Course https://www.evewealth.com/defi-curious

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Eve Wealth Website https://www.evewealth.com/