Beyond the Merge Blockchain enabled climate solutions 👤 Impact of Ethereum Summit - Ben West

foreign [Applause] [Music] which is going to be with Ben west from the get coin team um of course uh this chest can be called beyond the merge blockchain's enabled climate Solutions um I think everybody obviously should hopefully know in this chat that you know in the last couple uh I guess the last week actually it's only been a week um you know ethereum has received a massive upgrade uh called the merge uh which is dramatically changed uh its kind of climate footprint obviously we're all you know really excited about that and I think it Bears repeating um Ad nauseam until people really kind of realize how amazingly impactful that moment was for um ethereum as a climate perspective I think Ben's probably going to talk about more of it so I'm not going to jump in all over it but uh yeah without further Ado maybe I'll invite Ben up to the stage here to unmute and and sure as uh his camera and his uh his screen and uh yeah welcome to the uh welcome to the stream Bend thank you very much nice to be here and uh yeah well I'll just turn it over to you I mean we have uh I I don't want to talk too much about probably stuff you're already going to talk about so uh but I'm super excited to have you here and excited to learn more about uh what you're going to chat about well thank you sir I uh I definitely will talk about the merge and uh and we'll also talk about uh blockchain enabled climate Solutions um so uh why don't I just go ahead and share my screen so uh beyond the merge uh you know we uh have talked to a fair amount as a community about the significance of this moment I just want to start with this uh graphic from a piece that the economist did about the merge um which had the kind of bizarre title of uh farewell to the Netherlands but you know I think this uh this little chart that they integrated really tells the story of the reduction of energy consumption uh and related greenhouse gas emissions uh from from that moment where the merge happened um you know that line going straight down is not something you see very often uh it's pretty significant and the idea of farewell to the Netherlands is basically saying um you know that the amount of energy being consumed by the ethereum blockchain and by all of us using it uh you know has dropped by 99.95 or you know the equivalent of something like the Netherlands uh or Sweden or Chile uh would be another uh sort of comparable example of course there's a range of different estimates about what that energy consumption looks like um but sort of the high end or more most conservative I guess you could call it estimate um somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 million tons a year which would be the equivalent of the Netherlands of Chile or Sweden um so you know really significant uh and and I think it's important that we kind of recognize uh the significance of that and I'll talk a little bit more about it in a sec uh but first just for the sake of introducing sort of myself and and kind of how I fit into this conversation um my name is Ben I as you heard I work for Bitcoin I've also been doing a little bit of research on behalf of the ethereum foundation around blockchain enabled climate Solutions so I'm kind of wearing a couple of different hats here but I'm going to focus a lot of the sort of use cases that I'm going to talk about today on projects that have actually come through the get coin climate rounds in the last four rounds and I know uh Scott was here earlier uh talking and probably talked a bit about get coins so I'm not going to spend too much time talking about what Bitcoin is but you know for anybody who isn't familiar you can definitely go check out getcoin.co and you'll find lots of information there for the last four rounds of our quarterly grants rounds we've run a climate Solutions around we've now got over 250 projects in that round which is just mind-boggling we had 26 in the first round we ran it's definitely The Cutting Edge of climate Solutions projects uh you know I've worked in the climate space for over 20 years uh you know mostly in the environmental nonprofit side but I've also done clean energy plans and public consultations at the city and provincial level in Canada um you know it's a space that I think is just really really exciting you know I haven't seen this many people this excited about anything to do with climate Solutions in many years um you know it's become really a testing ground for new ideas and you know actually a place where a lot of uh you know VCS and others kind of go to look at uh you know what has uh the interest in the sort of what harnesses the wisdom of the crowds to really sort of you know show that its value in in this space so uh you know I'll kind of walk you through a variety of different uh sort of use cases and approaches that are enabled by blockchain technology um and you know I think we're at a pretty interesting moment now where a lot of people are going to start paying attention uh to what's possible with blockchain technology who may have you know hesitated or taken a small sort of step back um you know just because of concerns around energy consumption uh as it related to sort of you know using blockchain for climate Solutions you know perhaps uh you know they won't be as concerned now um you know I I also want to just recognize the contribution of our matching fund Partners uh you know it really is our partners who make it possible for Bitcoin grants to be a reality um and you know we've had a lot of different uh really exciting Partners come on board in the last little while um and it's really a mix of you know web 3 uh projects you know many of them graduates of Bitcoin funding you know folks who got their start uh you know inside of uh uh get coin and also you know some increasingly some folks who are kind of a step removed from web3 but are sort of Dipping a toe in the space folks like Kimball musk and uh Schmidt Futures uh Eric Schmidt's Foundation uh and others who are starting to get actively involved so really cool to see how uh you know this kind of mixture of Partners from across the web3 ecosystems as well as uh you know increasingly folks who have an interest in climate Solutions more broadly or in web 3 specifically uh starting to get involved um so you know really the first thing that we end up talking about when we talk about uh you know these use cases is the idea of getting rid of middlemen uh you know putting money directly in the hands of people um when I talk to people that are building on web3 technology uh on blockchains you know it's really this kind of fundamental principle of blockchains that is the first thing that brings people to the table it's this idea of um you know reducing uh the need to sort of pay rent-seeking individuals in the middle of transactions um that just opens the door to a whole world of uh potential Innovation um you know and I would say that that is kind of the first piece and then often you know we end up talking about composability and interoperability uh and I'll talk a little bit more about that later but you know just as a starting point one of the really beautiful things to see happen uh you know it's been kind of both on the side of helping when there's problems uh you know and this has been the case for uh you know funding go going to folks in Pakistan with the say Pakistan crypto Collective but also you know we've seen it in terms of uh you know things like support for uh folks in the Ukraine and of course millions of dollars has gone directly to you know both the government uh in the Ukraine but also to a lot of different groups on the ground doing good work and just being able to you know put money directly in the hands of people where it's needed um you know is is I would say kind of the the starting point for this conversation kind of beyond the merge um you know now that we've seen this massive reduction in energy consumption and by the way I think it's worth pointing out that the merge is probably the biggest reduction in energy consumption from any industry in the modern uh era of of human history uh you know I really am I I've tried to think of anything comparable uh in terms of sort of the amount of energy reduction uh and had a hard time thinking of another example uh really the closest thing would actually be the actions of countries not the actions of Industries or companies um you know that reduction in annual energy consumption is super significant and you know as ethereum continues to grow um of course that uh you know the emissions would have continued to grow along with it so uh you know it's it's not only a reduction in in potential energy consumption right now but if we look at that um you know if uh ethereum gets 10x or 100x uh in terms of the amount of use the uh the amount of value that's being derived you know the associated emissions are not going to go up with it which is uh really uh an admirable thing and I want to just you know for any uh eth core devs that are out there listening uh I just want to give my personal thank you for for that contribution it really is significant and historic um you know so both in terms of direct funding to projects where there's a problem that we're trying to solve where we're like looking at climate adaptation but also uh you know on the mitigation side just getting money directly in the hands of people trying to do good things uh like for example this group Iowa Uganda who's been a grantee on the get coin platform uh they've said that you know really without git coin it would have been very hard for them to do what they're doing uh it's given them the ability to plant trees install solar panels um you know in schools and health centers uh you know all throughout uh you know the area that they're doing their work um and this is just a couple of examples but you know it's it's kind of the the first use case of what the implications of removing middlemen can look like on the ground um the next use case that I'm going to point to is one that I think is uh you know really exciting actually and probably uh one of the Lesser known and understood and one of the areas where I think there may actually be the most uh opportunity or significant amounts of opportunity so first of all using the composability and interoperability of you know various different uh tools that are built in the sort of defy space has opened up this door to direct financing of solar energy projects or other clean energy projects and I'm just highlighting a couple of them on the screen here uh who are grantees from the get coin grants round uh projects like Village grid uh or zero Labs or make change possible all at different scales and different locations um you know are actually using these D5 protocols uh you know these kind of uh lending platforms borrowing platforms uh you know different forms of uh um you know decentralized financing so that people can directly contribute to funding solar projects on the ground and uh in particular I want to give a shout out to the solar Foundation which is a group that's trying to harness these mechanisms to directly fund uh projects actually for Iowa Uganda as well as for people in in Puerto Rico more recently and basically an attempt to try to bring more resilience and the ability to uh you know basically have your own microgrids at the local level uh you know with the help of you know these kind of funding mechanisms and what they're doing also ties into uh the folks at xerolabs who are using renewable energy credits as a way to go about doing this kind of work um you know this is kind of the equivalent of carbon offsets but for renewable energy so you know where you can actually buy uh you know credits for a certain amount of electricity consumption and I think these are really interesting and sort of Novel approaches to Bringing more liquidity uh directly into these markets and to make these kinds of projects a reality and it's worth pointing out that uh you know that these are investments that can generate a stable return over a period of time uh you know and it's really beautiful to see how that Capital can sort of find a home and more efficiently just actually make these projects a reality on the ground so some really interesting work happening in that regard I also put up this group seven energy which is a company uh in Norway or I should say it's an organization in Norway that's using what I would call a sort of forward-thinking policy to facilitate uh Community energy like they're actually using blockchain technology for decentralized grid management and that's similar to what village grid does as well to basically make it possible for people to buy and sell electricity directly from each other um and you know I think that this is one of those things where the potential for it is exponential but it also has barriers in the so-called meat space um you know so luckily in Norway there's policies that really make it difficult for electricity providers the folks that own the uh the grid infrastructure um you know it makes it hard for them to limit the ability of communities to do this and in some cases where people would like to see things like this happen they run into obstacles with Regulators there are some examples though uh that are are not at the community level even but even just at the individual building level uh in the process of the research I've been doing actually found a company based right here in Toronto where I am in the birthplace of ethereum uh showed it to Toronto um you know who have actually been using uh blockchain technology to facilitate microgrids at the condominium level uh you know so the charging infrastructure for electric vehicles um usually is kind of a one-way process you're pulling electricity off of that uh that charger you're paying a fee but what is uh being made possible by this company in Toronto is that they're actually making it possible to uh actually sell your electricity back into the condominium complex so uh you know the electricity that you've got stored in your battery you know for most people their automobile isn't being used over 90 of the time um that can now become a backup battery uh and if you imagine that at scale in a condo complex imagine you know the entire underground parking being filled with vehicles that have electric batteries uh in them uh and I think increasingly in the years ahead we're going to see more and more vehicles uh where that's the case especially as uh you know people are seeing costs rise around the world for uh for gas uh you know it just becomes increasingly an opportunity for you know that uh parking garage to now become basically like a backup battery Bank um and that can be useful in the case of blackouts but it can also really help with uh moments of peak demand and a lot of jurisdictions when you are kind of peak parts of the day people are charged more for electricity because there's such a demand on the gray grid and that can also result in using you know natural gas or coal-fired power plants that may not run all the time but are sort of used as a backup source of electricity now if you can sort of manage that more efficiently and actually draw power from batteries that are within a building not only are you creating a new Revenue stream for those automobile owners but you're also potentially creating uh you know the ability to reduce that sort of uh additional Demand on the grid itself during those kind of peak moments so yeah I think the financing of clean energy and the facilitating of decentralized grids is a totally fascinating uh and very rich ripe opportunity for Innovation um you know I see I think in some locations we're seeing kind of the equivalent of what happened in the global South when uh you know people uh just jumped right over landlines and write to cell phones I think we may see the same thing happen with these micro grids and distributed grids facilitated by blockchain technology where you know we'll actually see Solutions popping up that were financed perhaps by you know uh you know micro loans from a whole bunch of different people on the other side of the world um who are all getting a little bit of return from the money that's being generated by selling that electricity between Neighbors and also opportunities for you know whether it be local farmers or business owners and others uh you know who are renting out their rooftops or their land to facilitate these projects to generate some income uh that they may not have had otherwise so really a win-win scenario and something that just wouldn't be possible in the same sort of way with the same sort of uh transparency uh you know Clarity um and you know and all the stuff that comes with the interoperability of all these various different D5 protocols and tools plugging into to this space um probably the most commonly known use case for uh for blockchain technology in the kind of climate space is around the tokenization of carbon and other ecological assets um you know Carbon offsetting is you know very common uh approach taken by governments and companies to reduce their greenhouse gas footprint um you know basically you know the hope is that companies will do everything that they can to reduce their emissions or so will countries um but then if they're trying to reach a certain goal often they'll buy offsets to help sort of fill the gap and this is definitely the space where we see the biggest number of projects who are using blockchain technology again to bring additional liquidity to sort of build on top of these various different D5 protocols uh and to create what people are calling the refi space the regenerative Finance space um and you know that that takes a lot of different shapes and sizes uh I kind of showed a cross-section of a bunch of different interesting and Innovative projects uh senken in the middle of the screen here has created a dashboard that is kind of a clearing house for all kinds of different assets that tells the stories of the projects that helps to draw attention um to the sort of different approaches that are being taken and the the projects that are being directly financed you know of course the beauty of doing these kinds of projects enabled by blockchain technology is that it just opens up a whole world of possibilities in terms of cutting out middlemen again um and you know one of the biggest costs of doing carbon offsets is actually the validation and verification and I'll talk about that in a second but but you know really even just at the surface level knowing how much is being paid knowing whether an offset has actually uh you know occurred um you know all of that is stuff that's uh especially enabled by blockchain technology and just because of the sort of ease of use of many of these protocols brings a lot more uh liquidity into the space which is really a big part of what's needed in the carbon offside offset space is to just bring in more demand uh which will then generate more and more of these projects actually occurring in the real world um so I also included a couple of other projects like endangered token or Neptune chain who are trying to look at other ecological assets like Forest preservation or um you know the sustainability of uh you know the the marine environment um regen foundation and the regen network is a really interesting project and really a set of projects being built on top of a protocol that I think is really worth checking out um doing some very interesting stuff in terms of uh you know looking at ecology value and also using their own standards to bring offsets directly on chain as opposed to some other projects that are using pre-existing offsets and tokenizing them which is uh you know basically can be very effective but also has some limiting uh you know barriers when you know say a group decides to not allow that activity to take place as is kind of the the ongoing conversation right now with Vera the biggest voluntary carbon offset market right now um also just want to give a quick shout out to return protocol a really cool project that just allows you to set and forget offsets directly in your wallet uh so you know you can just basically set up a certain percentage of every transaction to go towards uh carbon offsets and you know you can just make that happen uh very easily and of course uh you know as as I think everybody is well aware user experience is one of the most important things for us to be wrestling with in the years ahead um cool to see projects that are just trying to make it as easy as possible um so I'm not going to mention all these projects Spirals and refi uh South also doing great stuff um but uh as as I am tend to do I I'm noticing I got a lot of slides and only you know not as much time as a I could I could talk endlessly about this um so you know the kind of the next piece of this that I think really uh is important and it connects to um the the conversation or an asset or offsets is the the world of uh monitoring reporting and verification or mrv uh you know tracking emissions uh you know is is definitely super important and verifying impact is super important um and oracles have become a big part of conversation around blockchain technology and the uh in recent years there's some great projects uh like astral and shamba uh who are trying to use oracles to help with the verification of offsets so like if somebody makes a claim that they're protecting a piece of forest how do you know uh and part of the way you can do that is using satellite data um you know weather data also becomes very important um and even in some cases even putting uh you know monitoring devices directly you know in the soil or at a farm um Can can bring that information on chain and be used as a sort of an additional layer in that stack of technology that can help actually verify the validity of emission reductions and uh shamba is already using this technology to help bring new Revenue to Farmers and various places in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa um really exciting to see what they're doing I also want to give a shout out to uh blockchain for climate Foundation they're big fans of ethereum so uh yeah you know if you don't know them already you should definitely check them out they've been around for many years run by a guy named Joseph uh who I've known for for many years in Vancouver um super lovely guy and uh you know they have been trying to bring the Paris agreement uh the the greenhouse gas reduction agreement onto the ethereum blockchain for many years and you know meeting with a lot of politicians and others but really at its core I think it's important to understand that using blockchain to actually do the carbon Accounting in a transparent way uh is fundamentally a very important and useful attribute of what blockchain can bring to the climate space already the government of Canada British Columbia and many other places in the world are experimenting with this uh it's much needed there's a real lack of standardization of how greenhouse gas accounting is done in terms of how the information is shared you know there's a hodgepodge of databases and spreadsheets that are floating around out there in the world and it's very hard to wrap your head around exactly what's being done in that space um so I I'm actually very excited about that sort of overarching like how do we use blockchain technology just for the monitoring of greenhouse gases and climate impacts as well as that sort of more on the ground monitoring of specific projects that are making claims um you know and you know if we're going to pass our money to folks having that sort of level of verification um you know in short I think blockchain could actually basically solve some of the biggest problems with carbon offsets uh Logistics and supply chain efficiency is probably the least sexy and potentially one of the most important uh uses of blockchain technology in terms of reducing energy um you know a tremendous amount of energy use goes into uh the movement of goods around the world uh already big companies like Maersk and others are using uh blockchains in their case I think private blockchains but increasingly we're seeing you know how this can be super super important uh in this space and the the graphic that I included here is from the folks at the Rocky Mountain Institute who are doing some really interesting work in this regard uh also Shadows should go to the folks from filecoin Green who are doing some very important work uh in this space as well around sort of attestations uh uh and you know different ways of sort of monitoring impact um and you know folks who have had a lot of experience working directly uh in this space so um yeah each one of these pieces I could I could spend an hour talking about but let's just say that uh um Logistics and supply chain efficiency super important and another really exciting opportunity in in the blockchain space to really have an impact finally the the last use case that I'm going to highlight is actually Community Arts and culture projects um you know culture does not change all by itself and this is one of the things that uh you know that we fund through Bitcoin grants rounds that I think is kind of underrated in its importance uh on this page there's a bunch of different interesting projects one of them is a video game uh one of them is a documentary um Reef fight out who has the cutest name in all of crypto I I always just call them reefed out because I get confused but they're trying to protect the Great Barrier Reef by making a digital twin of the Great Barrier Reef um in sort of a metaversal space where you can buy uh portions of the reef and it'll Finance researchers who are making 3D models of the Great Barrier Reef uh using some Innovative new underwater cameras and really you know to be honest it was the first time that I really got excited about the metaverse as much as I'm into games and whatever else um you know I hadn't really seen the implications of a metaversal space as part of climate Solutions refined I was doing some really interesting stuff there's also a lot of different uh conferences uh and educational programs like open campus that are seeing funding coming in uh hibiscus Dao is a group that's looking at standardization for reducing energy consumption in the fashion industry using blockchain technology that's their logo up in the top right corner and some just amazing artists for anybody who pays attention to git coin you've probably heard us talk about solar Punk art um you know definitely one of the coolest uh things that I I see happening in the space is just kind of this visioning of how the world could be and I think that you know the more that we have that conversation get people excited about the real world use cases that we talked about today but then sort of imagine what it looks like in our day-to-day lives I think that's what's what it's going to take to really start changing people's perception and understanding of of the value of this kind of Technology um so I just wanted to to sort of end off with this idea of uh you know just one last thing about git coin which is you know people say I I've got a friend named prernav from uh uh refi South who says people come to get coin for the funding but they stick around for the community and you know I I think that really is the secret sauce of the web 3 space in general and in Bitcoin in particular um you know the interoperability and composability of our tools really leads to this uh you know collaborative space where people support each other it's been very exciting to watch these projects over the last four grants rounds evolve and grow and collaborate learn in public you know sometimes things work sometimes things don't but we all uh you know kind of take big steps in the right direction as the result of of that kind of approach so I I just you know I I love seeing these kind of quotes from various different people in the community but the experiences that they had with uh with Git coin you know to me it's uh really just amazing to sort of watch this evolve and grow uh if you haven't checked out any of our Twitter spaces we've done a bunch of these shill spaces for folks in the climate space as well as just others on bitcoin and it's been really exciting to sort of see all these different projects come and share what they're working on and often make New relationships in real time and uh you know sometimes people find co-founders or they find developers or they find funders or they just learn about uh you know something interesting that's going on somewhere else in the world um so that's that's definitely a very cool part of what you see happening day to day I get coin and I'll just leave it there and say uh you know I would love to talk to anybody who is interested in what could be done in this space or is curious to learn more about this space I threw my Twitter handle and my telegram up there uh feel free to come and uh you know find me and and talk more about you know what is possible in the web 3 climate solution space so thanks for the time to to chat about all this stuff thanks for being here Ben I really appreciate that and I think awesome overview of just like all the different kind of things that are happening in the space and and what what's been made possible um I know we're a little bit over but I I kind of want to ask a couple questions uh that come into mind um anybody has any other questions feel free to drop them in the chat as well um but yeah I mean now that we've kind of done this this this major Improvement as you mentioned to kind of like I guess wipe the Energy Efficiency or the energy usage with the Netherlands off the map um and ethereum's Usage Now is like you know I think more representative of like the volume of of you know what it should be like given that all these all other climate Solutions and things that are happening on chain exist like is there a way where we could like measure that impact in in a way where we maybe ethereum could almost be like carbon not even just carbon neutral but also like carbon negative is there a way we could kind of get to that point yeah absolutely I mean some things are easier to to um to count than others but definitely the offset protocols and the renewable energy credits um you know many of those projects actually have dashboards um a big shout out to uh the folks for each for climate which is kind of a new Coalition that's just recently come together um that's actually talking about offsetting historic emissions uh from the ethereum blockchain um which I think is uh you know a noble and worthwhile activity um you know for me the the bigger picture really is just like how do we make ethereum a you know massively positive contributor to climate Solutions you know regardless of just historic emissions but also like kind of Beyond uh you know the emissions calculations and you know things like carbon accounting for example it's kind of hard to quantify what the impact of that is you know just having better information in the hands of people more readily um you know or things like their arts and culture projects you know again sort of harder to quantify uh but definitely there are a lot of ways that we can use blockchain technology to monitor um you know the impact of all of these projects um and you know I'll give a shout out to the folks at zero labs and to the folks at clementow who both have uh some great dashboards already that they're experimenting with and anybody who wants to take a look can go find the Discord for uh for climate and you'll you'll see a lot of that conversation happening there amazing um and then yeah maybe one last like really quick thing that comes to mind for me like uh you mentioned yeah historical ethereum you know I think it's like like to your point about earlier in the presentation about how like you can't think of any like uh proxy or equivalent to like that much kind of energy usage being kind of like flipped off in a switch outside of maybe government policies and stuff like that like um it is a big change and I think like there is a large kind of consensus almost that had formed uh during the proof of work days of ethereum that like it is energy inefficient it's part of the kind of uh battle against climate change that like we need to go up against ethereum not work with it um I mean you probably spend a lot of time you know chatting with different people that maybe you know aren't as you know maybe kind of in the know as kind of the group of people that are probably watching this but like what have you seen as like a really good way to sort of reverse that narrative now that like we really truly have done that with technology how do we now do that with kind of the more social aspect of it that's a really good question um and honestly I think it's the storytelling around projects and use cases um you know the uh you know the that old saying sell the sizzle about the stake uh you know I think because we're we're such like a developer heavy space and and still quite early in the sort of building out of tools uh you know I think there's kind of an emphasis on talking about the how everything works instead of the sort of why it's useful um you know and I I think like for most people really all they understand is kind of the payments or the sort of investment components of this um you know so my hope is that just by like telling these stories of these Innovative projects and the really interesting things they're doing with this technology and showing why that couldn't just be done um you know with a set of Excel spreadsheets or you know some traditional database structure uh or how that you know the removal of middlemen uh you know takes a bunch of rent seeking activity out of the mix and put more puts more money directly in the hands of people um or even things like the uh electric charging station in the in buildings in the city that I live in um you know to be that like you don't even need to know that there's blockchain under the hood there uh making that work but maybe when you do it learn that then you'll have sort of a different view of of this technology um I can tell you I've talked to a lot of uh climate oriented organizations and individuals um you know over the years uh you know from working in the space for many years but since I've been working at Bitcoin and even before as a you know person with an interest in crypto and I've been telling a lot of people like let's just keep having this conversation after the merge um you know because like people have been a little bit reticent but you know sort of interested in what was possible um and I think there you know there's going to be a big influx of people showing up who are sort of maybe now open to seeing what is possible in the space and and that's really exciting to me amazing well I appreciate your time Ben I'm also a fellow torontonian uh funny enough and I had no idea that those Chargers in My Condo building are connected to a blockchain so maybe I'll message you after to try to figure out what's going on there but uh it's absolutely a pleasure to have you here Ben and um and thank you so much for your time thanks for having me that was a lot of fun Cheers Cheers