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Steve Wozniak launches Efforce, a blockchain-based energy-saving platform
- totorovirus 6y agoHe is squeezing his last juice out of his reputation.
- dcolkitt 6y agoIs it possible that Woz is having money troubles? I couldn't imagine a co-founder of a multi-trillion dollar company needing a quick payday. But the more I read about this venture, the less likely any alternate explanation seems.
- bluedino 6y agoWozniak hasn't been part of Apple since 1985 (he does still receive a paycheck, though). His net worth is somewhere around $100 million USD depending on source.
- ahoka 6y agoSo people will burn electricity for mining, to save energy? What am I missing?
- CryptoPunk 6y agoEthereum, which this project operates on, will eventually fully transition to Proof of Stake. In any case it's possible for the energy for Proof of Work to come entirely from renewables.
- danpalmer 6y agoJust because it's possible to power proof of work with renewable energy does not mean it's a good idea. That renewable energy could be used instead to power things that we need, rather than to power what is essentially energy price arbitrage.
- CryptoPunk 6y agoWell, renewable energy exists in many places where it cannot otherwise be utilized, due to the cost of energy transmission, so PoW could utilize those sources, since transmitting PoW is much cheaper than transmitting the energy it takes to produce it.
- danpalmer 6y agoOr we could move our scientific computing workloads to places where that renewable energy is, as transmitting the results of scientific computation is much cheaper than moving the energy. I'm not saying that Proof of Work algorithms have no value at all, but I believe they have very little value to humanity compared to most other uses for that energy, and increase the costs of energy in many cases for most other applications. Currently Proof of Work spends energy to create a betting market for rich people. Maybe in the future there might be useful application of it, but we've yet to get any further than theorising and small scale demonstrations.
- CryptoPunk 6y agoCurrently Proof of Work is deemed by the market to be valuable, by definition, so it is merely speculation that the market is over-valuing cryptocurrency that your claim that PoW is not valuable is based on. Anyway, I would agree that if the PoW had a secondary purpose, like enhancing the efficiency of the blockchain, or providing scientific compututation, it would provide more value to humanity.
- terhechte 6y agoIt seems this token runs on Ethereum which is in the process of moving to Proof-Of-Stake, dramatically reducing the power consumption of the network. Which doesn't mean I'm a particular fan of this solution, but it is different to running it on top of BTC. https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-roadmap/ethereum-2.0/proof-of-stake/ https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-roadmap/ethereum-2.0/proof-o...
- hutzlibu 6y agoLots of buzzwords to gather investment money? I mean, it totally sounds advanced and futureproof.
- sparsely 6y agoI don't quite get the actual mechanism by which this incentivizes energy efficiency investments, or why blockchain is required vs normal debt, but the "blockchain, but for climate solutions" idea appears in "The Ministry for the Future", where it also looks like a weird idea.
- saeranv 6y agoI was just considering reading that book today. What are your thoughts on it? Is the tech prognostications realistic otherwise?
- jefurii 6y agoI'm about 2/3 through it. I also thought the blockchain stuff was a bit weird and buzzwordy, but technology is not really the point of this book. It's more about the kinds of social/political/economic changes needed to address climate change and other problems, which in this case includes ecoterrorism and revolution.
- mmkos 6y agoI'm wondering about the token allocation: Private Placement 45% EFFORCE Ltd 20% Incentive for Mining 20% Ecosystem and Consultants 15% So to start with, 35% of all tokens in the pool will effectively already be allocated to EFFORCE? Is this a normal practice?
- anfilt 6y agoIt's why some people equate a lot these new coins (ICOs) to pyramid schemes.
- jstummbillig 6y agoWild. It's not like blockchains are in any way a clearly proven, established thing. In fact, considering that we are stilling waiting for the first tangible contribution to society out of the blockchain field that matches its surrounding hype, I would argue that doing things differently is probably a good idea.
- sunshinerag 6y agopre-mined coins are considered dishonourable, but they are very common in alt-coin space.
- spoonjim 6y agoDon't see how Woz's involvement here makes this any more likely to succeed. The guy was a 1000x engineer 40 years ago and is obviously still smart, but hasn't really needed to keep any particular skills sharp for four decades and he is one of five co-founders. Sounds like some dabbling to me.
- mmkos 6y agoOne of six co-founders even.
- Traubenfuchs 6y agoHe is simply used so they can create an association with the success of Apple.
- INTPenis 6y agoIt's a name, just like Tommy Chong's name was used to sell water pipes. Woz is huge in hacker circles, a legend in his day. But as you say, the last decades have been pretty unremarkable.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- popol12 6y agoAnother scam in the space, yay.
- cinntaile 6y agoWhy do you think it's a scam?
- qertoip 6y agoBecause "token", because "blockchain technology", because "democratize", because "environment".
- dredds 6y agoI want to start a Tree-Planting Carbon-Capture Proof-of-Growth Eco-Coin. Who's with me??
- foxhop 6y agoI'm with you. Plant some trees, no need to prove it. Look into fast growing trees for your agricultural zone. Look into pruning techniques like pollarding to keep trees small. Use pruned dried material to make charcoal (has many uses in fish farming) and then charge it up with goodies to make biochar and finally bury it into your garden for a slow release fertilizer which lasts for hundreds or potentially thousands of years.
- Hamuko 6y agoI don't usually associate blockchains with saving energy.
- postingpals 6y agoWas anyone else hoping by the title that this would be a company that researches ways to save energy on technology like blockchain? I am a bit disappointed that it is not. Actually after doing more reading, I'm not really sure what this is. Landing pages with almost no tangible information are the worst kind.
- dredds 6y agoI was expecting they had solved some sort of Proof-of-Savings. The "without intermediaries based on exact consumption/savings data" sounds more like filling a ledger to resolve a smart contract. How exactly verification achieved is left unanswered. With grid-energy blockchains there is a tangible good. But decreased power consumption by one metric doesn't assure power is not used off platform. (not to mention the green-ness of any such generation)
- codegladiator 6y agoBlockchain and energy-saving in same sentence sounds like oxymoron. But yeah "relatively" it probably would be. edit: checked out the whitepaper, its not even about the blockchain saving any energy itself. instead you save energy somewhere and record it on blockchain... for ... ?
- nathias 6y agoIt's not an oxymoron to anyone even remotely acquainted with crypto.
- ForHackernews 6y agoAre there any non-Proof-of-Work blockchains in real use? (don't say ETH)
- capnorange 6y agoSolana. It powers Audius which has ~300,000 monthly users.
- joosters 6y agoSolana is centralized - it recently completely froze because a single server was giving faulty data. This weakness has been known about for a long time, e.g. https://twitter.com/el33th4xor/status/1313425180635660288 https://twitter.com/el33th4xor/status/1313425180635660288
- capnorange 6y agoThe issue was an implementation bug afaict and from official responses. Solana is clearly BFT, unlike what Emin claims. To be fair, I don't expect Solana to be as centralised as other chains only for the reason that you need a gaming rig to run a consensus node. Solana is not centralised for the reasons you mention.
- nathias 6y ago
- mattpojk 6y agoHas cryptocurrency actually ever provided any actual, legal value for anyone other than as a speculative trading platform (i.e. glorified lottery)?
- chriszhang 6y ago[edit: this comment is outdated. the parent comment is updated now to change the word crypto to cryptocurrency. I misunderstood earlier crypto to be cryptography. with crypto meaning cryptocurrency my comment is not related now.] I think it has. Worldwide ecommerce runs on cryptography. there are laws and regulations on how crypto should be made secure and managed in ecommerce. if you mean blockchain cryptocurrency by the word crypto then you may be correct. but in general terms crypto has a lot of actual legal value for it.
- mattpojk 6y agoI meant cryptocurrency of course and have updated the comment. Also it's a legit question rather than a statement. I haven't ever seen what blockchain is truly good for, but perhaps I've missed something.
- chriszhang 6y agoOh I agree it is an interesting and legit question for cryptocurrency.
- qertoip 6y agoYes, absolutely. With Bitcoin people protect their hard earned savings from rampant inflation present in many countries. With Monero people regain their right to financial privacy online.
- Traubenfuchs 6y agoOk, so we are at real use number 3. after "pyramid / get rich quick scheme" and "volatile high risk investment", the "evading the bank system, shady financial transactions and tax evasion" part.
- smarx007 6y agoWhitepaper: https://efforce.io/WP_ENG_V1.pdf https://efforce.io/WP_ENG_V1.pdf. Please read at least some of it before posting harsh comments. I think it would have been much better launched in EU. I can totally see this is as a platform for energy efficiency accountability and energy efficiency investment tracking for tax break purposes. My problem with it is that (1) the whitepaper is too thin on tech details and (2) it seems to have a fixed energy project model connected to those EFFORCE tokens preventing it from being used on a national level where a country has its own legally mandated reward scheme different from EFFORCE vision.
- yetihehe 6y ago> where a country has its own legally mandated reward scheme Knowing my country, that would lead to gaming the system.
- postingpals 6y agofor the confused, here's the key: > For the entire duration of the contract, the Beneficiary pays a part of the energy savings generated to the E.s.Co. This gives a return on the initial investment. > The greater the energy savings obtained by the Beneficiary, the greater the returns for the Esco and the Contributors, since the savings generated are the actual financial performance of the initial investment. So, contractors figure out how to make a company more energy efficient, and in return they get a cut of the savings they saved the company. > the company can use EFFORCE to look for the necessary crowdfunding to proceed with the energy redevelopment projects, in exchange for sharing the savings generated.
- saeranv 6y agoIgnoring the blockchain aspect of this for a second, the underlying model her makes me a little hopeful it can tackle some of the more frustrating problems I've experienced in designing energy-efficient buildings, if it ever catches on. In the building construction industry, there's a huge gap between an optimal energy performing construction and what finally gets built, due to the immense reluctance of clients to deal with the upfront cost or uncertainty associated with newer, high-performing constructions and technologies. It's somewhat mitigated in the commercial sector since commercial clients have incentive to "brand" their buildings as sustainable, but it's depressing as hell in the residential sector. Although it would definitely be harder (albeit, have way more impact) to use the EFFORCE model during new construction versus retrofits.
- dagw 6y agoI love Wozniak, but is track record of founding companies after Apple hasn't exactly been stellar. Anybody else here remember WoZ? Woz-U? That VC fund he co-founded? Entrepreneurship clearly isn't his strong suit.
- aeoleonn 6y agoI was at an event where Joe Lonsdale spoke a couple months ago. He took questions after giving a short speech. One person asked what he thinks about blockchain-based businesses. Joe basically said "These days, in Silicon Valley, if anyone brings up a business idea that involves blockchain, that's how you know that team doesn't know what they're doing." Basically, to paraphrase, people trying to throw blockchain into business concepts is like throwing like spaghetti against walls. Investors, according to Joe Lonsdale, do not typically find such ideas respectable-- in fact, the opposite: they seem to find them comical and gimmicky.
- 3pt14159 6y agoI talked to Joe briefly on the phone about ten years ago. He has a very sharp mind for financial related startups and his insights truly impressed me. If he said this, it says something to me.
- vekker 6y agoThat sounds awfully reductive. While it's obviously true that many blockchain-based businesses are/were just trying to cash in on hype alone, that doesn't mean that ALL ideas involving a blockchain are bad.
- DonHopkins 6y agoJust that all people involving a blockchain are bad, who will fuck up even the few good ideas involving a blockchain, in their quest to get rich quick without actually doing any difficult work or providing any useful services. I'm sure there exist a few rusty metal sewage snakes in need of lubrication, but that's not what most people are selling snake oil for.
- sdan 6y agoWas trying to figure out if this was a Deepfake. If it is, they're getting good. Otherwise, I don't see how they'll offset the carbon cost of the coin itself; which is a paradox I don't think they can overcome if I'm understanding this correctly.
- DennisP 6y agoPut it on top of an existing blockchain and the incremental carbon cost will probably be low. Put it on a proof-of-stake blockchain and it'll be essentially zero.
- pyentropy 6y agoMy instinct was to close the site immediately but decided to read what Woz is up to. Navigation didn't work for some stuff on mogile but I dowloaded the PDF whitepaper and I must say this is more shallow than most "tokens". If I understand correctly, people invest money into a pool that is distributed for companies/industries to spend, in order to increase their energy efficiency. Once they are done ("once" should be "if"), part of their savings goes to the investors. I think it is reasonable to assume that such process doesn't need any crypto proof and ultimately depends on lawyers, salesmen and bankers. Making a company or an industry more efficient requires talent and strategy, not just pouring money and it is a very risky and long process. If these guys feel competent to make a profitable energy efficiency fund, they should start one. And with clear legal protection for the investors, not a token.
- nathias 6y agoWhy would anyone buy a car when they can walk?
- openfinch 6y agoIt has the AM/FM trust problem wherein a business will always trust paper contracts and lawyers over Fucking Magic like this. Edit: Good example, estate transfers and mortgages are a potentially quite good use-case for blockchain. Why is nobody using it? Because it's Fucking Magic.. nobody with a sensible risk profile is going to replace a "contracts and lawyers" process that works well-enough with Fucking Magic.
- AzzieElbab 6y agoIn cases of property transfers the lack of trust in blockchain is understandable because contracts and lawyers can annul your “fucking magic” due to local legislatures.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- est31 6y agoYeah it's just a different way of managing a fund or investment company. Just that there is less regulatory oversight for the managing entity (bad for you), and a large part of the tokens is owned by them, so they can bring a lot of new tokens into the market. The fact that it's a blockchain likely makes it attractive to some people, so maybe it was chosen for marketing/hype reasons. Would it have landed at the hn front page had it been a traditional investment company? Likely not.
- qertoip 6y agoSounds exactly like you would expect of the next shitcoin.
- wslh 6y ago> EFFORCE Tokens are ERC20 Utility Tokens based on the Ethereum blockchain. No pun intended: an energy saving platform based on an energy inefficient blockchain. I should expect them to choose another blockchain or wait for Eth2.
- jonas_kgomo 6y agoExactly,this could have been amazing with The Chia Protocol, which has the same mission of substituting mining for farming and reducing energy waste
- idkwhoiam 6y agolooks like a typical ICO scam from 2018
- mangecoeur 6y agoSo... energy performance contracting with the word "blockchain" glued on the end. This is not the first time people have proposed this, someone even pitched this to our research group not long ago. The basic idea of broadening the investment base for EPC is like any kind of crowdsourced investment to cut out the middleman of institutional investors (instead of giving my money to a bank to invest in EPC, I do it myself). With the same downside that individuals are usually much worse judges of projects than institutions, so what you gain in reduced costs you lose in high risk. Then comes the blockchain bit, which suffers exactly the same problem of every project I've seen like this which is there is no technological way to tie the tokens to the energy use. Saving energy cannot 'generate' tokens, therefore you have to come up with a contract that ties the energy savings value to the value of the tokens. In which case there is basically no difference to just using cash since all the 'security' of the arrangement comes from contractual obligations, which are easier to create and more reliable to enforce using regular currency.
- strogonoff 6y agoSame for blockchain-based recycling tracking (which Chinese government had been investing in a couple years ago), etc. My issue with all of those ideas is that they are essentially trying (even if failing, for now) to devise ways for humans to trust fellow humans with less. Contrast the experience of using the railway in South Korea (typically you never have to show your ticket) and China (where staff went through my luggage and confiscated shaving gel of all things): setting aside any legitimate justifications for either treatment, one makes you feel like a fugitive who should not be trusted most of the time while the other treats you like a responsible and honest adult—and we all know how labeling works. Will it be impossible to address, in a post-scarcity society, the underlying issues that cause humans to lie to or hurt each other? Do we actually have to resort to dressing more and more of inter-human interaction into a straightjacket of never-forgetting blockchain?
- jonas_kgomo 6y agoThe only blockchain that seems to be addressing the energy problem is Chia. Ethereum already has issues with energy usage, even more so, Bitcoin. I think this could work ideally on Chia protocol https://www.chia.net/ https://www.chia.net/
- Traubenfuchs 6y agoWho in their right mind still invests money in blockchain based "get the creators rich fast" schemes? Is this still a viable startup strategy?
- wyldfire 6y agoIt is if you can sucker Woz on board.
- jpcooper 6y agoFor a non-blockchain version of this, in Europe there has been an effort towards developing and implementing a system called USEF [1], which allows entities like power stations, speculators and aggregators like British Gas across Europe to make available and trade future energy supply and demand contracts over chosen time periods. At my last job, we tried to make an initial implementation of this, but the specification was extremely complex, and even worse, ambiguous in many places. We were frequently unable as a group to agree on what the specification meant. Maybe it has improved in the two years since I left. [1] https://www.usef.energy https://www.usef.energy
- helsinkiandrew 6y ago> The data that each smart meter will transmit will be validated and certified by the blockchain, so as to be able to unequivocally guarantee the savings obtained at a certain point in time Block chain doesn't validate things happening in the real world (energy saved, KWh consumed) only auditors/inspectors can do that. The data from the smart meter can always be faked before it goes to the blockchain network. Have I missed something? I'd be inclined to give Woz the benefit of the doubt on most things but I don't get what blockchain gives here apart from marketing BS - for which its a year or two behind the times?
- greenkey 6y ago> a year or two behind the times How exactly? I agree with you that use of blockchain on its own is not fully secure, but that can be mitigated for the most part through the same sorts of proof-of-work and proof-of-stake mechanisms and entities that Etherium, etc. use. with adjustments. This might be exactly the time for Woz and co. to get into this given that there are others handling those problems, right?
- codetrotter 6y ago> I agree with you that use of blockchain on its own is not fully secure, but that can be mitigated for the most part through the same sorts of proof-of-work and proof-of-trust mechanisms and entities that Etherium, etc. use. None of that does anything to prove that the energy consumption data you are submitting is true.
- greenkey 6y agoThat’s what proof-of-work and proof-of-stake are about. I’m saying that the problem has been solved and would need to just be applied to this use case.
- pjc50 6y agoNope: those only apply to elements on the blockchain, not elements in the real world. You'd need proof-of-not-work for a real energy efficiency business.
- ulfw 6y agoBlockchain and Energy saving. Oh god...
- selimnairb 6y agoConvoluted market-based drivel. We need some degree of command and control to achieve climate security. Markets are too inefficient.
- arcticbull 6y agoMarkets tend not to price in externalities they can avoid, sadly. They’re great at lots of things but sometimes they need a finger to help balance the scales.
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago> command and control That's a very strange phrasing.
- krrrh 6y agoIt’s a very common term of art when contrasting regulatory approaches in the environmental space. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_control_regulation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_control_regulati...
- Grustaf 6y agoMarkets are very efficient, but if there's no cost to pollution then there's nothing to optimize or compete about. If companies had to pay the actual environmental costs of what they are doing then they would find better ways to do them in an instant, just like they have come up with incredibly efficient ways to spin yarn, build cars and everything in between.
- DennisP 6y agoIf you have a reliable plan for getting governments to actually do that, great. We've been trying for decades now. Until it happens it's just rainbows and unicorns and we need to do what we can without them.
- neilv 6y ago* How is the "20% Incentive for Mining" reconciled with the supposed energy-saving goal? * Does Woz have trustworthy advisors for whether to get involved in things like this? * What does the EFF think about the big, thick block letters "EFF" at the start of this company's logo? The company also spells their name in all-caps as "EFFORCE" in text of their site. ("EFFORCE" sounds more like a commando unit of the EFF, which is arguably a better idea than a blockchain ICO&mining scheme with the pretext of saving energy.)
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago> What does the EFF think about the big, thick block letters "EFF" at the start of this company's logo? To be honest, I really hate the new "big, thick block letters" EFF logo. The flat design trend destroyed the good original EFF logo and turned it into three featureless and boring letters. The fact that "EFFORCE" can create a logo that looks like the EFF using nothing but three capital letters is the proof of how featureless the logo is.
- nebulous1 6y agoPosted this a few days ago but didn't get any traction. My comment from last time: Not sure I fully understand this one, perhaps I missed it in the white paper. The more traditional method of this is the investors fund the project and then the benefitting company pays the investors a portion of what they would have been paying the utility companies if it hadn't been for the upgrad project. It's not clear to me if that actually takes place in the Efforce method, does the benefitting company have to buy tokens to pay the investors? Also, if all savings are calculated based on meter readings sent "directly" to the chain, how do you account for changes in energy requirements due to upsizing or downsizing or any other change not covered by the contract? A mechanism for this would seem to require a method of putting a thumb on the scale, and if that's he case then why use the token instead of the more traditional method.
- forlorn 6y agoWill it be effective enough to compensate energy needed to keep this blockchain platform alive in the long run?
- altacc 6y agoThe first thing I saw was that the tokens are called WOZX, which looks to be either a marketing gimmick or ego-centric naming. Either way, a bad sign. To me such marketing devices or personality-centric companies often means the underlying business will be less scrutinized and thought-out, so more likely to fail at some stage.
- AVTizzle 6y agoNot sure the real world agrees. Including almost every other law, accounting, and financial practice - personality-centric companies make up a non-trivial percentage of the worlds most iconic brands. Just off the top of my head: Disney Bloomberg Automattic Air Jordan Craigslist Baskin-Robbins Andreesen-Horowitz Kleiner Perkins Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati Fenwick & West
- pionar 6y agoSure, those companies use people's names in their names, but they're not all personality-centric (though that's a subjective assessment). In this list, I see really only 1 - Disney. Air Jordan isn't a company, it's a brand from another company - Nike. The others may have been named after their founders, but the companies are not about their founders and weren't started/successful because of the relationship with the founder.
- subzelo 6y agoDoesn't this create an incentive to congest the energy network in order to benefit from 'energy savings'?
- jka 6y agoThis isn't an indictment of the project or idea, but as a note of caution for potential investors: it looks like the company's CEO[1] may have been a defendant in a (dismissed) securities fraud[2] case in the past. Woz's reputation is likely a factor in the traction this post (and perhaps business) is gaining, and I hope that it's a credible operation for his sake. He's taking an engineer and founder role, and there is a separate CTO (who has experience founding a Square-reader-like[3] company in Italy). [1] - https://efforce.io/WP_ENG_V1.pdf#page=40 https://efforce.io/WP_ENG_V1.pdf#page=40 [2] - http://securities.stanford.edu/filings-case.html?id=101308 http://securities.stanford.edu/filings-case.html?id=101308 [3] - https://jusp.com/ https://jusp.com/ (NB before you click: TLS certificate is expired at the time of writing, since 2020-02-13)
- maplesthename 6y agoI don't think it's fair to talk about a dismissed case as if it's something. If it was dismissed - It wasn't much of a case to begin with.
- macinjosh 6y agoWow, so when someone is merely accused of something and then the courts dismiss it we should consider that person's reputation tarnished? What a terrible way to treat people.
- bigbubba 6y agoNormally I would agree with you. However in this case we also know this person is now involved with an ICO scheme. This puts the situation into the realm of 'where there's smoke...'
- dhruvdh 6y agoThe other commentators are really just pointing out that this kind of thinking is toxic. Imagine someone accuses you of sexual misconduct, and later the allegation is publicly proven to be misplaced. But you still get weird looks from your peers... How would you feel?
- stevespang 6y agoFrom the whitepaper where the terms and conditions attempt to eliminate any jurisdiction by the SEC: Restricted Persons. The sale of EFFORCE tokens is not directed at, and each purchaser of EFFORCE tokens will be required to represent, among other things, that they are not: (a) a citizen, resident (tax or otherwise) of, a person located or domiciled in, or any entity organized in or owned by certain persons in (i) the United States (including any U.S. Person pursuant to the U.S. Securities Act of 1933 (as amended)), . . . In addition, each purchaser of EFFORCE tokens will be required to represent that such purchaser is outside of the United States at the time of agreeing to purchase the tokens, was outside of the United States at the time any offers to sell or any offers to buy the token were reviewed, and will be outside of the United States at any time that such purchaser performs its obligations under the Token Purchase Agreement. Purchaser Sophistication. EFFORCE tokens are speculative and involve a high degree of risk and uncertainty . . . In other words, it's apparent they are not wasting their time or money registering with the SEC. Expect the SEC to respond with something to the effect that "regardless of all your terms and conditions if ANY US based person buys your Efforce token you are now subject to our rules and we will litigate" . . . same result as if anyone offshore sells anything unsuspectingly/unknowingly to a US citizen the US authorities immediately claim jurisdiction and ability to litigate/arrest/prosecute. . . . and the private placement listed at 45% - - these are the investors/creators taking their very sizeable cut of the deal, not a particularly altruistic percentage. Appears a bunch of Italians went seeking a world famous personality to be the frontman "image" for their token deal . . . . and booked the Woz. Wonder what his cut of the deal is ?
- wyldfire 6y agoFlagged. This is an equity that happens to have a coin, not a real cryptocoin. Seemingly novel ideas like binding medical or scientific research with cryptocoins means extending trust. Which means that the cryptocoin is just along for the ride and to hype the investment. It's not decentralized and trustless. With very rare exceptions: primecoin was designed to help uncover specific chains of primes.
- BTCOG 6y agoWhy is Steve Wozniak creating a scam altcoin?
- bitwize 6y agoI don't know, but story time about another celebrity much admired for his past achievements. Stan Lee was involved with a company called Stan Lee Media back around 2000 or so. Turns out his business partner was attempting to use it as a pump and dump scheme, and fucked off to Brazil when he heard the Feds were sniffing. But it gets stranger! When Stan Lee himself reacquired control of the content he created for SLM through a new company called Pow! Entertainment after SLM went bankrupt, his former business partner tried to sue him, from federal prison using intermediaries, to reacquire control of all of Stan Lee's creations, including Marvel properties like Spider-Man! The ensuing legal battle would dog Lee for the rest of his life -- kinda like how SCO v. IBM is unresolved to this day, there's still a little stub of a company trying to assert copyright over Linux. I think Wozniak, like Lee, may have innocently gotten involved with some shady characters. Hey, it's California, it's the tech industry, these things happen.
- wyldfire 6y agoHe was probably struck by the appeal of an environmental proposal combined with a (casual?) interest in cryptocoins. Without really understanding how they work, it would be easy to get sucked in.
- duxup 6y agoSo they have their own coin, so is there mining of these coins? If so that seems pretty counter productive as far as the environmental goals go. As for the rest, how does actually measuring energy saved tie into the chain? Who verifies this?
- swiftcoder 6y ago> blockchain-based > energy saving I guess it's international irony day?
- boh 6y agoHonestly, I'm going to take the risk that this comment might not age well, but... I feel bad for Steve. Promoting crypto-networks have gone poorly for pretty much every pseudo-celebrity that's done it. This company is run by a bunch of random people. The very first thing I see is where to buy the token. There's a bunch of growth charts that have nothing to do with the platform itself (more people are expected to use energy in the future, just in case you didn't know). These type of blockchain pitches are way too familiar at this point. Honestly without real standards/regulation blockchain is just going to be synonymous with fraud and failure. Bitcoin is its own thing, not just "blockchain". Companies are leveraging its success as if they're offering the same features (like immutability) or growth prospects just by offering "blockchain solutions". Hopefully Steve can avoid the McAfee/Segal ending.
- dhruvdh 6y agoDo you ever feel like all these blockchain frauds and failures are intentional and designed to keep the general public from ever trusting the technology?
- jcfrei 6y agoI've had kind of the opposite idea: Use bitcoin mining to consume excess electricity. Excess electricity is already an issue in European grids and resulted in negative power prices (for example in April: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/why-power-prices-turn-negative https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/why-power-prices-...). Rather than just heating water with the excess power, mining bitcoin during these times could be much more profitable.
- stevespang 6y agoRT is reporting Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak's сryptocurrency skyrockets 1400%
- wired_devil 6y agoSo how is it gonna save energy mining coins?
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoI'm sad to see this. I admire Steve Wozniak, and love what he did to the world. At the same time, I fear that he has picked a weird way to address climate change. It is VERY unclear from the beginning what Efforce actually is. Almost at the bottom, you see it's an ICO. Perhaps we can describe it as the equivalent of a carbon offsetting marketplace, just for energy? Well, if that's the case... It doesn't need a blockchain, and it doesn't need a token. It can be done, today, in dollars and euros. If there's a token, and a token sale, Efforce and its founders will benefit from it, even if their efforts will not positively impact the world. That's unfair. Why not, instead, reward them in a "normal" way - create an energy efficiency marketplace, earn a commission on the energy "traded" there, voilà. No blockchain, no token sale, no bullshit. Am I wrong? If so, what did I not understand? Edit: I see that EFFORCE is listed/tradeable, and apparently worth ~$950M already, which makes me even more suspicious... [0] [0]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/steve-wozniaks-blockchain-venture-lists-212850752.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/steve-wozniaks-blockchain-ven...
- avernon 6y agoI've thought about this basic business idea a lot. And there are businesses that already exist using this model, using dollars. The problem you run into is the transaction costs and overhead. The savings are a long tail distribution situation. So the current providers only target very large clients. There are tons of smaller opportunities that on paper have a great rate of return, but it is hard to get the overhead and transaction cost low enough to make the numbers work. Look at this structure as a way to lower the transaction costs and overhead of attacking this market. I'm excited they are trying.
- hannasanarion 6y ago"transaction costs" have nothing to do with it. All they are using the blockchain for is to store meter readings, the blockchain is significantly more expensive than the standard method: a regular-ass database. It's yet another example of the misconception that blockchain somehow guarantees data validity. In reality it does the opposite: it reduces tampering, sure, but there are other ways to reduce tampering that don't also forbid validation. A broken meter will put bad data on the blockchain just the same as it will any other database, but because you're using blockchain you now can't go back and fix it when you find the error.
- scott31 6y agoConsidering Woz's history of not having produced anything of value, it is clear what this coin will be worth
- GhostVII 6y agoWhy wouldn't you just setup a traditional market like we do with other commodities, rather than a blockchain? If you are trading in something that exists in the real world (like energy savings), you already need some central authority to verify people are being honest, so a blockchain doesn't provide any benefit over having that central authority manage the data. I love the idea of having markets for more things (ex. in Ontario we have cap and trade for carbon emissions), but the blockchain idea makes no sense.
- maxpert 6y agoAlmost 6-8 cofounders, nobody other than woz as big or as impactful. Weirdness on chain validation and all over the site. TBH I wonder if woz is really with them really co-founding or this is just like a kick-scammer.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y agoJust focusing on a singular statement in the super typical low substance, high stock footage, fast cuts video: "In the last ten years energy consumption increased exponentially world wide." It sure doesn't look exponential: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-consumption-by-region?stackMode=relative&time=2009..latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-consumptio... And if you break it down by energy use per person a really interesting trend emerges: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab=chart&time=1980..latest&country=IND~TWN~SWE~USA~GBR~FRA~DEU®ion=World https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab... For much of the western world energy use per person has flat-lined or started decreasing. This appears to be a fairly robust effect, you can see that Taiwan had very consistent growth until ~2007 at which point their trend closely matches USA/France/Germany. The tremendous growth in energy consumption is mostly developing nations, mostly Asia, starting to live closer to how developed nations live.
- oshea64bit 6y agoHave any projections been made on the net effect on the environment of EFFORCE? It seems a bit ironic to me that a project laser-focused on energy efficiency depends on blockchain, which massively contributes to electricity consumption and carbon emissions.
- Octopodes 6y agoCrypto for energy-saving is like fucking for virginity lol
- cangur91 6y ago1. it's illegal 2. when u need a frequent external data feed to blockchain ("smart meters") you'r already screwed. can't do that without compromise in trust element 3. it's centralized so can be easily shut down 4. if u wanna invest in energy u don't need to use a speculative coin to "select the project" 5. I don't care if it's Wozniak or Steve Jobs coming from it's grave, it's a fucking shitcoin. Don't do it. There is amazing tech out there. I hate to see this