PayPal's shenanigans for "green miners"

[NotATether]

As you can see in this article (link: https://bitcoinist.com/green-bitcoin-mining-paypal-proposes-reward-system-for-sustainable-miners/) the blockchain research arm of payments giant PayPal is teaming up with a bunch of other think tanks to design an environmentally sustainable and "green" mining system for Bitcoin.

Naturally for anyone with a little knowledge about Bitcoin, this means the elimination of Proof of Work, and the introduction of another kind of consensus.

In a recently published paper, PayPal’s Blockchain Research Group (BRG) proposed “the possibility for a more sustainable future” in Bitcoin mining. The investigation revealed that, as of April 2, data estimates the annualized emissions to be over 85 million metric tons of carbon dioxide due to Bitcoin’s Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism:

Maybe they should make conventional data centers greener first.

The paper suggests routing on-chain transactions to “green miners” via low transaction fees with a BTC reward “locked” in a multisig payout address. The rewards would serve as an incentive to mine these transactions, as only green miners would be eligible to receive them.

The solution is based on identifying miners that use low-emissions energy sources. After identification, their public keys, referred to as “green keys,” would be used to reward miners with Bitcoin in a trust-independent method through a “1-of-n multisig script.” As a result, the payout address would allow the miners with green keys to claim the rewards.

I see two big problems with this.

The first is that who decides what is a "green miner" and who isn't. That's right, they have centralized entities doing that which means the mining process becomes less decentralizedd as the process can be hijacked to exclude miners they don't like.

Second, who actually guarantees that any of the transactions are going to land in a block. This would require all miners not submitting their block templates to Bitcoin and to the centralized entity. This stinks of sanctions.

[hugeblack]

Green miners are usually used for public relations and to prove that accepting Bitcoin means an attempt by PayPal to make it better, either in terms of environmental impact or regulatory impact, both of which are useful for increasing the stock price and addressing the concerns of investors who may not be interested in Bitcoin, but in the end, if they want to implement these ideas, they must create a new altcoin.

[ABCbits]

The way i see it, it's either an attempt to centralize Bitcoin or merely reaching research publication quota. If they actually want to reward "green miner", they could just give donation to them either by sending Bitcoin or USD (through PayPal itself).

[Zed0X]

It looks like they think highly of themselves. I agree with hugeblack that they might be better off creating their own blockchain and use their green technology to mine their native coin. In that way, they can guarantee that all transactions are "green". They can use a ticker like PYBTC (like PYUSD)

[TomPluz]

Green miners are usually used for public relations and to prove that accepting Bitcoin means an attempt by PayPal to make it better, either in terms of environmental impact or regulatory impact, both of which are useful for increasing the stock price and addressing the concerns of investors who may not be interested in Bitcoin, but in the end, if they want to implement these ideas, they must create a new altcoin.

While I am for sustainability, I am sensing something wrong with platforms pushing for environmentally-friendly ideas and solutions and the problem is that they are actually pushing for their own agenda and interest in the process that will be excluding many in the business and rewarding those they selected based on their own criteria. Many are using this green movement to mask their own selfish concerns and without us being aware of what they are doing, we can be left shocked and trapped. We should then be wary of PayPal which is a decentralized platform now wading into the cryptocurrency industry when it decided that it too wanted a slice of the pie after it actually doubted this very industry for years.

[MrSpasybo]

The first is that who decides what is a "green miner" and who isn't. That's right, they have centralized entities doing that which means the mining process becomes less decentralizedd as the process can be hijacked to exclude miners they don't like.

Second, who actually guarantees that any of the transactions are going to land in a block. This would require all miners not submitting their block templates to Bitcoin and to the centralized entity. This stinks of sanctions.

In essence, if it were possible to accurately determine the "greenness" of miners, I would partially support this idea of making the BTC mining industry even "greener" by utilizing more sustainable energy sources. However, I don't see PayPal proposing any solutions for this, unless they intend to manage all miners and decide on their own to license miners who meet PayPal's "green" criteria   

Clearly, POW doesn't operate in that manner. All miners aim to optimize profits, and they'll seek to utilize the cheapest and most sustainable energy possible to minimize costs. It's this profit motive that has driven the BTC mining industry to become "greener" over the years. I don't think PayPal intends to introduce or enforce POS for BTC, and perhaps the community wouldn't accept such an initiative right now.

In any case, this is just a proposal from PayPal, and I believe it's merely a way for PayPal to garner attention from the crypto community and demonstrate that they're also a player in the crypto market ^^

[Stompix]

The first is that who decides what is a "green miner" and who isn't. That's right, they have centralized entities doing that which means the mining process becomes less decentralizedd as the process can be hijacked to exclude miners they don't like.

Proof of owning your solar panel or whatever and a contract in which you;re liable for damages if you breach it by using grid power.
Prett easy to do and enforcable.

Second, who actually guarantees that any of the transactions are going to land in a block. This would require all miners not submitting their block templates to Bitcoin and to the centralized entity. This stinks of sanctions.

You simply broadcast them to the mining node, the other nodes\pool don't know of their existence, the green mining pool finds a block, adds them and the block is valid by all means and will not be rejected.
Nothing extraordinary in it, some pools do this with their internal transactions too.
But the thing is that you can't mine without a grid, and qualifying as a full green miner unless you sue some hydro plant would be impossible, all the big guys use coal and gas and maybe nuclear but nobody is going full green, it's simply too expensive.

[NotATether]

The first is that who decides what is a "green miner" and who isn't. That's right, they have centralized entities doing that which means the mining process becomes less decentralizedd as the process can be hijacked to exclude miners they don't like.

Proof of owning your solar panel or whatever and a contract in which you;re liable for damages if you breach it by using grid power.
Prett easy to do and enforcable.

You simply cannot enforce this in the protocol. This is one of those solutions that has to be enforced politically, and honestly with the anti-crypto waves of legislation we've been witnessing in the last few days, it is more likely that they dig a grave and hold a funeral service for decentralized currency than for these legal people to pass any green laws.*

*Unless the place you live in is called New York, but that place has its own problems with crypto.

[Stompix]

You simply cannot enforce this in the protocol. This is one of those solutions that has to be enforced politically, and honestly with the anti-crypto waves of legislation we've been witnessing in the last few days, it is more likely that they dig a grave and hold a funeral service for decentralized currency than for these legal people to pass any green laws.*

*Unless the place you live in is called New York, but that place has its own problems with crypto.

You don't need to enforce it in the protocol since it's a centralized system before mining.

To help identify green miners and onboard them to the solution, we can leverage
solutions by providers such as Energy Web, a global non-profit organization with a
mission to accelerate the energy transition. Using the Green Proofs for Bitcoin validation platform, miners
can apply for and share their sustainable mining certifications. Miners can then
selectively disclose these certifications and the underlying sustainability data with crypto
market participants and business counterparties.

Miners can obtain Green Proofs for Bitcoin certification by achieving either a Clean
Energy Score or a Grid Impact Score higher than 50. The details of how these scores are
calculated can be found here.

It's basically a closed pool just like Foundry, you share proof that you're US-based, you're licensed, you have the number of hashes needed and you can get an account, which is the same as a key with this green project.