Greetings from the Department of Innovation, Industry and Science in Canberra, where I am attending The Inaugural Blockchain Australia National Meetup Roadshow. There are about sixty people present, mostly lawyers in dark suits. I am here as a member of the ACS Blockchain Technical committee. My aim was to mention the ACS' reports on blockchain, but the first speaker has already mentioned them.
We are having discussions around the tables and contributing via an app. I have suggested there is a barrier to blockchain use through the lack of IT professionals trained in its use. This creates an opportunity for Australia to provide training and qualifications on blockchain to the world.
Two speakers mentioned the idea of a Blockchain Cooperative Research Center (CRC). I don't think this is a good idea. Blockchain is moving so fast it needs something more flexible than a CRC. This could be linked to the startup centers associated with universities and bodies such as the ACS.
The last question we were asked was what the National Blockchain Roadmap should be called. we looked at each other on our table and typed in: "National Blockchain Roadmap". ;-)
ps: It is a very Utopia event, with the MC mentioning there had been an episode of the TV comedy sending up government blockchain use.Already I have had two lawyers tell me about their parenting techniques, and received one invitation to give a presentation on the ethics of IT. ;-)
Greetings from the Australian Computer Society (ACS) in Sydney. I am a member of the ACS Blockchain Technical committee and taking part in a workshop with people from industry and academia. We were looking for use cases, so I suggested education, specifically blockchain for micro-credentials.
Educational qualifications much shorter than current diplomas and degrees is a hot topic in Australian vocational and higher education. What takes this beyond a theoretical discussion is New Zealand recognizing Micro-credentials from 22 August 2018.
A NZ micro-credential is equivalent to about 1 to 8 weeks study. So in addition to accumulating perhaps a half dozen macro-credentials during their career, an individual may have hundreds of micro-credentials. It would be cumbersome to manage these on paper, or through a centralized computer system.
The micro-credentials may then be automatically checked for some jobs by automated systems. I will touch on this in my talk on mobile education for the Computer Society of Sri Lanka National IT Conference (NITC 2018), 2 to 4 October. Students could study and be tested via their mobile device and then their digital certificate provided via the same device.
Harald Vranken at the Open University of the Netherlands (2017) estimates that bitcoin's ‘proof-of-work’ algorithm is using up to 500 MW of energy. Unlike other computing protocols, which could be improved using a more efficient algorithm, or a faster processor, the inefficiency of Blockchain is an essential part of the protocol. A question I may to put to my ICT Sustainability students next semester at ANU is "Are Bitcoin and Blockchain bad for the environment?".
In the original paper proposing Bitcoin and Blockchain, Nakamoto (p. 1, 2008) wrote "... the longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power...". Vranken (p. 3, 2017) traces the evolution of bitcoin "mining" computers, which started using general purpose CPUs in 2009, then GPUs in 2010, FPGAs in 2011 and Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) in 2013. Each change in technology brought about an improvement in energy efficiency, from CPUs with an efficiency of up to 0.1 Mh/J (million hashes per Joule of energy). Four years later the ASICs were up to ten-thousand times as efficient, at 10,000 Mh/J.
Vranken (p. 5, 2017) speculates about possible improvements in the energy efficiency of bitcoin mining hardware, however, the Blockchain design has built into it a mechanism which increases the computation required as hardware (or software) becomes more efficient:
"To compensate for increasing hardware speed and varying interest in running nodes over time, the proof-of-work difficulty is determined by a moving average targeting an average number of blocks per hour. If they're generated too fast, the difficulty increases." (Nakamoto, p. 3, 2008).
This proof of work is used not only to reduce the possibility of fraud, but also to combat inflation of the digital currency (Nakamoto, p. 4, 2008). Those processing the transactions are rewarded with newly generated "coins". If this becomes too easy, then there would be runaway inflation.
Apart from the hardware, the major cost in bitcoin mining is the energy to run the equipment. As Vranken (p. 7, 2017) notes bitcoin's proof-of-work wastes energy, and there have been proposals to replace it with some useful task and alternative schemes to prevent fraud and inflation.However, the current proof-of-work scheme has proved remarkably effective. It would be interesting to conduct a more detailed analysis of how it compares with other more conventional financial systems, in terms of energy efficiency.
The Australian National University is offering my course "ICT Sustainability" (COMP7310) in Semester 1, 2018. I have added a reading on block-chain and bitcoin to the
course, asking students to consider the energy use of this technology.
The notes are
available free and anyone is welcome to run their own version of the
course. Athabasca University (Canada), run the course as Green ICT Strategies: COMP 635.
Reference
Nakamoto, Satoshi [Szabo, Nick?] (1 Nov 2008). Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. URL https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
The Australian Computer Society (ACS) has announced the members of their Blockchain Committeefor 2017/2018. I am delighted to have been included. The committee is to look into the technical aspects and use of blockchain, including Smart Contracts.
ACS Blockchain Committee
Chair: Dr Vincent Gramoli, Head
of the Concurrent Systems Research Group at the University of Sydney.
Vice-Chair: Dr Philippa Ryan, barrister
and lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Technology.
Members:
Mr Ambarish Natu, IT Architect, Australian Taxation Office
Professor Ren Ping Liu, Head of Discipline, Network and Cyber Security, School of Electrical and Data Engineering, University of Technology Sydney.
Mr Scott Nelson, member of the National Committee of the IEC in Australia.
Mr Steven Pereira, Chief Information Officer, GS1 Australia
Mr Tom Worthington, Honorary Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University.
