If you are reading this you no doubt understand what a blockchain is. Perhaps you have not yet been introduced to LENR. I expect less few have ever used both terms in the same conversation. However, in an ironic twist of fate, the two of them may be codependent on one another as we usher in a new era of decentralization.
LENR is short for Low Energy Nuclear Reactions, or Lattice Enabled Nuclear Reactions or a host of other acronyms which have come to symbolize what was once referred to as Cold Fusion. All essentially represent the heretofore unexplained phenomenon where purported anomalous and excess amounts of heat are generated when a stimulus is applied to certain transition elements which have readily absorbed isotopes of hydrogen.
The blockchain has become synonymous with Bitcoin, for a period of time the sole cryptocurrency of choice for those investing and using digital currencies as an experiment. However, there are hundreds of these digital coins and tokens in use today and they are all run by a backbone of distributed databases which are used to maintain a continuously growing list of records, called blocks. This is the blockchain. The records are permanent, decentralized, public and irreversible. The blockchain is maintained by nodes of processors running the calculations that create the never-ending creation of new blocks. The energy consumption for these processors is growing on a daily basis as the transactions and tokens using a blockchain type algorithm explode in popularity (note: Al Gore has nothing to do with this).
LENR, hailed as potentially the cheapest and cleanest energy source to be imagined, has been plagued by three constant constraints: centralization, censorship and a lack of funding. In a centralized world where valuable and useful information is hoarded and kept secret on private servers, groups are incentivized to protect experimental data in order to someday profit from it. However, this mindset has inhibited the growth of LENR technology as this hoarded institutional knowledge is lost when funding, patience or other issues run out. Each successive LENR experimenter faces the same time-consuming and technical challenges and issues as their predecessor; thereby the field only incrementally advances as a whole when experimentation is done centrally.
Blockchain technology empowers its users by decentralizing information, streamlining avenues of value and providing a prosperous ecosystem for like-minded individuals. As we are now witnessing, it is also an ingenious means for fundraising through ICOs (initial coin offerings). By using the Ethereum platform, users can build a platform that is decentralized, free from censorship, and directly rewards those who produce the most value. By issuing their own tokens or coins, a group has the potential to raise millions of dollars in funding without having to engage brokers or venture capitalists. Using a native token brings about several novel benefits. Used as a deflationary currency, as the ecosystem gains in popularity, the finite supply of tokens may rise in value, benefiting the ecosystem equally and those who of course can extract the most value. No longer will an intermediary be able to hijack commerce and sap value from each transaction at the expense of the parties involved (Yes, Amazon, I am talking to you).
Decentralization and blockchain technology will disrupt more than just our centralized economies. It has the ability to empower and giveback real value to artists, creators, experimenters and anyone else who is willing to contribute and redistribute value in the ecosystem of your choice. Without the constraints, rules and censorship ability of a centralized network, the potential for an ecosystem to flourish is practically unlimited.
Energy runs everything and in order to use it, it must be captured locally, but this comes at great expense. In the near future, local energy distribution will become more common and efficient using blockchain capabilities. As LENR theory and products get developed into a commercial reality, the technology itself may be relied upon to meet the insatiable energy demands for powering the public ledgers and blockchains of our decentralizing society.
Swarm.City, a decentralized meta-platform debuted its Boardwalk platform on June 15, 2017, and represents one of the first truly decentralized peer to peer sharing economies, enabled by the $SWT token, running on the Ethereum blockchain. It may represent a watershed moment in decentralizing commerce and may be the first time the common person realizes the awesome disruption of the blockchain running in the background.
This article is a rework of my article published on my blog ecat.org.