Cryptocurrency is an ingenious invention that has the potential to change the world for the better by enabling a more decentralised and stable economy. However, it comes with certain drawbacks, one of which has been getting a particularly large amount of public attention recently. Currencies based on the proof-of-work principle, such as bitcoin, require a prodigious (and rapidly expanding) amount of energy to produce them, which is both expensive to provide and hazardous to the environment, which threatens their widespread acceptance in the age of renewable energy. Proof-of-stake currencies may be much more sustainable, but they have their detractors in the cryptoindustry due to greater centralisation, and may not supplant proof-of-work currencies any time soon.
https://4new.io/
4New offers a “green” solution to this problem. By operating waste-to-energy power plants with on-site cryptocurrency mining farms and tokenising their output, it hopes to make cryptocurrency mining affordable and simple for its stakeholders while also reducing its environmental impact. If that is accomplished, it may be able to expand its operations and the use cases of its token further.
How will 4New's network operate?
Waste-to-energy plants create electricity as a byproduct of waste processing. In the case of 4New's plants, this will be done by subjecting organic waste to anaerobic digestion and pasteurisation, creating biogases which would then be put through an engine that will generate both heat for the pasteurisation process and electricity. It is this electricity that is 4New's principal offering, as its ownership will be tokenised and sold to prospective users. Each KWATT token will correspond to one kilowatt worth of annual energy production.
At the beginning of every year, KWATT holders will decide between two options for the annual use of their energy. They will be able to either sell power to the United Kingdom's National Grid (possibly directly offsetting their own electricity bills) or use it to mine cryptocurrencies on 4New's on-site cryptocurrency farm. In the latter case, users will have the ability to allocate their energy between any of twenty most popular mineable coins. KWATT smart contracts will ensure that all mined coins will be automatically forwarded to the energy owners' 4New wallets. Any unsold tokens will be burned and their energy will be used at the discretion of the management, as will the energy tied to tokens whose owners fail to set their allocation in time.
KWATT could have some additional uses beyond that. It will be fully tradeable on other platforms, effectively allowing peer-to-peer energy trading. It could also be staked by miners to process cryptocurrency transactions. 4New also appears to be trying to make it possible to use KWATT to pay for healthcare and money transfer services on friendly platforms.
What makes 4New a promising project?
4New was founded by veterans in the fields of waste removal and clean energy. It has secured Daszkal Bolton's auditing services and Zucker Forensics' accounting assistance. Perhaps most crucially, it also already has two fully operational waste-to-energy plants in the United Kingdom and intends to acquire more to scale its operations in the future, setting aside 35% of its income towards this. The biogas-based processing model makes those plants much safer and more eco-friendly than the incinerators often associated with the industry. They also have the advantage of creating byproducts that could be sold to farmers and agricultural businesses, such as water and fertilizers. Together with retaining control over some of the energy, this should allow the company to break even without much difficulty. 4New's mining rigs will use S9 Antminer ASICS and GTX 1060 GPUs and will be placed in retrofitted shipping containers to allow them to be easily relocated as part of a future expansion.
Waste recycling and renewable energy are both very popular ideas and highly in demand right now, especially with the sheer amount of waste created every day in developed nations. This should ensure the project's economic viability. Mitigating environmental concerns raised by the energy requirements of bitcoin mining should also help the company attract support. This project has a lot to offer to would-be cryptocurrency miners by offering them a way to generate coins without taking on larger electricity expenses or hobbling their own computers. On the whole, that may make it one of the most viable ways for smaller users to act as miners at this point.
https://4new.io/
Token sale details
FRNC has been renamed to KWATT, but is otherwise unchanged. The pre-sale held in 2017 has been very successful, securing 42 million dollars.
Sustainable cryptocurrency mining?
The success of 4New's product depends on several factors. The first has to do with the power plants and mining equipment. While the company has been careful to secure the best and most advanced technology for its purposes, none of it is fool-proof, and its centralised location may serve as a liability in the event of unexpected problems. Another is related to cryptocurrencies. 4New makes the assumption that proof-of-work currencies will remain viable for the near future, and that, if anything, environmentalist pressures would not destroy mining but will push more miners towards 4New's model (where it would have an early adopter advantage, thus benefiting from this shift). It does have a fall-back plan in case proof-of-stake currencies should become fully dominant, as it can still be used to help support a larger amount of those transactions on the grid, but it is not clear how well it will be able to adapt.
Last but not least is the usual factor of community support. On the one hand, 4New has generated a great deal of positive buzz, as is to be expected, considering the project's appeal to the cryptocurrency community. It also already managed to raise a large amount of money. On the other hand, there has been some confusion and distrust towards it online, due to changes affecting some details of its proposal and the scheduling of the ICO, and somewhat lacking levels of engagement with the community. Perhaps most of this could be explained as inevitable for such a major, involved and long-term project. However, this does threaten to undermine the project's credibility somewhat, as does the proliferation of scammers trying to exploit its name. Still, on the whole, this does not seem like an insurmountable hurdle, and 4New's basic offer is both clear and promising enough. Provided that its model does turn out to be economically and environmentally sustainable, it may become part of the cryptoindustry vanguard.
Links:
Website: https://4new.io/
WhitePaper: https://bit.ly/2JjQpCV
Telegram: https://t.me/team4new
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/4newcoin/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/4newcoin/
Medium: https://medium.com/@4newcoin
ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2990989.0
Author: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=980049
Bountyhive Username: denvil
Disclaimer
This review by Bonanza Kreep is all opinion and analysis, not investment advice.