Where we come from

There is no doubt cryptocurrencies gained a huge share of relevance over the last years. Let's put aside the question, if the overall market cap (~ 500 billion) of those about 3K cryptocurrencies is somehow real or not.
The new possibilities and organizationals cryptocurrencies implicate have positive impact; cryptocurrencies for sure have a lot of strengths.
But as with every (rather) new technology there are weaknesses. Three of those seem to be especially relevant:

  1. Tangibility, transparency and usability: Cryptocurrencies are not easily understood, which is not only true for laymen. Besides that the ecosystems around cryptocurrencies are not too transparent, especially for laymen. Finally cryptocurrencies aren't really easily usable; more or less an implication of the above.
  2. Cryptocurrenices are highly inefficient: The price for the strengths cryptocurrencies implicate is inefficiency. This is due to their basic design (decentral p2p, trustless) and and their major way of implementation regarding money creation and basic modus operandi (Proof of Work (PoW) (Wikipedia)). This inefficency is directly linked to real world resource usage: It is fair to see the energy balance (Wikipedia) of for example Bitcoin as disastrous.
  3. (Transactional) Capacity: Also due to 2. the capacity of cryptocurrencies is rather small, the throughput per second isn't particularly high. Bitcoin for example experienced long wait times and high transaction fees recently.

Those points sum up to one consequence: Cryptocurrencies are not for the mass-market.
Maybe even more important: It is even not desirable, that cryptocurrencies will be for the mass-market, if you look at energy efficiency.
Actually there are ongoing discussions, if for example Bitcoin should be positioned for the mass-market at all. Or if it rather should be position itself as a service for large transactions in B2B only.

With that said: All those weaknesses (and more) have been identified and get discussed or are being worked on by real implementations (for example cf.: Proof of Stake (PoS), Bitcoin Cash (BTC) (Wikipedia)). There is no doubt, that the cryptocurrency community is highly active and capable.

digital Mark

The digital Mark (dMark, dM, DIM) has the superordinate objective to establish a mass-market cryptocurrency.
To achieve this there are three major design objectives:

  1. Tangibility, transparency and usability: The dMark will be designed for usability by end users (laymen) - beginning from the start and permanently.
  2. Energy sustainability: The dMark will stimulate energy sustainability by the means of technical and organizational measures. It is legitimate to see the dMark as a "green cryptocurrency" in this context.
  3. Capacity: The dMark will remove capacity barriers in the long run.

Energy sustainability will be fostered by rewarding the usage of renewable energy. In detail:

  • Central user registry: Users - including miners (Wikipedia) - are invited to register (with their public key) with a central organisation (digitalEnergyRegister - dEnReg). They can proove their source of energy in a reliable way. Based on this proof they will be tagged with an energy class.
  • The underlying algorithms (blockchain (Wikipedia) management, rewarding/money creation, transactions) will be modified in such a way, that using renewable energy will yield advantages - depending on the energy class of the user. Obviously dEnReg will have to be published in a cryptographically secure way.

Conceptual parameters

  • It is not an objective to undermine decentrality as a core-characteristic. The introduction of dEnReg will have to be examined carefully in this respect.
  • It is also not an objective to restrict anonomity. At least not more than already happening (for some cryptocurrencies) or required by law.
  • It is not an objective to exclude users utilizing non-renewable energy, but to reward the usage of renewable energy. Being a user with dMark is perfectly ok without registration with dEnReg.
  • There is no doubt that finding a reliable and efficient way to verify users' energy source will be a major challenge - especially in an international context. For Germany for example it may possible to accept the validation of the energy provider regarding the percentage of renewables in the respective tariff. This verification will btw. be due to be redone in a certain interval - energy class tag will be limited in time. Audits may be possible.
  • It is perfectly ok to think about opening up dEnReg for other applications in the long run.
  • Conceivable advantage for users according to b. could be a lowered transaction fee; depending on energy class.
  • Conceivable advantages for miners according to b. could be: a higher mining reward, an easier mining task; each depending on energy class.
  • The dMark will reuse proven designs and implementations. It is surely not an objective "to reinvent the wheel".
  • The dMark will stick to PoW approach.

Conclusion

This website btw. represents the much-loved whitepaper in its current version (1.0a, 30.12.2017).

Imprint

Imprint

joerg.jung@retevastum.de
(OpenPGP-Certificate)

Discuss

Discuss dMark in project wiki on github: Github

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Picture source (header, footer): Datagrafy krypto: dMark