Interview | Earth Token - Creating Positive Environmental Impact with Blockchain
Earth Token Director of IT and Crypto - Wesley Carlson
Today, I spoke to Wesley Carlson, Earth Token's Director of IT and Cryptocurrency. The company behind this token was established in 2009 in Mauritius. As Carlson went on to explain, the organization's intentions had been to conduct operations related to trading and other business in South Africa. So, Earth token happens to come from an already established and successful business model that continues to focus on making a positive impact on our environment.
The IT Director noted early on during our conversation that he introduced the company's former CEO, who has now unfortunately passed away, to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology in 2015. This was around the time that a number of now established crypto industry specialists and consultants were beginning to experiment with various aspects of the digital currency space such as crypto mining.
Gradual and Research-Based Move into Crypto
Initially, Carlson said that he was serving in a "very limited" advisory capacity as the company's IT and cryptocurrency consultant. However, as cryptos became more widespread, the environmentally-focused company began to consider developing products and services that used blockchain-based technologies. In Carlson's words, part of what Earth Token does and aims to do is develop a natural asset exchange.
There are companies who "negatively impact" the environment, as the IT specialist explained, and for them Earth Token provides a way that they can "balance" this with a "positive impact" by using the platform's token and products. For instance, there's something called carbon credits which Dictionary.com defines as:
"a permit which allows a country or organization to produce a certain amount of carbon emissions and which can be traded if the full allowance is not used."
Using Blockchain For Increased Transparency
So, extending this (carbon credits) concept and leveraging crypto and blockchain-tech, Carlson intends for his company to bring more transparency and efficiency to the process of issuing carbon credits certificates. Notably, facilitating the smooth working of the carbon credit issuance process happens to just one aspect of what Earth Token aims to offer. The director also clarified that they are not looking to tokenize carbon credits.The primary focus of the company, according to Carlson, is more broad. It's to "mitigate" the impact of harmful environmental factors that can have an adverse effect on our planet Earth. The experienced techie also mentioned that they are aware of the issues surrounding climate change, however, they're not too keen to get involved in the related and heavily politicized debate. That's also not one of the main goals of their organization.
ERC-20 Token Now, But Advancements Are Planned
Currently, Earth Token is simply an ERC-20 token and their platform uses the Ethereum blockchain. Due to scalability issues and other challenges the Ethereum blockchain is now facing, Carlson would like to move to another blockchain platform in the foreseeable future. While Ethereum currently uses proof-of-work (PoW) and could transition fully to proof-of-stake, the tech specialist noted that PoW does not quite fall in line with their environment-friendly mission as the protocol consumes too much energy. Therefore, it would only be appropriate for a platform of their kind to migrate to preferably their own blockchain, where they have more freedom to implement the type of products and solutions they want - without having to work on an overcrowded blockchain.
The company's ICO, which Carlson explained, was meant to raise funds and "bootstrap" the marketplace and community. Additionally, they would want to see more awareness being created about what Earth Token is all about. To achieve this, it would be beneficial if there was more stable and substantial trading volume for their token. Already, the Earth Token platform has a market capitalization of over $1.7 million and a daily trading volume of around $67,000 (based on current data from CoinMarketCap).
Earth Token's Own Blockchain
The process of migrating to a different blockchain is not yet set in stone, as everything related to this is in its "preliminary" stages according to Carlson. Also, once there is enough awareness and trading of their token, the IT expert plans to lead his company into possibly migrating over to their own blockchain. As Carlson mentioned, the blockchain will be public/permissionless.
When asked why his company decided to use a blockchain-based solution, the director said that it was for the simple fact that blockchain is an "immutable, public ledger." He also said that there has to be more transparency in the trading process and there's a need to eliminate all the unnecessary middlemen and brokers who're involved in the asset exchange process, which uses the traditional system of documenting and transacting.
Bringing Artificial Intelligence to the Blockchain Space
Carlson said his organization will be engaging in partnerships with companies that are developing sophisticated AI-enabled image capturing technology. For instance, users of this technology would be able to take an image of a tree using their smartphone and then that image would have proprietary software and intelligence which would tell you how old the tree was, along with its other characteristics. This concept is not too far-fetched at this point considering that IBM has launched what it calls a crypto anchor verifier, which is able to use cutting-edge hardware and software to determine the authenticity of anything ranging from high-quality wine to the cut grade of diamonds.
We will probably see a growing connection between artificial intelligence, internet of things, big data, and blockhains - because the development teams and research organizations behind them are working more actively than ever before. You can look forward to hearing more from us about Earth Token and its ongoing projects right here at Crypto Core Media.
Please visit this platform's website to learn more, directly from the source:
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