Steve Wozniak Is Starting Another Company, 45 Years After Co-Founding Apple With Steve Jobs (cnbc.com) 39
45 years after co-founding Apple with Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak is starting a business in the green tech and blockchain space called Efforce. CNBC reports: Efforce, which has been in stealth mode for almost a year, is a marketplace for corporate or industrial buildering owners to have "green" projects funded. According to Efforce, "investors can participate in energy efficiency projects buy acquiring tokenized future savings," while companies benefit from such improvements "at no cost." Using blockchain, "a smart contract redistributes the resulting savings to token holders and the companies without intermediaries based on exact consumption/savings data."
According to Wozniak, "energy consumption and CO2 emissions worldwide have grown exponentially, leading to climate change and extreme consequences to our environment. We can improve our energy footprint and lower our energy consumption without changing our habits. We can save the environment simply by making more energy improvements," he said a statement about the company. Wozniak created Efforce "to be the first decentralized platform that allows everyone to participate and benefit financially from worldwide energy efficiency projects, and create meaningful environmental change," he said. The company's cryptocurrency token, trading under the token named WOZX, was made public on Dec. 3 on HBTC, a marketplace for decentralized currencies, and will launch on Bithumb Global, another marketplace for decentralized currencies next week, according to a Medium post about the company.
According to Wozniak, "energy consumption and CO2 emissions worldwide have grown exponentially, leading to climate change and extreme consequences to our environment. We can improve our energy footprint and lower our energy consumption without changing our habits. We can save the environment simply by making more energy improvements," he said a statement about the company. Wozniak created Efforce "to be the first decentralized platform that allows everyone to participate and benefit financially from worldwide energy efficiency projects, and create meaningful environmental change," he said. The company's cryptocurrency token, trading under the token named WOZX, was made public on Dec. 3 on HBTC, a marketplace for decentralized currencies, and will launch on Bithumb Global, another marketplace for decentralized currencies next week, according to a Medium post about the company.
Is that a "proof of work"-based blockchain? (Score:4, Insightful)
No (Score:5, Informative)
No. New coins or tokens will not be created, by wasting energy or any other method. The billion tokens which exist today are all which will ever exist.
The blockchain is used to track investment in energy-saving projects, such as replacing all of the lighting in a warehouse with LEDs.
Suppose the project costs $3,000, and saves $300 of electricity each year. If you put up half the money, you'd get half the return - $150 / year.
You can read more about it here:
https://efforce.io/ [efforce.io]
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So basically Woz is giving out monopoly money which you can "buy" instead of doing 'green' things and then someone else can agree to take on your monopoly money if they end up doing 'green' things.
How on earth is the value going to be enforced - yes I replaced LED's everywhere, how is the system going to know whether you actually saved any energy or if you used that saved energy and re-invested it, thereby expending the energy you just saved?
Also, the summary is full of spelling and grammar mistakes.
Re:No (Score:4, Informative)
I'm no expert on smart contracts but from what little I know of them this seems very aspirational. Oracle problem aside, just controlling out other electrical loads to isolate the impact of the LED project is not exactly easy in most applications unless load monitoring hardware is installed on the mains going to the lights.
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How does a smart contract check what kind of light bulbs are in my warehouse? Or whether I installed solar panels? Or if I planted a tree?
There's a missing link there. You need a trusted 3rd party to verify that the agreement was followed. And if you need a trusted 3rd party- why not just let the 3rd party keep track of the contracts and money? Why use blockchain, and inherently inefficient system whose only value is avoiding trust, when you already have to trust?
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With WozX, your investments are going to rocket to the stratosphere. You missed out not buying Apple, but now you can redeem yourself. Get rich or die trying. Plus - apps. iApps even. iApps 11, the most powerful iApps to ever just work. Get yours today! And again next year, and the year after that...
iWoz (Score:2)
Yet another cryptocurrency .. come on Woz .. why couldn't you use Bitcoin or one of the gazillion other cryptocurrencies out there? Also, would be nice if the currency can be at least partially backed by stored watts .. whether it's barrels of oil in your basement, hydrogen, or charged up batteries (with a low discharge rate). .. like each coin guarantees a MIP of computation or something like that.
May throw in computational capacity as part of the currency too
Hey if the dollar can be backed by an IOU this
That would defeat the purpose (Score:4, Insightful)
> why couldn't you use Bitcoin or one of the gazillion other cryptocurrencies out there?
The purpose of the project is to fund energy-efficiency projects.
Bitcoins are generated by proving that you wasted a lot of energy.
So the purpose of this venture is to do exactly the opposite of what Bitcoin does.
His concept is that investors put up money which is used to make energy-saving investments, such as replacing all the lighting in a warehouse with more energy efficient lights. Suppose that buying $3,000 of led lights saves $300 of electricity each year. That's a 10% return to investors - not bad.
The blockchain is used to track the energy savings, so that you know you got paid the correct amount based on your investment.
Actually 10% would be a poor return, because (Score:3)
I had said:
> Suppose that buying $3,000 of led lights saves $300 of electricity each year. That's a 10% return to investors - not bad.
When I wrote "not bad", I was forgetting that you never get your principal back, unlike the investments I was comparing it to.
If the LED lights last 10 years, and the reap 10% per year, then over those ten years you only get your money back. That would be a 0% total return.
A good return would be 20% / year for ten years. Half of that would be getting your principal back,
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Please reply to some more comments with the exact same copypasta a few more times.
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You know I posted that exactly once, right?
Is your browser glitching out on you? Maybe you're just stoned out of your mind?
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You realize that blockchains require processing to be validated, right?
Re: That would defeat the purpose (Score:2)
Yes, but that proof of work doesnâ(TM)t guarantee a value to the coin. Requiring the coin to be worth a certain number of computations means you can trade the coin to get some computing work done such as rendering a 3D image or solving some protein folding problem. Just like how you used to be able to go to a bank and get some quantity of silver for your silver certificate.
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That processing only has to be expensive if that's the purpose of your blockchain.
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If the processing is not expensive, then it is trivially easy to fake transactions and double spend.
Unless there is going to be a central point of access for all coins, which is an entirely bigger problem.
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> why couldn't you use Bitcoin or one of the gazillion other cryptocurrencies out there?
he actually is re-unsing an existing blockchain - the token is not a "coin", but
a token on the Ethereum network.
I am actually amazed on how hard it was to get this information trying to cut
through the media announcements and press releases -
It can be read on PAGE 31 on the company's Token whitepaper, though:
https://efforce.io/WP_ENG_V1.p... [efforce.io] (Open link and search for "Ethereum")
The token and its smart contract s
Again? (Score:2)
hot take (Score:5, Funny)
Steve Wozniak is starting a business
Awesome! Who doesn't love Woz? A perennial visionary. Never aspired to pick up a quick buck by trading on buzzwords -- that was Jobs -- just wanted to move the technological frontier forward. Man, whatever it is, I'm sure I'll be into
green tech and blockchain
Oh jesus
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Yeah..."Oh Jesus" doesn't do his description justice. If I have correctly put on my waders and plugged my nose, he is talking about buying and selling of "carbon credits" using a blockchain for the ledger. WTF is that all about.
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2020 - 1976 = 45, not 45. And we trust this guy's company to do complex cryptocurrency math?
Kudos for having a typo that had me wondering if I was missing some subtle point...
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not letting you edit to correct typos.
Why make Preview function stitch its brow? Preview function edit.
Why request audit = edit? Where computational swap memory resource server side to host on-fly #n instance across stack make attack platform so hooman deny last signal first? Why complex machine *screw* insult? Why $noparse$ directory request?
Name of the Woz' company? (Score:3)
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I'm sure Apple 3 will be even better!
wow! (Score:4, Insightful)
Ugh (Score:1)
I love Woz, and don't want to needlessly waste energy, but I really don't want to be restricted to doing my laundry and opening my fridge in the middle of the night. There is a point, which I think we are approaching in some places (cough, California, cough), where energy efficiency undermines civilization. And without civilization, we won't have the luxury of saving much of anything.
Re: Ugh (Score:2)
I don't often say "what the fuck" out loud, but your hand-wringing about fridge restrictions did the trick.
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It may seem like "WTF" to you, but I work in the utility industry, and the scheming I've seen going on would not just charge you more for peak usage, but would have your electric meter turn off your fridge whenever it was deemed "necessary" by (essentially) government regulations.
Woz bankrupt? (Score:2)
I fully expect to see such a headline in the future.
Woz takes on The Wooz! (Score:2)
Buildering? (Score:2)
...a marketplace for corporate or industrial buildering owners to have "green" projects funded.
Hmm... let's see what Google says...
Buildering describes the act of climbing on the outside of buildings and other artificial structures.
OK! I get it! So... he's promoting energy-efficient ways to use blockchains to suspend oneself on the outside of skyscrapers for the purpose of climbing them "at no cost."
... Did I get it right?