Aggelos Kiayias interview: Will blockchain be good for the planet?

Will blockchain technology be good for the planet? I’ve been asking people about that, and the first impression is that it will be incredibly wasteful using networks of computers to redundantly verify transactions for cryptocurrencies, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), and ultimately the metaverse. The second impression is that it could be a lot less wasteful shifting to cryptocurrency than relying on our current financial system. I talked about this with one of the experts in the field, and we delved into these myths on a more factual level.

Kiayias is chief scientist at Input Output, a blockchain engineering company. It’s the driving force behind the Cardano blockchain, which is a third-generation cryptocurrency, which tries to improve on second-generation cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and first-generation cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.