Blockchain is expected to grow to a whopping $163.9-billion industry in six years, accumulating at least $20 billion by 2024, according to a recent TechJury study. Global businesses, as well as startups, are capitalizing on this, building industry-specific solutions on blockchain. But how exactly does an enterprise develop effective and economical blockchain platforms?

This is what the London Blockchain Conference is aiming to answer with its inaugural event happening on May 31 to June 2 at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre. The conference will feature enterprise-grade technologies built on the BSV Blockchain, the largest public blockchain in the world. It will not only guide businesses on how to properly develop blockchain solutions, but it will also show how private businesses can work together with the government to achieve greater goals.

The London Blockchain Conference intends to address the steep learning curve about blockchain by shining the spotlight on achieving environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals. The current state of investor preferences for tailoring investments on sustainability indicates that organizations' ESG performance may eventually be as important as their financial success.

The digital asset industry has been maligned over its notoriously high energy consumption, with the White House issuing a scathing report on proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain mining operations—ranking it after refrigerators, lights, televisions and computer use.

In a recent statement, the Biden administration voiced concern that PoW mining is inefficient, hazardous and of little profit or benefit to anybody other than the operators. PoW mining's deteriorating public image prompted proposals for a total ban of its use or for blockchain protocols to process transactions using proof-of-stake (PoS) as an alternative.

While allegedly less energy-intensive, PoS is intrinsically compromised since large stakeholders can seize entire control of the blockchain. The setup would allow for stakers to accumulate significant amounts of tokens in multiple wallets while pretending to represent other parties and vote as they wish. This is possible because PoS does not require that stakers identify themselves.

These limits occur because PoS networks stray from the original Bitcoin protocol, therefore reaching a scale ceiling that PoW does not have. The Bitcoin SV (BSV) Blockchain has restored the original Bitcoin protocol, allowing for it to be capable of limitless scaling. BSV already scaled to 4GB blocks at a throughput of 50,000 to 100,000 transactions per second (TPS). 

Compared to unscalable networks like Bitcoin Core (BTC), which has a maximum throughput of only seven TPS and a block size of 1MB, BSV can be seen as energy efficient as measured by energy consumption per transaction. The BSV blockchain's liberal block sizes demonstrates its decarbonization method by drastically reducing energy consumption per transaction as network traffic increases on the network.

“If you remove that one-megabyte limit and have an unbounded block size every ten minutes, now you’re able to actually have scalable proof of work like BSV, that is less than 2kg of CO2 per transaction, even today. That’s because of the unbounded amount of transactions that can be included in a block,” Bryan Daugherty, global public policy director of the BSV Blockchain Association, testified at the New York Senate Standing Committee on Banks hearing. 

The environment-friendly aspect of PoW mining is but one aspect of ESG compliance that digital asset firms need to take into consideration. The issue of reconciling profit and social responsibility with ESG legislation is something that has yet to find a resolution. 

“They should be allowed to maximize their profit, and that’s what a business is supposed to do. It would be quite difficult to make obligations under ESG or even CSR [corporate social responsibility] standard into the law that we force businesses to consider the interests of a wider community,” Dr. Lerong Lu, senior lecturer of Law at King's College London, said.

How a scalable blockchain can provide the most effective solutions for ESG compliance issues is just one topic that the London Blockchain Conference will discuss in depth. Entitled “Bringing Government and Enterprise onto the Blockchain,” the conference is sure to provide invaluable knowledge and experience to its audience. Register now to learn more about how blockchain can bring together the public and private sectors.

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