Nebula Whitepaper
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NEBULA WHITEPAPER A. Nebula Abstract i. General Information B. Analysis of the Current Bitcoin Mining Industry ii. Introduction to blockchain iii. What is Blockchain Mining? iv. Challenges faced by mining industry C. Nebula Project Review I. Introduction: Who is Nebula? Ii. Background: History of Nebula iii. Advantages Iv. Key Features 1. Crypto-Mining Rigs Rental 2. Decentralised Peer-to-Peer Hashrate Consumption 3. Joint Crypto-Mining Services 4. Crypto-Mining Rigs Collateral Loans D. Roadmap Phases I. Phase I Ii. Phase II Iii. Phase III E. Project Team F. Restrictions for Investors G. Risk Factors A. Nebula Abstract The Nebula Project supports and accepts BRM tokens, and BRM tokens has equal functions as URS tokens in the Nebula Project. Only BRM/ETH tokens are accepted for the sale. B. General Introduction to Blockchain, Bitcoin Mining Industry & Energy Blockchain, one of the hottest trends in technology today, refers to a digitized, decentralized, public ledger of all cryptocurrency transactions. As each transaction is recorded, it is added on to previously completed blocks in chronological order, making up a blockchain. Decentralization is a key aspect of the blockchain economy, and enables members of complex networks to collaborate without the need for central authorities or middlemen. This increases efficiency in many ways, removing transaction costs and other sources of friction associated with these agents. Despite being originally created as the infrastructure to support the processing and transaction of bitcoin, the world’s largest digital currency, its uses go far beyond cryptocurrencies. Other applications of the technology can be developed with Smart Contracts to manage digital assets across a wide range of industries. Blockchains are seen as having the potential to revolutionize the global financial system and other industries through disintermediation. A World Economic Forum survey highlights that blockchain technology will transform financial services, with 10% of the global GDP expected to be stored on blockchain platforms by 2025. The rise of bitcoin towards reaching its all-time high at close to $20,000 USD in 2017 was accompanied by the growth of bitcoin mining, where the prospect of earning “free” money led to a flood of crypto-enthusiasts all over the world adopting the practice. BLOCKCHAIN MINING There are three primary ways to obtain coins today. Apart from buying them on an exchange or accepting them as payment for goods and services, you can also mine new ones. With the price of bitcoin soaring in recent times, more and more individuals have turned to mining in hopes of accumulating the digital currency. This process involves the discovery of new coins - just like finding gold. Mining has become so widespread that the word “miner”, a major buzzword on the Internet today, has adopted a whole meaning, no longer referring to your traditional coal miner but to those who engage in cryptocurrency mininG. Mining refers to the an energy-intensive process of solving complex math problems, verifying multiple transactions and adding them to the blockchain, a public ledger. It is essentially bookkeeping for the cryptocurrency network, and in return for their accounting services, miners get rewarded in coins. Cryptocurrency mining is a task that requires some level of technical knowledge, software tools, a dedicated mining rig, constant power supply, and access to the Internet. When mining first began, regular off-the-shelf PCs were enough to generate even bitcoins in a short amount of time. However, the more coins are generated, the harder they are to mine. Miners have increasingly moved on to more advanced, specialized hardware such as application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) mining rigs designed purely for the task of mining coins. GLOBAL ENERGY FRAMEWORK The crypto mining business model is highly dependent on the energy supply. The price and availability of electric power are the two most important factors for mining companies. On a macro level, the hunt for cheap energy has lead to a concentration of mining operations in countries with low socio-economic and environmental standards, and therefore cheap fossil electricity. As a negative consequences of this low-cost, “dirty” energy, the mining of cryptocurrencies significantly contributes to climate change. The concentration of mining operations in a few authoritarian countries meanwhile undermines the distributed ledger system and increases the risk of manipulations. On a micro level, miners have become vulnerable to energy price fluctuations and regulatory changes. The competitive advantage of many companies in this sector depends on the willingness of a handful of regimes to tolerate cryptocurrencies, keep energy prices low and maintain friendly regulations. That is, obviously, the business model of an industry in its early stages. DIGITAL ENERGY CONSUMPTION The IT ecosystem is one of the largest consumers of electricity worldwide. It consumes about 1,500 TWh per year of electricity – enough to equal the power generated by Germany and Japan combined - or almost 10% of the electricity generated worldwide. Within the sector, cloud computing alone accounts for 416 TWh2,3, roughly equivalent to the carbon footprint of the entire aviation industry, and it is growing fast: cloud computing doubles its energy consumption every four years. By 2020, it will grow to 1,400 TWh annually and could surpass China and the US, the world’s biggest electricity consumers, by 2030. Within the next decade, electricity might become a scarce resource, putting upward pressure on prices, if not globally then in certain places at certain times. The source of this bottleneck is the grid rather than power generation. The fastest growing application in cloud computing is cryptocurrency mininG. The amount of energy consumed by Bitcoin and Ethereum exploded within seven years from virtually zero in 2010 to 19.2 TWh in 2017 – matching the energy produced by Iceland or Puerto Rico 5. The energy efficiency of ASICs and GPUs has risen quickly, but it has been outpaced by the increase in transactions and market cap. While this exponential growth provides excellent opportunities for miners to earn rewards, the power consumed by the information technology ecosystem also increases competition for energy. Only those with safe access to affordable electricity can put their chips to work. The ecological footprint of traditional mining operations is enormous – the total amount of energy consumed in mining Ethereum and Bitcoin is as large as Nigeria’s consumption, a country with 180 million inhabitants, about 2% of the entire population on eartG. The Guardian stated back in July that a single Bitcoin transaction “devo as much energy as what powers 1.57 US households for a day – roughly 5,000 times more energy hungry than a typical credit card payment”10. Traditional large- and small-scale mining operations get their power from regular grids - based on a traditional energy mix. On a global level, that energy mix is still dominated by fossil fuels contributing to pollution and climate change. For blockchain to fulfill its own vision and become the infrastructure for transactions in the future, the technology needs to improve its energy consumption profile while maintaining its core principles: the distributed ledger and a redundancy of capacities. That is a big challenge for the entire industry. GLOBAL ELECTRICITY MARKET Unlike coal, oil and LNG, which can all be shipped around the world, there is no global market for electricity. The electricity market is highly fragmented, consisting of thousands of regional subsystems in various jurisdictions where overcapacities alternate with shortages. While global energy demand continues to grow dramatically, huge differences remain between industrialized countries and the rest of the world. In its International Energy Outlook 2016 the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) projects an increase of global electricity consumption by 69% within three decades, from 21.6 trillion kWh in 2012 to 36.5 trillion kWh in 2040. While the demand for electricity in OECD countries will increase by a total of 38%, demand in non-OECD countries will double – reflecting the difference in GDP growth of 2.0% for OECD and 4.2% for non-OECD countries. THE NEED FOR ELECTRICITY The exponential growth of energy consumption in the IT ecosystem is hitting an energy market in transition. The growth of renewables in the energy mix is creating imbalances in the grid – an uneven distribution of power in time and space. At certain times and in certain places, there is an abundance of electricity straining the grid to its limits, while scarcity might prevail at other times. These imbalances trigger large fluctuations in spot market energy prices, regulatory responses, and price differences between sectors, regions, time and climate zones. As data centers are long term investments in infrastructure, they have a limited capability to adapt to changes in the price structure of energy markets. Once built, they are tied to their location and might lose competitiveness to other locations if price structures change. While new market conditions might be lethal for traditional data centers, they offer vast opportunities for the global, flexible and smart mining operation that envion is launching now. We need a solution that has gained political credibility and support, cheap electricity costs and future ancillary revenue streams. C. Nebula Project INTRODUCTION Nebula is the encrypted cryptocurrency data service provider with the greatest potential in the world today. In line with the rising trend of blockchain and the electricity needs due to mining, Nebula will build a 450 MW substation. A electricity source of such great power can turn on 300,000 machines at the same time, with an aim of fitting a million mining machines in the future. It will be become the world’s greatest blockchain mining source in the entire world. In preparation for a project of such scale, Nebula is organizing a token sale for . The objective of this token sale is to raise at least 400M USD.