"A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."
Satoshi Nakamoto is clear! The goal is to find a way to bypass the intermediary of financial institutions to allow peer-to-peer transactions.
With this first line from his white paper, Satoshi Nakamoto unveils the result of nearly 40 years of research: the blockchain. The blockchain "is a technology for storing and transmitting information, enabling the creation of replicated and distributed registers, without a central control body, secured by cryptography, and structured by blocks linked to each other at regular intervals of time" [ Senate Report No. 584 (2017-2018) ]
In 2021, 13 years after the publication of this white paper by this unknown author or group of authors, the technology is driving the development of new markets, that of crypto-currencies, NFTs, and the metaverse to name a few. The value of these markets is estimated at over 2,000 billion dollars.
If blockchain is to become mainstream, it must be further researched. It is necessary to determine the role it will play in the challenges of the 21st century, namely the challenges of sustainable development, including the ecological and energy transition. Indeed, in order to secure certain blockchain systems, it is sometimes necessary to mine cryptocurrencies, which require computer hardware with a high level of computing power that comes from terrestrial resources: rare metals, which are themselves difficult to mine with a consequent carbon footprint. So can the development of a mass-market sector be in line with the desired energy transition?
As of October 1, 2021, nearly 300 million people were holding crypto-currencies worldwide. Thus, the energy consumed today by the blockchain system would be much lower than the energy it will consume tomorrow if it reaches 3 billion regular users. Nevertheless, the blockchain sector is finding alternatives to the first energy-intensive protocols. It is, therefore, possible to ask whether, at first sight, blockchain, which appears to be environmentally destructive, could contribute to accelerating the energy transition.