International payments giant PayPal has proposed rewarding "green miners" with extra Bitcoins to make environmentally friendly mining more attractive.
PayPal's research team worked with Energy Web and DMG Blockchain Solutions to develop a project to reward miners with payments overlaid on top of the Bitcoin network.
PayPal's blockchain research team believes that the added incentive of Bitcoin will force miners to use low-carbon energy sources. Such a pilot will capture the attention of the community and encourage innovation in Bitcoin mining.
The project will encourage further exploration of opportunities around Bitcoin to develop potential improvements to the industry.
The project states that "green miners" whose operations are based on green energy sources will be accredited and receive special "green keys" associated with their public keys.
These miners will receive Bitcoin transactions with lower fees. In addition, there will be a locked BTC reward on the multi-signature payout address that only green miners can receive.
PayPal explained that "green miners" will be the only ones able to use the additional locked BTC reward, so they will be interested in mining these transactions.
The proposal will incentivize miners who are willing to work with low-carbon energy sources to receive additional BTCs.
The project will use Energy Web's Green Proofs for Bitcoin platform to certify miners as green. It is also envisioned that eco-miners will be able to register and share their green keys on the platform as participants in an incentive program.
PayPal BRG researchers have already tested the project with a Bitcoin miner from DMG Blockchain Solutions Inc. They have run several low-fee transactions to evaluate the effectiveness at different volumes.
"These transactions will either take a long time to validate or will eventually be removed by the network, increasing the chances of eco-miners getting the transactions," the miner concluded.
"The project aims to achieve a good degree of decentralization, ease of implementation, and trust independence in the distribution of incentives," PayPal concluded.
