7 August 2024 – Glow Protocol’s mission to power the planet with 100% renewable energy took a step forward as it recently became the No.1 revenue generating DePIN project globally, whilst still in a beta-guarded phase.
Glow has achieved this significant milestone after making major developments in enhancing its audit security, governance and solar farm onboarding. As well as attracting institutional funds to deploy capital focused on expanding solar on Glow. Glow transforms the solar industry by rewarding solar farms with GLW tokens for their electricity with the additional kicker of providing them USDC for the carbon credits they produce.
Source: on-chain revenue as reported by https://depin.ninja/
Glow is more than a project; Glow is a movement
“People across the world are working together to fight a battle that, for maybe the first time ever, feels like it's going to be won. Glow is winning the war on carbon, not through sacrifice or deceleration, but by creating such a large surplus of clean power that a full transition to sustainable energy is an effortless step for society” says David Vorick, Founder & CEO of Glow Labs, a developer and thought-leader in the Glow ecosystem.
Solar is now cheaper than all sources of dirty energy
Glow’s entry into the market appears well timed. In 2023, the US solar market installed 32.4 GWdc of capacity, a remarkable 51% increase from 2022 due the cost of installing solar at scale decreasing by 5x since 2010 and 20x since 2000. Modern systems also typically operate for more than 25 years with maintenance only costing a few hundreds of dollars per decade.
Electricity demand to double by 2040
As climate change denial reaches new levels, one issue nobody debates is the increasing need for AI compute, reshoring and electrification. Large power plants and long power lines are not built easily, and the electricity grid will not be able to keep up the pace with demand. A16z published earlier this year about the significance of Decentralizing the Electric Grid and investors are forecasting the Decentralised Electricity sector to outpace DeFi within the next few years.
Glow sets a higher standard in carbon credits
The $1 Trillion carbon credit industry is trying to incentivize corporations to reduce emissions with carbon mandates. Unfortunately, the legacy system focused on rewarding past behavior leading to an abundance of exploitation. Glow has solved this issue by only rewarding 100% new solar combined with a robust auditing process consisting of site visits, next generation hardware and satellite imagery which is all published onchain and on glow.org.
Amplifying contributions with recursive subsidies
Glow's role in the solar economy is to catalyze construction by rewarding builders with USDC and GLW tokens when they construct new solar farms that compete with dirtier sources of power.
The rewards are delivered through a novel incentive mechanism called a "recursive subsidy". Glow's recursive subsidy requires solar farms to contribute 100% of their electricity savings and revenue towards the construction of even more solar. This creates a powerful amplification effect. When money is spent constructing a solar farm, that solar farm will produce revenue. Glow requires that the revenue is used to construct another solar farm, which will produce its own revenue, and so on.
In practice, Glow's recursive subsidy turns each original dollar of construction funding into $20 of brand new solar, creating one of the most effective climate platforms in the world.
Learning from Bitcoin
Foundation DePIN has proven to be one of the most powerful strategies for rolling out physical infrastructure in the world. Within 3-5 years:
- Bitcoin built a compute network with >10 million ASICs
- Filecoin built a storage network with >10 million TBs of storage
- Helium built a data network with >1 million worldwide hotspots
- During the period that Nvidia improved GPU efficiency by 200x, Bitcoin improved ASIC efficiency by 60,000x.
What’s next for Glow?
Glow only started in Dec 2023 and has already been through multiple major transformations, growing from solar farms funded by friends to solar farms strategically constructed by institutions. With strong traction in the US, overseas expansion is now a major focus.
About Glow Protocol
Glow, an Ethereum-based solar infrastructure protocol revolutionizes the decentralized electric grid by rewarding solar farms with GLW tokens for their electricity production and USDC for their carbon credits. More than a protocol, Glow is a movement to replace the entire dirty grid with 100% renewable clean energy. Corporations can participate via Glow’s Impact Partner Program which enables them to buy Glow Carbon Credits. Individuals and Commercial Solar Farm prospective customers should contact [email protected].
Glow Protocol is backed by Alliance, HF0, Lattice, Protocol Labs and Hack VC.
Useful links
Community Discord | Twitter (X) | Glow Labs Website | Glow Stats | Weekly Reports | Audits |Blog | Impact Partners | White Paper | DePIN Ninja
Media contact
Dominic Moore
Core Contributor, LFGlow
E-mail: [email protected]