Humans have achieved a global population all-time high in 9500 out of the past 10,000 years. In the most recent of these years, humans have become prolific enough to threaten the stability of the biosphere.
With such a consistent and dominant history of growth, it is unlikely that the environment can be saved by convincing humanity to slow down. Instead, any solution must embrace the unstoppable tide of progress and merge acceleration with sustainability.
Glow is an environmentalist project born from the womb of capitalism. Glow recognizes that humanity is a threat to nature, not because humanity and nature are fundamentally adversaries, but because the incentives that drive human progress aren't aligned with the long-term needs of the environment.
Glow changes humanity's incentives. By ensuring that capitalists make the most money when they consider growth and sustainability together, Glow can turn the unstoppable progress of the human race into a shield that protects the planet while allowing humanity to thrive.
Traditional Incentives
As humanity has evolved, the sophistication of the human economy has evolved alongside it. This means that tools which have historically been used by governments to shape the economy - tariffs, subsidies, price controls, etc. - are no longer the most effective tools available.
For example, the United States incentivizes solar farms by offering to cover as much as 40% of the cost of construction. Because the incentive focuses on cost rather than output, builders focus on increasing margins and making solar farms needlessly expensive. A better design would encourage builders to build more solar, as opposed to spend more money.
Another common technique for incentivizing solar is for the government to agree to pay a premium price for the electricity produced by a solar farm. Though this subsidy does encourage builders to produce as much electricity as possible, it also gives subsidies to every solar farm, including solar farms that are profitable even without financial assistance.
From the perspective of the government, the goal of a solar subsidy is to increase the total amount of solar that is being constructed. Any money that is given to a solar farm that would have been constructed anyway is wasted, as it could have been given to a solar farm that was otherwise unable to secure sufficient funding to begin construction.
Glow is a new type of solar subsidy that uses modern techniques to increase efficiency. For example, Glow uses game theory to ensure that subsidies are only distributed to solar farms that can't exist without financial help. Glow also uses mechanism design to ensure that builders remain focused on producing as much solar as possible. Finally, Glow uses competition to ensure that subsidies are only distributed to the builders that can make the most effective use of each dollar.
Traditional subsidies are estimated to generate between $0.70 and $1.80 of net-new solar per dollar spent. Glow on the other hand has been consistently producing more than $10 of net-new solar per dollar spent on subsidies. Over its lifetime, it has created enough solar to power more than 30,000 homes and offset the carbon emissions of more than 300,000 international flights.
Infrastructure Projects
Glow's mission is to completely transition the global electricity grid to renewable energy, which could reduce global CO2 emissions by as much as 30%. Accomplishing such a goal is no easy feat, and is going to require participation from governments all over the world.
Just as it is unrealistic to expect human society to stop growing, it is also unrealistic to expect a government to contribute material financing towards a project unless there is some direct benefit to them.
To be able to better cater to the different needs of governments and other stakeholders, Glow is divided into different infrastructure projects. Each infrastructure project has its own set of incentives, and infrastructure projects often target a specific region or jurisdiction.
For example, a government that is dependent on natural gas imports for their energy grid may create an infrastructure project that specifically focuses on replacing their own natural gas power plants with solar farms. Similarly, a government that does not particularly care for the environment may choose to create an infrastructure project that focuses on energy dominance, incentivizing the construction of as much solar as possible irrespective of any climate benefit.
In both cases, there is both a positive overall benefit for the environment as well as a valuable stakeholder outcome. This strengthens the justification for Glow and increases its viability among large stakeholders.
Why Blockchain?
Glow operates using a precise series of incentive mechanics. For example, participating in Glow as a solar builder involves submitting a deposit, keeping funds in escrow, programmatically tracking the effectiveness of each solar farm, and then receiving subsidies based on the solar farm's competitive abilities.
Traditional finance is slow, manual, trust-based, and lacks transparency. Because of this, operating Glow on top of traditional rails would be challenging. Blockchains on the other hand are fully transparent, automated, programmatic, and can reliably execute arbitrarily complex transactions.
Blockchains, and especially tokens, also have a unique ability to create passionate and excited communities that are able to mobilize as a collective to solve challenges. There is enormous strength in the ability to give people ownership of a project as they participate in it, and Glow leverages this strength through an impact focused token.
The GLW Token
Tokens already have a strong track record of deploying large amounts of infrastructure. This track record goes all the way back to Bitcoin, which has built enough real-world hardware to consume as much electricity as a large country. Projects such as Ethereum, Chia, Filecoin, Helium, and dozens of others were able to repeat Bitcoin's success, each creating enormous amounts of their own real world infrastructure.
Given that there is already a well-established playbook for using tokens to incentivize infrastructure, Glow has designed its token using that playbook. More specifically, Glow generates 9 million tokens per year through inflation and distributes them to builders that construct solar farms for Glow's infrastructure projects.
One place that Glow does innovate is in the way that it brings value to the GLW token. Each year, 9 million GLW tokens are created through inflation and distributed between infrastructure projects. To monetize itself, Glow has governments and other stakeholders bid for control over that inflation.
More specifically, the number of GLW tokens that are distributed to each infrastructure project is proportional to the amount of control that has been directed towards that infrastructure project. The proceeds that Glow receives from selling control are used to perform a variation of a token buyback, which brings long term value to the GLW token.
One consequence of this design is that control is not a zero-sum game. Though Glow only distributes 9 million GLW tokens each year, the fundamental value backing the GLW token increases as more control is purchased. This allows Glow to support a theoretically unlimited number of infrastructure projects, so long as each infrastructure project purchases enough control.
The Control Token
Most commonly called "control" or "GLW control", the control token is a fully liquid and fungible ERC20 token with the ticker "GCTL". Once minted, the control token is permanent, and will control a portion of the GLW inflation indefinitely.
This means that any buyer of control is purchasing an asset that has long term value. The buyer is able to acquire control, use that control to fund an infrastructure project, and then later sell the control on the open market.
Most infrastructure projects reward their supporters with an impact asset. For example, the Clean Grid Project is an infrastructure that is focused on producing as many carbon credits as possible, and it gives all of the carbon credits that it produces to the supporters that are funding the project with their GCT.
Control therefore can be a yield bearing asset depending on the infrastructure project that it is funding, and the yield usually takes the form of carbon credits or other impact assets. This means that the control asset functions a lot like real estate - it's expensive to buy, it has long term value, it produces income and/or utility for the owner, and it can be resold.
The cost of minting one control token is equal to the square root of the price of a GLW token. Therefore, if GLW is $1, it costs $1 to mint a control token. Similarly, if GLW is $100, then it costs $10 to mint a control token. This means that control tokens can increase in value as the GLW token increases in value.
The control token has a hardcoded on-chain minimum price of $2, which means that the cost of minting a GCTL token will be fixed at $2 for all circumstances where the GLW token price is below $4.
Governance
Glow operates using a decentralized governance model. Major decisions are made on-chain by GLW token holders, and everyday operations are managed by a handful of elected governance officials. A non-profit entity called the Glow Foundation manages business relationships, and is legally required to follow instructions provided on-chain by the GLW token holders.
Elected governance officials fall into two categories. The first is the Glow Verification Entities, or GVEs, who are responsible for ensuring that all claims made by the Glow protocol are accurate. The GVEs follow strict auditing procedures to verify every solar farm, including physically visiting each solar farm and collecting photographic evidence that it is real. The GVEs have oversight over every infrastructure project, and work to ensure that every infrastructure project is making progress towards its own specific objectives.
The other category of elected governance official is called the veto council. Veto council members take more of an advisory role within the Glow ecosystem and perform tasks such as managing operations at the Glow Foundation and maintaining key business and ecosystem relationships. The veto council is also able to act as an emergency brake that can temporarily pause pieces of the Glow protocol if something unexpected and/or undesirable happens.
A Brighter Future
For most of history, humans and their technological footprint was so small that technology was irrelevant to nature. Humans have only recently become powerful enough to threaten the biosphere, and therefore have little practice in ensuring that technology is used in a sustainable way.
At this phase in history, it can feel like humanity has to choose between technology and nature. Glow says "choose both". Humanity went from its first flight to putting a man on the moon in less than 70 years - if it can do that, it can also find a path that merges growth and sustainability.
Glow takes the first step by introducing a new incentive structure and changing the nature of profitability on the electrical grid. With Glow, the most profitable technology and the most sustainable technology are the same, paving the way to a brighter future.