How 5ire is building a sustainability-focussed Layer 1 blockchain ecosystem
Launched in 2021 by Pratik Gauri, Prateek Dwivedi and Vilma Mattila, 5ire is a Layer 1, Web3 project to build a user-centric, sustainability-driven blockchain ecosystem aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Blockchain enthusiasts and founders Pratik “PG” Gauri and Prateek “PD” Dwivedi not only share the same name, but also a common vision for the sustainability of decentralised networks.
When they bumped into each other at a tea shop in Delhi, they began talking about how a sustainable blockchain ecosystem could be built and scaled for a billion users.
Alongside a third co-founder - Vilma Mattila - this idea led to the genesis of 5ire, a Web3 project to build a user-centric, sustainability-driven ecosystem around 5irechain (a Layer 1 blockchain).
“5ire stands for the Fifth Industrial Revolution - a concept I've been promoting for many years. The thesis is you can make more money if you do more good in the world,” says PG in a video interview with The Decrypting Story.
“Last year, I was at an inflection point where I wondered how such a concept could be scaled to a billion people and expedite progress from the fourth to the fifth industrial revolution. That’s when blockchain technology came into the picture, and we started building a sustainable blockchain ecosystem,” he adds.
5ire claims to be the world’s first sustainability-focused Layer 1 project (a Layer 1 network refers to a blockchain, like Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc).
5ire has also aligned its network to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Further, it is building its ecosystem featuring an exchange, a wallet, an NFT marketplace, as well as a VC fund to help grow other sustainable blockchain projects building on 5irechain.
Recently, the project announced it has secured a $100 million capital commitment from Global Emerging Markets (GEM) Global Yield LLC SCS (GGY), as it seeks to go public.
Sustainability in the 5ire ecosystem
For the co-founders, quantifying and contextualising the meaning of sustainability at 5ire took significant amounts of research, they say, adding that it was important to note that the concept of sustainability in global terms was subject to change.
Prateek Dwivedi says, “Since sustainability as a concept may keep changing, it is important to build a blockchain system that is forklessly upgradeable. Ethereum, for example, does not work this way, and gets stuck or takes a lot of time to upgrade itself. For us at 5ire, the governance mechanisms in place assures easy upgradeability and elasticity.”
As per the project’s lightpaper, 5ire embeds sustainability in the network’s base layers and the upper decision-making process which democratically commands the network.
Further, 5irechain is a nominated proof-of-stake blockchain with participants that are financially incentivised and rewarded to bring sustainability from their off-chain operations.
“We indexed sustainability factors to generate a score on the chain. For instance, a project using geothermal energy will receive a higher score and be financially rewarded better, compared to a project generating a significant amount of carbon emissions. The 5ire network is thus designed to work in a way that projects are incentivised to move towards a for-benefit paradigm,” Prateek Dwivedi adds.
The future of 5ire
5ire has been working with various nations, governments, enterprises and educational institutes to scale its ecosystem. Its use cases encompass e-governance, smart cities, naming services, identity management, decentralised finance, and more.
However, the co-founders admit that making stakeholders comfortable about adopting blockchain technology has been an ongoing challenge - primarily because the tech is new.
“Further, human capital for hiring tech talent has been challenging. To address this, we are organising several hackathons and working with schools to build curriculum around blockchain. When working with governments and universities, adoption of our solutions have taken place because they prefer a sustainable network like ours over other Layer 1 blockchains,” Pratik Gauri says.
Going forward, the race for becoming the go-to Layer 1 blockchain will only heat up as projects like 5ire aim to disrupt the status quo and early adoption achieved by chains like Ethereum, BNB Chain, Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT), Avalanche (AVAX), Algorand (ALGO), Cardano (ADA), etc.
Edited by Anju Narayanan