Kelly Robertson
In addition to making people rich fast, decentralized computing could be a force for good, as we want to prove with today’s story.
We’ll talk about Bail Bloc, a project of The New Inquiry conducted in partnership with the Bronx Freedom Fund.
Using blockchain to get people out of jail
Bail Bloc is a Windows desktop application that uses computer processing power to get people out of jail. It is not made for releasing any serious criminals mind you — it is designed to help the poor people pay their bail.
When/if you install the Bail Bloc app, it will verify transactions for the Monero cryptocurrency ledger, which is the process we know as mining. Only a small percentage of your overall computing power will be used for the task, creating the money for bailing people out of pre-trial detention.
For those who missed it, Monero is an ASIC-resistant cryptocurrency, which means that consumer-level computers can mine it in a financially viable way. (related: Monero Cryptocurrency: 5 Things Everyone Should Know)
While you will be using an extra power while mining Monero, that won’t be a lot more power. According to The New Inquiry, Bail Bloc is a very small mining operation and can’t be compared to “Bitcoin Farms” that require a ton of power to keep them up and running. The software will utilize only an additional 10-25% of your computing power, and so your environmental impact will be 10-25% greater than is usual for your computer. Money-wise, this translates to additional $1-3 per month of power use.
Now you may be asking whether this is financially viable and whether you’re better off simply donating the money.
First, it is financially viable, and second — if you want to donate, by all means — do it.
The New Inquiry even encourages individuals to form community bail funds in addition to running Bail Bloc. If your community doesn’t yet have a bail fund, you can organize one, and in the meantime give money to the individuals and families forced to bear the burden of posting bail on their own.
As a non-profit, The New Inquiry has seen first-hand how difficult it is to encourage individuals to donate out of their own pockets, especially when those individuals don’t have direct access to capital. In that sense, Bail Bloc was not designed to replace any of these other fundraising efforts — it was designed to accompany them.
It’s the idea that matters
The Bail Bloc project was designed to be greater than the sum of its parts, or the sum of its “hashrate.” It is as much about catapulting a radical criticism of bail into the public imagination as it is about raising bail funds via cryptocurrency.
The project seeks to engage people in a dialog about the fact that the justice system takes as a basic assumption that poor people will not be able to afford bail. Bail Bloc is one tool, among many, to support the varied, long-standing movement for abolition.
So what are you waiting for – go to Bail Bloc and volunteer your computer’s spare power to get people out of jail. Simply put, it is easy and it is the right thing to do!
