Jaywick in the Tendring district of Essex, England, is around 3 kilometers from the Clacton-on-Sea.
The seaside village was originally a combination of fields and salt marshes, and was unsuitable for agricultural use. But when it was purchased by Frank Stedman in 1928, he turned it to become an affordable holiday resort for working-class families from London.
But unfortunately, after the World War II, the properties gradually became permanently inhabited, turning the village into one of the most deprived areas in the country. And with factories in surrounding areas have continued to close, the fact puts more stress on the local population.
Considering its future, with the village having 62 percent of its working-age population receiving government benefits, a designer-researcher based in London wants to prove that technologies can bring positive impact to the area.
And that he leveraged the village's abundance of water, to power cryptocurrency miners.
To introduce and re-engage the villagers with technology, Maël Hénaff collaborated with Jaywick’s community to run practical workshops that illustrate how emerging technologies can work for them, rather than against them.
And here, by building fully-functioning cryptocurrency miners, the communities can earn a small amount of supplementary income, all by themselves.
Using the oceans tides change, the kinetic energy is harvested and collected to charge external batteries that are connected to a voltage regulators. This sends the electricity to power the Raspberry Pi model 3s used for mining.
The devices are then put submerged into the ocean, waterproofed using mason jars.
As for the software being used, Hénaff run the Raspberry devices using cryptocurrency mining scripts found on GitHub and other open-source platforms.
According to Hénaff:
"[The Raspberry devices] aren’t powerful devices, which can explain why we aren’t mining a lot of cryptocurrencies, but the price of these computers is cheap and they don’t require that much energy to run. We are actually using Raspberry Pi Zero too, as they need even less power."
But Hénaff idea isn't all about making money. After all, the devices can initially mine only around 5¢ every hour.
The goal of this project is mainly to introduce people of Jaywick to new emerging technologies, as well as sparking discussions between the locals, that hopefully would give birth to a new micro-economy.
All cryptocurrency mined is sold monthly, with any of the generated money is given back to the community.
"I would say that from the beginning the idea was less to make money, and more to realize that emerging technologies could become a real tool for social benefit," said Hénaff. "Now that Jaywick locals know how to build and make them work, a few people are making their own miners."
