photo of Alia Al Sadawi

The Iraqi academic Alia Al Sadawi, the first person to hold a PhD in blockchain technology from the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, has no fear when it comes to choosing her research areas.

The first challenge came when the available topics for her PhD bored her, until her advisor mentioned a new technology in 2018 called blockchain. “He told me, ‘Let’s see what you can do in that field,’” Al Sadawi said.

“I am not the kind of person who shies away from challenges,” she said. “I wanted risk. I wanted to research a topic that gives me an adrenaline rush.”

Previously, Al Sadawi studied electrical and electronics engineering, followed by a Master’s in engineering system management from the American University of Sharjah.

The next hurdle came when Al Sadawi decided she wanted to explore using blockchain to help solve one of the world’s most pressing problems – climate change.

Al Sadawi’s dissertation proposed utilizing blockchain and smart contracts in carbon trading markets. The 1997 United Nation’s Kyoto Protocol introduced the concept of carbon trading as a means to reduce greenhouse gases through market forces. It offered mechanisms to assign countries, companies, and manufacturers carbon emission allowances, which can be quantified and traded.

A factory that needs to exceed its emission limit may purchase carbon credits from a developing country. This way, the total amount of emissions around the world is controlled. Yet it doesn’t always work that easily, either through theft, fraud or difficulty in ensuring participants obey the rules.

“In theory, it should work, but in reality, it sometimes leads to increasing pollution rather than reducing it,” Al Sadawi explained.

Early days

Back in 2018 when Al Sadawi began her PhD work the academic research on blockchain was minimal. Many papers were merely general surveys and literature reviews. Resources were scarce and few academics in the country took a serious interest in the new space.

If these were not enough challenges, “skeptic voices were very high. People said cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology were just a sham that will disappear into oblivion soon,” Al Sadawi said.

I spoke to her in the Mohamed Bin Rashid Library right after she finished speaking at a blockchain conference. She carries the enthusiasm and excitement of an engaging teacher. Years of lecturing have given her the ability to discuss and breakdown complex technical problems for hours at a time, while keeping a smile.

“I try to have one leg in academia and one in the industry,” she said. After the interview she was off to a business meeting.

There is still a disconnect for many people about what web3, cryptocurrencies and blockchain mean for the larger world. “People usually confuse blockchain with cryptocurrencies, and most do not know the technology’s other applications,” she said.

One of those applications is providing a transactional ledger that’s both public and can’t be changed. Al Sadawi realized that could provide the much-needed transparency in the carbon credit market.

Trading carbon credits became a lucrative business that could be used to maximize corporate profits rather than cut emissions. A company may sell its credits when prices are high, even if it needs them. It would then repurchase them when prices drop, buy more credits with the profit which allows them to spew higher emissions with no extra costs.

Moreover, the European Union Registry, an electronic database containing emitters accounts, admitted that “allowances were stolen from their system.”

Smart contracts for credits

Al Sadawi proposed solutions: put the carbon credits on a blockchain. The transparency of the technology would force accountability and identify bad actors, she argued, as well as eliminate double-spending.

She also proposed a smart contract that enforces regulations on carbon credits, such as putting a limit on the percentage of allowed credits to be traded by any company.

“Everyone can witness that this number of credits was granted to a car manufacturer, then sold to an oil company. You can see the whole story easily,” Al Sadawi said. “The market will be controlled by integrity.”

Al Sadawi’s proposal to use blockchain to counter climate change contradicts the usual criticism of the technology as a source of pollution. She claims that critics abuse the transparency of blockchain to inflate its environmental impact.

“We do not know, with complete accuracy, how much pollution is created by cloud computing and large centralized data centers,” she said, “There is no way to vet their claims or verify their offset projects.”

She believes that future innovations will create more sustainable and environmentally friendly blockchains.

Somewhat paradoxically, she is not a proponent of the anticipated Ethereum merge that will move it to a proof-of-stake mechanism rather than a proof-of-work. The merge is planned to take place in mid-September and should reduce Ethereum’s energy consumption by more than 99 percent. That means far less carbon emissions from securing the Ethereum network.

No merge fan

“If blockchain was introduced in the first place with a proof of stake consensus algorithm, would it have been successful and trustable?” she asked rhetorically. 

Al Sadawi believes that proof-of-stake is not ideal for decentralization and that there are better ways to create energy-efficient blockchains. She is currently researching the usage of blockchain in tracking vaccine side effects. She is considering using the BSV blockchain.

She argued that BSV hosts faster and cheaper transactions and micropayments than Ethereum and allows large and flexible sizes of blocks, which makes it less energy intensive.

Regardless of the current state of technology, she is bullish that the future carries wider adoption of blockchain with better solutions. She’s witnessed a lot of positive changes in the field since the early days of her PhD research.

“We are seeing an increasing number of students who want to study blockchain every year,” she said. To help keep this going, she’s ushering more engineers and programmers into the field at the master’s degree level.

This fills her with hope that the industry is ripe for innovation, and that better days lay ahead. She’s also putting her money where her mouth is.

“I won’t tell you how much, but I still hold my crypto portfolio,” she laughed.