LENR.  Blockchain.  These are two odd words many people have probably never heard of before and certainly not in the same conversation.  However, in an ironic twist of fate, the two of them may depend upon one another in a new era of decentralization.
LENR is short for Low Energy Nuclear Reactions or Lattice Enabled Nuclear Reactions or a host of other acronyms which have come to symbolize what was once referred to as Cold Fusion.  All essentially represent the heretofore unexplained phenomenon where purported anomalous and excess amounts of heat are generated when a stimulus is applied to certain transition elements which have absorbed isotopes of hydrogen.
The blockchain has become synonymous with Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency of choice for those investing and using digital currencies in commerce.  However, there are hundreds of these digital coins and tokens in use and they are all run by a backbone of distributed databases which are used to maintain a continuously growing list of records, called blocks.  This is the blockchain.  The records are permanent, decentralized, public and irreversible.  The blockchain is maintained by nodes of processors running the calculations that create the never-ending creation of new blocks.  The energy consumption for these processors is growing daily as the blockchain grows in popularity.
LENR, revered as the cheapest and cleanest energy source, has been plagued by three constant issues – centralization, censorship and a lack of funding.  In a centralized world where energy and valuable and useful information is stored on private servers, corporations are incentivized to hoard experimental data in order to profit from it.  However, this mindset has inhibited the growth of LENR technology as this hoarded institutional knowledge is lost when funding or patience runs out.  Each successive LENR experimenter faces the same challenges and issues as their predecessor, causing advances in the field to only be incrementally gained.
Blockchain technology empowers its users by decentralizing information, providing a prosperous ecosystem for like-minded individuals and now an ingenious means for funding through ICOs (initial coin offerings).  By using the Ethereum platform, users can build an ecosystem that is decentralized, free from censorship, free from value-sapping middlemen and a means to transfer value.  By issuing their own token or coin, a group has the potential to raise millions of dollars in funding without having to engage brokers or venture capitalists.  This brings about several intended benefits.  Used as a deflationary currency, as the ecosystem gains in popularity, the limited supply of tokens will rise in value, benefiting the ecosystem as a whole and not just a few centralized players.  Those who CREATE the value will be directly compensated.
Decentralization and blockchain technology will disrupt more than just our centralized economies.  It has the ability to empower and give real value to the efforts of artists, creators, experimenters and anyone else who is willing to provide value in the ecosystem of your choice.  Plans for local energy distribution will become more common with blockchain capabilities and LENR, advanced by the technology itself, may be relied upon to meet the insatiable demands for powering the blockchains.
Swarm.City, debuting its Boardwalk platform on June 15, 2017, will be the first truly decentralized peer to peer sharing economy, enabled by the SWT token, running on the Ethereum blockchain.  It will be a watershed moment in decentralization and may be the first time the common person realizes a benefit from the blockchain running in the background.