David Vorick is the co-founder and chief executive of Glow, which uses cryptocurrency incentives to finance new solar installations. He previously co-founded Sia, the decentralized cloud-storage network behind Siacoin, and developed specialized cryptocurrency-mining hardware through Obelisk.
Vorick studied computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and became involved with Bitcoin in 2011. In 2014, he co-founded Nebulous Labs, which developed Sia as a marketplace where independent participants provided blockchain-incentivized cloud storage. He subsequently launched Obelisk with colleagues from Sia. His analysis of cryptocurrency mining challenged claims that blockchain protocols could remain resistant to application-specific hardware: specialized chip designers, he argued, can systematically exploit inefficiencies built into general-purpose computers.
Nebulous later became Skynet Labs and expanded into decentralized storage and application hosting. The company closed in 2022 after failing to secure additional financing, while the Skynet platform continued independently. Vorick subsequently founded Glow, which attracted $30 million in financing led by Framework Ventures and Union Square Ventures.
Building solar through economic incentives
- Competitive recursive subsidies: Glow targets installations that might otherwise remain uneconomical. Participating farms compete for a fixed reward pool, while electricity revenue returns to the protocol, discouraging participation by projects profitable enough to proceed without assistance. Vorick describes this combination as a mechanism for financing genuinely additional solar capacity.
- Token-native infrastructure: Vorick distinguishes blockchain-specific coordination from merely attaching digital tokens to conventional energy projects. Open participation, transparent rewards and recycled revenue are intended to align investors, installers and electricity producers around new physical infrastructure.
At AI Engineer World’s Fair 2025, Vorick connected Glow’s model to projects in India, Mexico and Lebanon, including an Indian solar farm built to earn protocol rewards. He later continued developing the system through Glow V2.
