onthebreeze
commented
2 years ago This is a technology choice of a specific implementation (the UNECE non-production pilot) and not something that can be forced upon other sustainability / traceability platform operators. So this technology choice, whilst quite sensible for the UNECE pilot platform, has no impact on API or VC specifications that will drive interoperability between platforms.
The increase in blockchain transactions has drawn the attention of the market to the consequent carbon emissions resulting from verifying transactions in proof-of-work blockchains.
With CO2-related deaths attributable to blockchain, social pressure from the market has helped to progress the switch away from the deliberately polluting proof-of-work blockchains to more sustainable consensus protocols.
The promise of an economic future that is managed by a blockchain (a decentralized database that is shared among the nodes of a computer network, as opposed to being held in a single location, such as a central bank) is compelling.
For anyone paying attention, the rapid expansion of blockchain and cryptocurrencies has been stunning. In 2019, the global cryptocurrency market was approximately $793 million. It’s now expected to reach nearly $5.2 billion by 2026, according to a report (https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2021/04/12/2208331/0/en/At-30-CAGR-CryptoCurrency-Market-Cap-Size-Value-Surges-to-Record-5-190-62-Million-by-2026-Says-Facts-Factors.html) by the market research organization Facts and Factors. In just one year—between July 2020 and June 2021—the global adoption of cryptocurrency surged by more than 880 percent (https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/bitcoin-adoption-surged-880-in-one-year-emerging-markets-lead-the-way-2021-08-19). But the increasing popularity of cryptocurrency has environmentalists on edge, as the digital “mining” of it creates a massive carbon footprint due to the staggering amount of energy it requires.
Based on data from the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index from Digiconomist, an online tool created by data scientist Alex de Vries, the carbon footprint of Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, is equivalent to that of New Zealand, with both emitting nearly 37 megatons of carbon dioxide (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/05/bitcoin-btc-surge-renews-worries-about-its-massive-carbon-footprint.html) into the atmosphere every year, according to a February 2021 CNBC article. Other sectors are shaken up by digital assets, a type of guarantee normally backed by the Ethereum blockchain. The carbon footprint of a single Ethereum transaction as of December 2021 was 102.38 kilograms of CO2, which is “Equivalent to the carbon footprint of 226,910 VISA transactions or 17,063 hours of watching YouTube,” according (https://digiconomist.net/ethereum-energy-consumption/) to Digiconomist. Meanwhile, the electrical energy footprint of a single Ethereum transaction is about the same amount as the power that an average US household uses in 8.09 days, the website further states. This is normally due to a huge amount of servers (nodes) connected to the productive Ethereum blockchain securing the complete ecosystem.
[https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/environment/as-cryptocurrency-becomes-mainstream-its-carbon-footprint-can-t-be-ignored-81118]
These huge numbers are evidently not applicable to Ethereum testnet environment where BC pilot has been developed.
New protocols (completely compatible with Ethereum EVM developpments) are gaining market position enabling to scale Ethereum (speed and costs) while being Eco-Friendly .
With Proof of Work (PoW) blockchains becoming a hot topic for discussion as far as carbon footprint and eco-friendliness go, where does Polygon — with its Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism — rank in terms of its ecological footprint? As per estimates, the biggest PoW blockchains can consume a yearly quota of anywhere between
TWh of electricity, with a continuous draw of anywhere between 3–15 GW of electricity. Just the two biggest PoW blockchains would be ranked 27th in yearly energy consumption if it were a country — above the likes of Sweden, Vietnam and Argentina. It is clear that PoW eats away a huge chunk of the global sustainable energy budget every year. By contrast, Polygon’s validators approximately consume 0.00079TWh of electricity yearly with an approximate continuous draw of 0.00009GW, orders of magnitude below the energy consumption by the major PoW blockchain networks.
Comparison between PoW blockchains and Polygon
Hourly Electricity Draw comparison
To put Polygon’s eco-friendliness in perspective, Polygon’s yearly energy consumption is equivalent to:
https://blog.polygon.technology/polygon-the-eco-friendly-blockchain-scaling-ethereum-bbdd52201ad/
For an industrialization of the BC pilot the final deployment to PoS protocols should be considered as mandatory.