Polkadot Has Least Carbon Footprint, Crypto Researcher Says

(Bloomberg) -- Energy usage by various crypto blockchains has been a topic of controversy for years -- and now a research firm has tried to quantify the exact differences in consumption by some of the top networks.

Polkadot has the lowest total electricity consumption and total carbon emissions per year of the six so-called proof-of-stake blockchains studied, according to a report from Ulrich Gallersdörfer, Lena Klaaßen and Christian Stoll of the Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute. Cardano uses the lowest energy per node per year and Solana the lowest electricity per transaction, the report said. The report was commissioned by Ava Labs, which is associated with the Avalanche blockchain, one of those that was studied.

When assessing the economic value secured in financial applications on each platform -- known as the the total value locked -- it's $18,454 per kilowatt hour for Avalanche, versus $4,395 for Solana and $19.18 for Polkadot, the report said, using DeFiLlama data from Feb. 1.

Proof of Work systems such as the one that underpins Bitcoin need computational power to solve mining puzzles to secure the network, while Proof of Stake requires validators to lock in funds for a specific period of time to propose or vote on new blocks. Ethereum also uses Proof of Work, though it's undergoing upgrades that will convert it to Proof of Stake.

Bitcoin's energy consumption has attracted concern from the likes of Elon Musk, Bank of America Corp. researchers and more -- and it's been a concern even for countries that host miners. Proof of Stake networks consume less than 0.001% of the Bitcoin network, the CCRI report said.

The CCRI report goes further, also asserting that the Proof of Stake networks studied use little enough energy that other factors should be given more attention when evaluating them.

“For practitioners selecting a PoS blockchain protocol, other factors such as decentralization, network throughput or functionality (e.g., smart contracts) should increase in relevance as decision criteria,” the report said.