<aside> đź“• tl;dr: we are partnering up with One Tree Planted by making a donation to offset the CO2 footprint of our NFT drop and make it carbon positive.
This document dives into the details of how we estimated our footprint.
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Although we firmly believe that blockchain technology is unlocking a massive amount of new opportunities for content creators (and many other people) we are also aware of its shortcomings.
The Ethereum blockchain (the one that powers the drop and our upcoming community DEX) relies on proof-of-work technology, which in its current state require a lot of computing power, and thus a lot of electricity.
We believe this should change, and while the Ethereum project as well as the biggest players in the blockchain ecosystem are all working hard on new ways to make the technology greener and more energy efficient, we think it is our responsibility to make sure we do not contribute to carbon emissions and climate change.
This is why we have decided to fully offset our CO2 emissions by planting trees. You will find below the details of how we estimate the carbon footprint the transactions that this drop will occur.
We are partnering with One Tree Planted to plant more trees than what is needed to fully offset our emissions. For each dollar donated to One Tree Planted, they are able to plant one tree (for a cost of $0.85) and fund their operations (around $0.15). You can find the details about how much it costs to plant a tree on their website 👇
How Much Does it Cost to Plant a Tree
During the drop, we will interact with a smart contract stored in the blockchain. Each interaction (called a transaction) requires the network (miners) to validate the transaction (by adding it to a block and “mining it”). This is the process that is responsible for the massive energy consumption of the network.
We will mint up to 10,000 NFTs during our drop (depending on the drop’s success), which requires an equal amount of transactions. There will also be some transactions made during the whitelisting process which should not be more than a few thousands. We think adding a 33% buffer on top of the 10,000 necessary transactions is a very generous estimate, making the number of transactions incurred by the drop 13 300.
This is the number of transactions on the Ethereum network per day
This represents the daily carbon emissions of the Ethereum blockchain
According to Etherscan, the leading Ethereum blockchain explorer, there has been an average of about 1.2M transactions per day the past few weeks.
Experts have been able to evaluate the carbon footprint of the blockchain. You can find more about the estimation of carbon footprint of the. Ethereum network on Kyle McDonald’s personal website or read the full paper on ArXiv: