The Solana Foundation’s Initiative to Track Carbon Emissions from Blockchain
Carbon emissions from blockchain networks have become a hotly debated issue over the last few years. With a large network of servers and computers, they guzzle enormous amounts of electricity to execute transactions and mint new tokens.
Bitcoin [BTC], for instance, emitted a whopping 54 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) in 2022, as per Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index.
Ethereum’s [ETH] transition, from proof-of-work (PoW) to the proof-of-stake (PoS) last year, was a step in addressing the growing concerns around greenhouse gas emissions.
And now, another PoS-based network – Solana [SOL] – has introduced a feature to keep track of its footprints.
Real-time Carbon Data
The Solana Foundation has unveiled a data portal which tracks carbon emissions from the blockchain in real time, claiming to become the first major smart-contract platform to roll out such an initiative.
The dashboard will regularly update key metrics like energy consumption, emissions, and network power intensity, making it feasible to examine network emissions from a variety of angles.
The emissions tracker, developed in collaboration with carbon data platform Trycarbonara, fetches data from validators and RPC nodes on the network. This will help teams investigate how each user affects the carbon footprint of the network.
Between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2023, Solana released an equivalent of 10,651 tonnes of carbon dioxide. It also consumed more than 26,000 megawatt-hours of electricity over the same period.
Solana Activity Spikes
Activity on the Solana Chain surged as the number of daily active users increased by more than 7% in the last week. The user base clocked a monthly growth rate of 30%, indicating that adoption of the chain has been on the rise too.
As users swelled, the trading volumes registered an uptick. Transaction fees paid to validators also soared by 11% over the week.
Despite this groundbreaking initiative, however, SOL dipped by 3.48% in the last 24 hours. Even so, the price drop did not make any dent on the confidence of long position holders as SOL funding rates were positive on most exchanges.
The number of long positions taken for SOL steadily increased over the last few days, as evidenced by the growing Longs/Shorts Ratio. This lent more evidence to the prevailing bullish sentiment.
