🌳 Environmental Impact of Crypto

Today's Highlights

• Aiming to reduce electricity usage of crypto-assets
• Blockchain jobs - a listing of fresh jobs related to web3/blockchain/crypto.
• In Other News - a few interesting developments we're tracking.

Aiming to reduce electricity usage of crypto-assets

One of the most important issues that are impacting the world is climate change. The US government wants to protect communities and the planet by reducing greenhouse emissions to practically zero. One of the easiest ways to ensure that is by making sure new technology is designed to be as carbon-neutral as possible.

Crypto Assets, however, are implemented using cryptographic techniques, and they can require large amounts of electricity which results in greenhouse gas emissions. As crypto-assets grow rapidly in this upcoming web3 era, they could potentially nullify any effort to reduce greenhouse emissions in the US.

By August 2022, the total global electricity usage of crypto-assets is between 120-240 billion kilowatts per year, which represents up to 0.9% of total annual electricity usage. A significant portion of the energy usage can be traced back to consensus mechanisms, the distributed ledger technology that mines and verifies crypto assets.

The most dominant mechanism is Proof-of-Work (PoW). This mechanism is used by the two most popular blockchains, Bitcoin and Ethereum. While PoW is unfortunately not that energy efficient, there are other ledgers that are more environmentally friendly. Proof of Stake, for example, could reduce overall crypto-asset electricity usage to less than 1% of what it is now.

The White House offers some recommendations for Web3 companies to reduce their emissions. Companies should be willing to cooperate with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) since these agencies can provide technical assistance for reducing electricity usage. The government will also conduct studies and collect data in order to optimally find solutions to reduce greenhouse emissions while not greatly hindering the goals of Web3 companies.

💡 Blockchain Jobs

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