How much does your digital life pollute?

To buy an NFT, cryptocurrencies are required that, beyond the fluctuation in their value, have been indicated by the level of contamination and energy consumption involved in their mining process.

Dan Cartolin, account executive for Latin America at Chainalysis, a data analysis company blockchain, mentions that the high value that cryptocurrencies have come to have is one of the main motivations for more people to participate in their mining, despite the environmental impact they generate.

Cryptocurrencies contaminate because to obtain an asset a mining process called “proof of work” must be carried out. This, in very simplified terms, consists of a computer solving mathematical problems, while another validates them and generates a reward, which is cryptocurrency.

Although it seems simple, the process is replicated millions of times in the same number of computers, which require a lot of power and consume a large volume of electrical energy, since a large RAM storage memory and a good cooling system are needed to carry out these transactions. .

According to estimates by Digiconomist, a site specializing in the analysis of digital trends, the energy consumption during the mining process of a single bitcoin unit is 1,195 kilowatts per hour, which is equivalent to the average energy consumption of a home in the United States per 41 days and generates 439 grams of electronic waste, the same weight as a pair of iPhones.

Greenpeace has criticized companies and organizations linked to bitcoin, saying that it is ignoring the phenomenon of climate change and falling behind in its standards to address the climate crisis. Meanwhile, other cryptographic technologies are making changes to be more efficient at mining.

In November of last year, New York state signed a law banning proof-of-work cryptocurrency mining for the next two years, because the energy needed comes mostly from fossil fuels unless companies use 100% renewable energy.

One of the most popular cryptocurrencies, ethereum, has taken steps to change standards and pollute less in the mining process, trying to evolve from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake (PoS), which “is more environmentally friendly” says Carolin.

Alejandro Rodríguez, director of Block-chain of Dicio, a Mexican company of digital solutions based on blockchain, biometrics and artificial intelligence, explains that the proof of participation is a mechanism where the validators of the network come into play in substitution of the miners. So far, its most relevant use case is ethereum.

Its operation is based on validators, people who already have a number of tokens (in this case, ethers), bet them in such a way that they enter a random draw to create a new block or validate it. To be validated, you must have at least 32 ETH. If that amount is not available, several people can join together to reach it. In environmental terms, the positive impact of this proposal is that computational power is no longer needed to solve mathematical problems, in addition to the fact that one miner no longer competes against the machines of another and, therefore, energy consumption is lower.

Specialists agree that this change in mining can be key for the crypto industry to have a sustainable future, they even highlight the possibility of starting to use clean energy in processes and avoiding the extraction of fossil resources to stop damaging the planet.