Solana: new report on the carbon footprint of blockchain

The Solana Foundation has released the third edition of its September 2022 Blockchain Energy Impact and Carbon Footprint Report. An initiative involving external experts to conduct an independent assessment of blockchain emissions. 

Solana and its third report on the carbon footprint of its Blockchain

Solana Foundation has released its latest and third September 2022 report with an independent assessment by outside experts on the carbon footprint and energy impact of its Blockchain. 

1/ 🧵 Today, the @SolanaFndn released the most recent Solana Energy Use Report as part of its commitment to making Solana carbon neutral.

Emissions per validator fell nearly 48%, despite the network's estimated carbon footprint growing by 26%. https://t.co/QsvEIrrEez pic.twitter.com/COj7Ukj20R

— Solana (@solana) September 20, 2022

“Today, the @SolanaFndn released the most recent Solana Energy Use Report as part of its commitment to making Solana carbon neutral. Emissions per validator fell nearly 48%, despite the network’s estimated carbon footprint growing by 26%.”

In the report, the highlights show that the network’s estimated overall carbon footprint is 3,412 tons of CO2 per year, up 26% from 2,707 tons of CO2 per year in March 2022.

This 26% increase in just 6 months is due to the overall growth of the validator network and the addition of hardware production emissions (e-waste) in the analysis. 

At the same time, the report shows a decrease in emissions due to a reduction in estimated energy consumption per validation node, which dropped 48% from 984W to 509W per validation node.

Solana urges the community to consult and use sources posted on Github 

In a roundup of tweets, Solana also informed the community that they are publishing the sources of their report data on Github. 

In this way, Solana Foundation expects the community to be able to consult and use them, encouraging all validators and projects to take a look at their emissions data and mitigate where possible. 

Not only that, the Foundation also compared the carbon emission of its Blockchain with Google searches. Here’s what it said:

“A key takeaway from previous energy use reports is that a single transaction on Solana uses roughly the energy equivalent of 3 Google searches. Upon further digging into our dataset, we uncovered that a single non-voting transaction on Solana is the energy equivalent of 3 Google searches. However, the average transaction on Solana (including both voting and non-voting transactions) uses the energy equivalent of approximately half a Google search.”

The price of Solana (SOL)

And so while in the past six months, Solana’s blockchain appears to have decreased emissions per validator by 48% and increased its carbon footprint by 26% per network growth, the price of its native crypto SOL appears to have fallen, following the trend of other cryptocurrencies. 

And in fact, since March 2022, the price of SOL has dropped from $88 to the current $31. Specifically, over the past month SOL has hovered around $34, with peaks of nearly $39 and lows of $30. 

Solana, referred to by many as the “Ethereum Killer,” seems to be staying “afloat” compared to the price trend of its “rival,” especially after the resounding and long-awaited Ethereum Merge, which was made official on 15 September 2022. The upgrade saw Ethereum’s blockchain move from PoW to PoS, which made it more sustainable. 

Ethereum (ETH) has seen a price drop over the past five days from $1590 to $1290, being worth $1339 at the time of writing.