Compare All Eco-friendly Green Cryptocurrencies
September 2023

Sustainability in Crypto

Sustainability is a growing concern from what we eat to what we wear all around the world. The Crypto industry faces some difficulties establishing more environment-friendly, low-carbon ecosystems. Eco-friendly coins are cryptocurrencies with a low computing power requirement and less carbon footprint.

When it was May 2021, cryptocurrency markets were tanked with the debate on Bitcoin’s massive energy consumption. The debates started growing concerns after the cryptocurrency market’s post-pandemic rapid growth. Elon Musk announced that Tesla would accept Bitcoin as payment on March 24, 2021. But only after a month, Musk announced that Tesla stopped accepting payments in Bitcoin because of environmental concerns. Bitcoin price plummed drastically after this date. Bitcoin miners are consuming more than a middle-size country’s electricity consumption in a year. For example, Finland, Netherland, and Argentina have less energy consumption than all Bitcoin miners in the world.

2021 was a very turbulent year in Bitcoin’s history. After all Elon Musk's tweets and concerns about environmental impact. China decided to ban Bitcoin mining. Miners started to shift their operations to other countries. North American Bitcoin miners had a conference meeting with crypto industry enthusiasts and top influencers. The decision to create a more sustainable mining industry was accepted by participants at the conference.

After the conference, North America Bitcoin Miners constantly transformed their power sources with renewable energy. Some miners started their renewable energy farms near the mining facility. The North America Miners council created an amendment to regulate the industry on a sustainable level. The energy produced by solar panels or wind tribunes is preferred in mining facilities.

Besides turning Bitcoin mining more eco-friendly, there are other blockchains and projects to create a more environmentally-friendly cryptocurrency world. But when a new blockchain compromises security with speed, it causes some questions about the project’s reliability. This is called a blockchain trilemma.

Cryptocurrency's Trilemma: Decentralization, Security, and Scalability.

Bitcoin is a widely accepted cryptocurrency with a long and proven history. But Bitcoin consumes so much energy that we can not simply use it as a daily currency. Bitcoin as a currency used in daily transactions is going to be a very big liability for humanity. Many projects and startups are working on creating layer 2 scaling solutions for Bitcoin. There are also different blockchain projects trying to develop an ecosystem with less energy consumption in a Bitcoin level of security.

The problem comes here, when developers want to create a cryptocurrency with less energy consumption, they must trade it off with either security or scalability.

Chia Network

Chia Network was created in 2017 as a blockchain and smart transaction platform that is with a minimal carbon footprint. Chia Network was designed as a global financial and payments system. The biggest driving force behind Chia Network is creating an environment-friendly cryptocurrency that can be used in daily transfers. The consensus mechanism is very unique and innovative. Chia network is using Proof of Space and Time instead of proof of work or proof of stake. Chia Network uses idle hardware storage instead of computing powers.

Hadera

HBAR is the native coin of the blockchain-based Hedera public network. Hedera is a decentralized network known for its energy-efficient proof of stake consensus mechanism. HBAR is one of the Green coins that requires less energy consumption for its system to be maintained and backed by big corporate companies including IBM, Google, and LG.

Cardano

Cardano is one of the leading major cryptocurrencies. The founder of Cardano is Charles Hoskinson who has worked with Vitalik Buterin at the early stage of Ethereum but left the project due to some disputes over for-profit or non-profit issues. Cardano ecosystem doesn’t have a big Dapps and smart contract ecosystem. Cardano is one of the promising environment-friendly cryptocurrency projects.