Spring is a wonderful time. The flowers come into bloom, trees are budding, birds are chirping and the air is fresh and warm. As we head into this lovely season, we reflect on the state of the planet’s health. Whether we focus harder on recycling or picking up garbage, there is always room for improvement on how we can help preserve our planet.
Blockchain activity has been growing at an enormous rate, but that growth has raised concerns that blockchain-generated carbon emissions are damaging our habitat. However, not all blockchains are the same. The WAX blockchain stands out for its energy-efficient design. WAX strives to be a model for a sustainable blockchain economy.
The first carbon impact NFT
Coming to the blockchain in May, WAX has created the world’s first tradable carbon impact NFT for consumers. WAX carbon impact NFTs offer a simple and convenient way to offset some portion of your carbon dioxide generating activities. If you’re flying somewhere, taking a long car trip or returning a lot of e-commerce items you’ve recently purchased, you may wish to offset some of the carbon generated from those activities. WAX carbon impact NFTs can help you do that.
How it works
WAX carbon impact NFTs can be purchased from WAX at on.wax.io/Mint-Green. NFTs are priced at $1, $5, $25, $50 and $100. Every $1 in NFT value corresponds to the planting of one tree sapling. These NFTs can be gifted, traded, sold and ‘composted’. When an NFT holder wishes to offset their carbon, they can compost the NFT (i.e. redeem it) and by doing so, one tree sapling will be planted by the National Forest Foundation, a respected non-profit organization focused on reforestation. According to co2meter.com, one tree will sequester approximately 1 ton of CO2 over its lifetime. To learn more about how to participate in improving our environment on the WAX Blockchain, visit here.
Powered by WAX vIRL technology
WAX carbon impact NFTs are vIRLs. vIRLs stand for virtual + In Real Life (v.I.R.L). vIRLs are NFTs linked to real-world products and services. The WAX carbon impact NFT happens to be redeemable for both a real-world product (a tree sapling) and a real-world service (planting the tree sapling). vIRLs hold an important part in taking WAX to the next level of going green. vIRLs can offset the environmental impact of the growth in e-commerce by reducing millions of package deliveries. Fewer deliveries translate into fewer delivery truck rolls and less landfill-destined packaging material required to ship products. vIRL NFTs separate ownership from physical possession. This allows a person to buy a physical item and digitally transfer it to another person without needing to physically ship it.
WAX is vastly more energy-efficient than Ethereum and Bitcoin
Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains operate on a proof of work system (PoW) system. PoW systems use a massive amount of energy to process transactions as miners compete to solve complex equations (i.e. the proof of work problem). The first computer to solve these math problems is compensated with valuable tokens. As the value of ETH and BTC tokens have risen over time, crypto miners have invested in ever more powerful mining rigs to more rapidly solve the blockchain proof of work problems. WAX is built around an entirely different transaction validation design, a delegated proof of stake system (DPoS). William Quigley, co-founder of WAX says, “WAX was designed from the beginning to be incredibly energy efficient. That is why WAX NFTs use a tiny fraction of the energy of Ethereum and Bitcoin. In fact, WAX is 125,000 times more energy-efficient than Ethereum and WAX is already carbon neutral”. With WAX DPoS, transactions are approved by 21 energy-efficient guilds delegated with that responsibility by WAX token holders. WAX token holders who stake their tokens are eligible to vote for their preferred guilds. Under WAX DPoS, there is no battle for computing power dominance as there is with Ethereum and Bitcoin PoW chains. This means that while Ethereum and Bitcoin grow in terawatts of energy each month, the energy consumption on the WAX blockchain is relatively stable.
WAX NFTs have already offset almost 4 million tons of carbon emissions compared to Ethereum
Many NFTs are minted and traded on Ethereum. As we have noted, Ethereum requires an incredible amount of energy to process transactions. According to Digiconomist.net, a typical Ethereum transaction consumes 75.8 kilowatt-hours of energy. That is 125,000 times more energy than WAX requires. And consider that the process of minting, bidding on, and trading just one Ethereum NFT could easily exceed 5 separate transactions. If all of the NFTs minted and traded to date on WAX had been created on Ethereum instead, an additional 4 million tons of carbon dioxide would have been released into Earth’s atmosphere. According to the EPA.gov greenhouse gas equivalencies calculator, it would take 88.9 million tree seedlings grown for 10 years to sequester that amount of CO2 emissions. Put another way, creating NFTs on WAX instead of Ethereum has reduced carbon emissions equal to 5.9 billion pounds of coal being burned or 228 million trash bags of waste recycled instead of landfilled.
WAX NFTs are not just green, they are also affordable
If being green is not motivation enough to use the WAX blockchain for NFTs, keep in mind that WAX does not charge gas fees. Peer-to-peer trading is free on WAX. You only pay commissions when selling your NFT on a WAX marketplace. The WAX Cloud Wallet is also far easier to use than equivalent Ethereum wallets. Want more motivation? Some of the biggest consumer brands are releasing NFTs on WAX making WAX the best place to buy and trade NFTs.
