There has been a big fuss around the world regarding how mining crypto harms the environment. Climate issues keep forwarding, global environmental problems seem depressing.
Besides, as the crypto industry develops and expands, the crypto mining-related eco-unfriendly activities floated to the surface.
Blockchain has the power to change our world in many ways. It can provide digital wallets for people without bank accounts, prevent fraud, and replace outdated systems with more efficient methods.
However, the industry’s largest cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, require a lot of energy consumption to operate. Last year, the blockchain used more electricity than 159 countries. Unsurprisingly, this is causing a huge environmental problem and requires a global solution.
Lots of people get interested in mining with cryptocurrencies. However, when starting mining, you will need to meet specific requirements. Following the recent trends, you will need to find the most acceptable and environmentally-friendly mining methods to make your occupation legal and allowed.
Recently, many giant mining industries have switched to more eco-friendly mining options. This article will explain their alternative energy usage plans that might help you make your first steps successful and unharmful in the mining industry.
Shift to Proof-of-Stake
First, as an example, we can discuss Ethereum’s solution plan. By market capitalisation, Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency. It is also the leading platform for DeFi and NFT, two potentially transformative technologies with huge investment interest.
Ethereum is currently supported by a “Proof of Work” mining system similar to Bitcoin, but it has already begun transitioning to Proof of Stake. This method will significantly reduce the impact of Ethereum on energy.
According to the company, the upgrade of the proof-of-stake would reduce the energy usage of the Ethereum blockchain by 99.95%, and it is also possible to run the entire blockchain with approximately 2.6 MW of energy.
Renewable energy mining operations
Bitcoin’s sustainability challenge provides an opportunity for North American miners to adjust their model to create an eco-friendly mining business that meets compliance requirements and ESG requirements of commercial and financial stakeholders.
Foundry Digital is one of the prominent participants in this work. It provides funding for mining operations to purchase mining hardware and infrastructure to help build a more decisive influence in the United States and Canada.
Foundry helped purchase nearly half of the Bitcoin mining machines installed in North America in 2020, and cooperated with Core Scientific, Bitfarms, Bit Digital, and Compute North.
In North America, most of the sustainable mining capacity is located in Quebec, where most energy comes from hydroelectric power. Bitfarms has five industrial-scale mining facilities in Quebec that use 100% hydroelectric power through long-term power contracts. Argo has just acquired two data centres backed by hydroelectric power generation in Quebec.
Besides, Mechanical Technology Inc. announced EcoChain, a mining business supported by renewable energy. It partnered with renewable energy expert Soluna to launch a 2.6 MW business in Wenatchee, Washington, where MTI acquired mining assets from Gigawatt. MTI has purchased additional land in the southeastern United States and plans to expand the scale of renewable energy mining to 50 MW by the end of 2021.
Blockchain-driven carbon offset
Additionally, FTX and BitMex, two leading cryptocurrency exchanges, announced plans to achieve carbon neutrality by purchasing carbon credits. Some encryption platforms are using blockchain to facilitate these efforts. The Energy Network Chain is a utility company blockchain that creates a carbon offset market and helps organise the cryptocurrency climate agreement.
Ripple, which supports the Tether stablecoin, has collaborated with EnergyWeb to create EW Zero. This open-source tool allows any blockchain to decarbonise by purchasing renewable energy in local markets around the world. As part of its efforts, Ripple pledged to achieve net-zero carbon by 2030.
Climate trade is another carbon offset market. It runs on Algorand and is helping the blockchain achieve the goal of damaging carbon emissions.
Greener options for pool mining
A mining pool is a group of miners who combine their computing power to improve their chances of getting block rewards. DMG Blockchain Solutions and Argo Blockchain recently announced Terrapool, calling it the world’s first clean energy-driven Bitcoin mining pool.
Initially, the mining pool will use the computing power of DMG and Argo, which will run on the energy generated by hydropower resources. Looking ahead, partners will invite “like-minded miners” to join the mining pool.
Dogecoin’s solution
More interestingly, joke-based cryptocurrency, Dogecoin has been created with a solid eco-friendly plan.
Dogecoin uses the Scrypt algorithm. This is a much less energy-intensive approach that helps Doge to require only 0.1 kWh of electricity per transaction. The estimated energy for a single Bitcoin transaction is 650 kWh, which obviously is a massive amount of energy.
Bottom Line
To conclude, lots of giant crypto industries tend to start eco-friendly crypto transactions and mining operations. Cryptocurrency is one of the fascinating inventions of the modern world. Making it highly unharmful for nature would bring even more success to the industry and the crypto lovers.
As a result, we hope you will find our article useful and helpful to determine your future steps in the crypto and mining industry.
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