Crypto enthusiasts have spent millions of dollars on the gold rush, i.e. Irreplaceable icons (NFTs). However, the world of NFT has an enormous impact on the environment. New research by the NFT Club says millions of trees are needed to offset carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions due to NFTs.
“At a time when the world is becoming increasingly concerned about the impact of global warming, the seemingly harmless world of online trading is becoming an increasingly big problem,” the NFT Club wrote in a blog post.
For starters, NFTs are digital holdings that are created or “minted” on the blockchain. For an NFT deed, you need to pay something called a “gas fee”, to make sure your NFT is added to the distributed blockchain database, so that you get an exclusive right to that NFT artwork. The NFT SDK consumes power. This is because in order to log every NFT transaction, crypto mining must be done. Cryptocurrency mining requires computers and specialized hardware that are connected to each other. The whole process emits carbon dioxide, which ultimately affects the environment.
How much carbon dioxide do NFTs produce?
The research indicates that adding any NFT to the blockchain uses around 83kg of CO2. That’s not it. Once the NFT is mined, the carbon cost for each individual piece of the NFT continues. “Every time a bid is made to purchase an NFT, it costs 23 kg of CO2, each NFT sale produces 51 kg of CO2, and each transfer of the NFT produces 30 kg of CO2.”
According to the NFT Club, CryptoKitties NFT has so far released 239.83 million kg of CO2, 20.71 million kg of CO2, Axie Infinity 27 million kg of CO2, Art Blocks 23 million kg of CO2, and Sandbox 11.6 million kg of carbon dioxide. The company has called these groups “the most environmentally damaging kind of non-food item”.
CO2 balancing
To offset NFT’s energy consumption, the company says more and more trees must be planted. It takes at least 1.37 trees to make up one NFT sale, meaning that the number of trees needed to calculate the 5 million NFT sales would be 6.85 million. Notably, at least 13 million NFTs have been sold so far, according to Dune Analytics data.
“An average area of forest can offset the carbon emissions of 1,764 windfall trade deals. Adding NFT to the blockchain produces 83 kilograms of carbon alone, prior to sale, transfer or secondary sale.”
For example, the Snoop Dogg NFT portfolio owns 3,683 NFTs, which means he would need to plant 5,050 trees to calculate the environmental impact of his collection. The company estimates that the cost of NFT carbon for half a year for a single NFT artist is equivalent to driving a car 838 thousand kilometers, or boiling a kettle 3.5 million times.
Meanwhile, the researchers have also created a new calculator that shows how much your NFT portfolio will affect the environment and how many trees will be needed to offset carbon emissions.
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