The Top 10 Cryptocurrencies with the Lowest Carbon Footprint | by Sara Mohammed | Feb, 2022

One of the hottest topics in the crypto world has been the debate surrounding its climate problem. The cryptocurrency OG and most popular digital currency, Bitcoin (BTC), is energy-intensive by design, due to being “mined” by millions of high-powered computers around the world.

Like all other industries, the blockchain industry has to solve its sustainability issue in order to achieve mass adoption and revolutionize banking, finance, gaming, shopping, entertainment and others. Ethereum (ETH), the second-most popular cryptocurrency, also uses a lot of power much like Bitcoin, but its developers are planning a transition to a mining method that is more environmentally friendly. It is called the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm.

In light of the importance of sustainability in today’s world, I have compiled a list of the top 10 cryptocurrencies with the lowest carbon footprint.

The cool thing about what SolarCoin is doing is that it is working to incentivize real-world environmental activity: verifiably produced solar energy. SolarCoin uses an innovative approach, creating 1 SLR for every Megawatt hour generated from solar technology.

At the moment, this technology mainly depends on users uploading documentation to prove energy generation, which is not efficient and may be considered time-consuming. However, streamlining and automating this process is not too far in the future. Once SolarCoin figures out a way to improve the ease of this process, the number of users are sure to rise as a result.

Designed as an eco-friendly alternative to Bitcoin, Bitgreen operates its network through a PoS consensus model, which cuts the amount of energy used.

Apart from that, it makes similar efforts as SolarCoin, by inspiring users to reduce their carbon footprint by offering them financial rewards. For example, if someone decides to carpool to reduce pollution, the decision is rewarded.

Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum, Cardano (ADA) uses a PoS consensus mechanism. It is built to be far more energy-efficient and serve as a viable alternative to traditional proof-of-work (PoW) networks. Cardano is one of the few cryptocurrencies that has been dubbed “the Ethereum killer” because of this.

Aiming to provide banking services to the unbanked, Cardano needs much less hardware investment, and transactions are still just as secure as when using a PoW network.

Founded in 2014, Stellar is an open-sourced blockchain platform that provides a payment alternative. It forked off from Ripple at the start in order to bridge the gap between traditional financial institutions and cryptocurrencies. Apart from not charging users for using its platform, Stellar is also seen as a faster, easier and more cost-effective alternative to PayPal.

The network’s token, Lumens, is used to facilitate trades (in US Dollars, Bitcoin, Pesos, Yen and any traditional and/or crypto currencies) on its decentralized platform at a fraction of a cent and with reduced carbon emissions. Due to its open-source nature, it also allows users and companies to create tokens, which has led to the use of sustainability initiatives such as investing in renewable energy.

Nano is a crypto token that does not rely on printing, minting or mining. In fact, here are some stats to shed light on the differences between bitcoin and nano transactions.

1 bitcoin transaction equates to 6,000,000 nano transactions. What does that mean? Let’s break it down further. The estimated energy usage for 1 bitcoin transaction is 651.08 kWh. On the other hand, the estimated energy usage for 1 nano transaction is 0.000112 kWh.

Due to the fact that IOTA utilizes Fast Probabilistic Consensus for consensus and only partly relies on PoW, the energy consumption of the network as a whole is quite minimal. It has been calculated that the average ECPT (energy consumption per transaction) for IOTA is just 0.11 Watt hours.

This number is very low, even when comparing it to more traditional financial networks e.g. VISA and Mastercard. Like many cryptocurrencies, IOTA far exceeds Bitcoin in terms of energy conservation. Additionally, there are new updates that will make Atomic Transactions the norm for IOTA. This means it could lessen the transaction size from 1.7kb to less than 100 bytes, presumably reducing the energy consumption accordingly.

In May 2021, IOTA outlined a possible 33–95% reduction in energy consumption linked to the Chrysalis upgrade, decreasing the energy required to just over a millionth of a kWh per transaction.

EOSIO is a distributed ledger loved by developers due to the fact that it is simple to set up and write applications in a number of programming languages. It has also demonstrated lightning-fast speed — 3,996 transactions per second and counting –and does not cost anything.

A nonprofit organization and public blockchain, TRON runs using decentralized governance based on a two-tier model of Super Representatives (SR) and Super Representative Partners, with every account having the ability to become an SR and vote for SRs.

Plus, the TRON currency, Tronix, is pre-mined and can be traded on most of the top crypto exchanges. It also has big plans in the works for its future, which includes using it to create decentralized gaming platforms.

Holochain is an open-source framework for peer-to-peer applications and its token HoloTokens (HOT) does not need mining. This is because the platform eliminates the need for global consensus and this significantly cuts the amount of electricity required to validate data.

Not to mention, the storage requirements are minimized, which makes it unnecessary to manufacture storage devices and reduce the need for more infrastructure.

On May 6th, 2021, Hedera Hashgraph passed the number of ETH transactions, making it one of the world’s largest blockchain networks out there. In theory, Hedera Hashgraph could process over 100,000 transactions per second, which would enable it to effortlessly beat Visa and other traditional payment systems.

Due to its PoS consensus model, HBAR automatically processes significantly less amount of energy per transaction as a result. At the same time, it also maintains a throughput that is exponentially higher.

With more than 10,000 cryptocurrencies in existence as of February 2022, there are definitely more sustainable digital tokens out there. This list is not meant to be extensive. Just a few additional names to look into include Algorand (ALGO), Fantom (FTM), Polkadot (DOT) and Ripple (XRP).

If you’re interested in cryptocurrencies and living a sustainable lifestyle, here are a few other articles you may be interested in.