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Polygon Banks On Merge To Get Rid Of 60,000 Tons Of Carbon Footprint

Polygon expects to eliminate a considerable amount of carbon traces from its system as the Merge nears.

The Ethereum Merge is just around the corner. With a soft deadline set on September 15, the world will soon find out whether or not the developers’ hopes for a positive change are realized.

The Ethereum-based Polygon blockchain will also undergo changes as a result of the Merge. In a nutshell , the Merge is the transition from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-stake (PoS). With this update, the Ethereum network should use less energy in the future.

If you take Chile’s annual electricity consumption of 77.53 TWh and apply it to the current annual electricity usage of the Ethereum network, you get a pretty good idea of how much power is being used.

Polygon’s Burden: Cutting Carbon Footprint

The network’s carbon footprint is comparable to that of Hong Kong (which is 43.24 MT CO2), so it’s quite sizable.

Based on research by Polygon, the network is responsible for 0.48 percent of Ethereum’s total carbon footprint of 12,721,000 metric tons of carbon equivalent. This estimate is valid for the period beginning in August 2021 and ending in July 2022.

That’s the equivalent of creating 60,930 tons of carbon dioxide. Polygon also mentioned the difficulty in doing so, noting that it must also factor in the emissions of its L1 chain.

As a result, the progress Ethereum has made toward a (almost) emission-free system will have a significant effect on Polygon’s emission rates.

Polygon did the math for the post-merge as well. They believe that reducing energy consumption will result in Polygon having only 50.22 tons of carbon output.

To put the reduction into context, the projected post-merge annualized energy consumption is 0.82 percent of the pre-merge annualized energy consumption figures for 2021-2022.

Hype And Anticipation On The Merge Intensify

This connection with Ethereum may have an impact on the price of MATIC, Polygon’s native token. Traders have been speculating about the merger. This meant that if investor sentiment for Ethereum is low, investor confidence may be low as well.

According to Coingecko data, the Polygon team’s press day release of the blog post about the merger was met with fear.

The price has recovered from its recent drop the day after the announcement. MATIC’s price has exactly tracked the dip and surge in the price of ETH since Polygon’s blog post.

Confusion and hype are the forces propelling the ETH price surge and retreat.

The future of Ethereum-based networks and Ethereum itself is at stake as the Merge approaches.

MATIC total market cap at $6.5 billion on the daily chart | Source: TradingView.com
Image from Blockchain News, chart from TradingView.com

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Recent Analysis Compares Waste From One Bitcoin Transaction To Throwing Out Two iPhones

There have been many studies that have highlighted the carbon footprint and electricity usage problems of Bitcoin transactions. Founder of Digiconomist Alex de Vries and researcher at MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Christian Stoll, released a new study that shines a light on the electronic waste that Bitcoin generates.

Related Reading | How Elon Musk Is The Answer To Bitcoin Energy FUD

This study, “titled Bitcoin’s growing e-waste problem”, provides new insights into another major component of Bitcoin’s wasteful design.

The Electronic Waste Problem Of Bitcoin

Most studies have ignored the fact that Bitcoin miners go through a large amount of short-lived hardware that could increase global electronic waste growth.

“E-waste represents a growing threat to our environment, from toxic chemicals and heavy metals leaching into soils, to air and water pollutions caused by improper recycling.”
According to the study, a single transaction generates 272 grams of e-waste, the same amount of electronic waste as throwing two iPhone 12 minis in the bin. In 2020 the bitcoin network processed 112.5m transactions (compared with 539bn processed by traditional payment service providers in 2019).

“Bitcoin’s annual e-waste generation adds up to 30.7 metric kilotons as of May 2021,” they claim. “This number is comparable to the amount of small IT and telecommunication equipment waste produced by a country like the Netherlands.” This figure could increase to more than 64.4 metric kilotons of waste.
They also point out that the demand for mining hardware already today disrupts the global semiconductor supply chain, which is currently suffering a global shortage due to increased need in the coronavirus pandemic, as well as a US-China trade war and drought in Taiwan.

BTC trading at $47.6K | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

Additionally, Bitcoin mining has evolved from a simple activity done on a laptop to a complex and very expensive game done through powerful ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits). These ASICs are specifically designed to mine crypto transactions. And as technology changes, miners have to constantly replace their ASICs with newer, more powerful ones to stay competitive. Therefore, these single-purpose ASIC chips quickly become waste. According to the researchers, “The lifespan of bitcoin mining devices remains limited to just 1.29 years,”

Researchers in Europe and the U.S. also claim that miners have been dumping tens of thousands of tonnes every year of ASIC rigs and contributing to the ever-growing environmental challenge.

Alex and Stoll also warn that the e-waste problem will probably grow further if the price of the cryptocurrency continues to rise since it will incentivize further investment in and replacement of ASIC hardware.

Related Reading | Why Bitcoin Could Rise To $53K, Here Are The Risks Bulls Must Overcome

If the community were to try to reduce its e-waste problem, the paper concludes, it would need to replace the bitcoin mining process in “its entirety with a more sustainable alternative,” One of those alternatives is “proof of stake” instead of “proof of work”, as an experimental replacement. “The first miner who finds a PoW [proof of work] that satisfies predetermined conditions broadcasts the block to all nodes in the network. The receiving nodes express their acceptance of the new block by building on top of it”, the paper explains.

Featured image from Interesting Engineering, Chart from TradingView.com