The Solana Foundation, in partnership with data platform Trycarbonara, has announced the launch of a real-time tracking dashboard for measuring carbon emissions on the Solana blockchain. According to a blog post from the foundation, this is the first “major smart contract blockchain” to measure carbon emissions in real time. The group hopes this will spark a trend toward carbon transparency in the blockchain ecosystem:
“By releasing this data, the Solana Foundation hopes to set a new standard for measuring blockchain emissions.” The new dashboard can be found on the Solana Climate website. The tracker there currently shows the total number of nodes, MWh, average total carbon footprint , and marginal usage, among many other metrics.
The new dashboard also includes several emissions comparison charts, where users can view side-by-side transitions depicting Solana usage versus many other emissions-generating activities. According to the chart, burning a gallon of gas is equivalent to 140,416.67 transactions on the Solana blockchain , while performing a Google search adds up to one and a quarter transactions.
The data used to power the Solana Foundation's real-time carbon emissions dashboard is open source and modeled from the estimated carbon footprint of a Dell PowerEdge R940.
Whether other blockchain institutions will adopt similar tracking systems remains to be seen, but the Solana Foundation move comes amid growing global efforts to use blockchain technology to monitor global carbon emissions. As part of its "Shaping Europe's Digital Commis Future, the Einiti the politically independent body of the EU's executive arm, has partnered with the European Council to laud blockchain as the basis for accurate measurement of carbon emissions in any sector. “Blockchain can be leveraged through smart contracts to better calculate, track on printoot and report on reductions across the value chain,” the commission wrote in a post on the EU Digital Strategy blog.
Meanwhile, in the United States, President Joe Biden recently proposed a budget plan that would impose a 30 percent excise tax on electricity used for cryptocurrency mining.
