If you’re worried about the environmental impacts of NFTs, you’ve likely heard about Ethereum’s high energy consumption. Most NFTs run on the Ethereum blockchain without directly increasing its carbon footprint. New blocks on the chain are created consistently, not just when needed, which means it isn’t NFTs specifically causing the high energy use.

Ethereum’s high energy consumption stemmed from their implementation of a ‘proof of work’ consensus mechanism. This essentially meant that with every new batch of transactions, users across the network would compete to be the first to verify them and add them to the blockchain. This required a huge amount of processing power as hundreds of computers were trying to solve the same problem simultaneously.

However, in September 2022, Ethereum underwent a signifcant update known as ‘The Merge’. This update changed the way Ethereum verifies its transactions, moving to the new and more environmentally friendly ‘proof of stake’ consensus mechanism. Under proof of stake, instead of validators competing to add the transactions to the blockchain, one user is chosen to complete the task. This system allows for a far quicker, less energy intensive process. It is estimated that The Merge reduced Ethereum’s energy consumption by ~99.95%.

Even before The Merge, our partner company M1NTY had diligently investigated an environmentally conscious approach to creating NFTs. M1NTY has chosen to host the NFTs they create on Polygon, a sidechain network that runs alongside Ethereum, who have recently pledged to eliminate their carbon debt and become carbon negative in 2022. Polygon was set up on a ‘proof of stake’ consensus mechanism in order to combat the high power consumption and scaling limitations of the main blockchain, and its carbon emissions have been reduced even further since The Merge, making it one of the most eco-friendly companies on the market.

Being hosted on the Polygon sidechain, Fatsoma NFTs are both environmentally conscious and easy to create. A Fatsoma NFT emits just 1/10th of the carbon of a tweet and you would have to mint 197,000 Fatsoma NFTs to equal the carbon footprint of a single 12” vinyl. With Fastoma, you can be safe in the knowledge that the NFTs you create aren’t having a large impact on the environment.

Find out more about NFTs in our FAQs page here.