Environmental impact

Environmental Impact of NFTs

Many people say that “the blockchain“ is bad for the environment. This is partially true. Yes, some blockchains need a big amount of energy to work. The short explanation for this is that computers across the world store the data, sign transactions and make it secure, instead of a single entity like a company or a bank that acts as a 3rd party validating a transaction. As NFTs run on blockchains, they also have an environmental impact. This is a topic we, but also the whole blockchain and NFT community is aware of. In order to understand the reason behind this impact, let’s dive a bit deeper on what blockchains are.

Variety of Blockchains: Is Ethereum bad for the environment?

There is not the „one“ blockchain. A blockchain is more like a technological framework. Bitcoin runs on a blockchain, Ethereum is another and there are many many more. Every single one of these blockchains has its own reason to exist and also has a different ecological impact. Some of them are specifically made for transferring money and assets, but there are also others that try to build solutions for the health sector, agriculture, transportation and many more.

How does NFT affect the environment?

As mentioned above, the reason for the high energy consumption is that you need a lot of computers that verify, sign and store transactions, so the network is safe and secure. It is basically a global ledger. The big advantage of this is, that it is not up to an individual company you have to trust with your money and digitally owned valuables, but instead you can trust the network. While a single company can be hacked, the blockchain is more secure, because people with malicious intent would need to hack all servers across the world in the same millisecond so that the network doesn’t “see” it.

Another reason for the high energy consumption is that transactions have to be signed by solving very complex mathematical problems. This increases the security of the network, but at the same time needs a lot of energy. The big challenge for people who are trying to improve the energy efficiency is to find a balance between security and energy consumption.

Improving energy efficiency of Blockchains

The communities and companies who are constantly trying to improve their blockchain are aware of the ecological impact. Many smart people have already found ways to improve energy efficiency and are implementing them as we speak. Ethereum is currently the biggest blockchain that is used for NFTs. It has already received updates in the last months and will get more updates in the future that optimise the ecological impact of NFT and the whole blockchain technology.

Offsetting the carbon footprint

Creatokia is a platform where book lovers can buy, read and trade digital originals. In our marketplace we offer brand new, unique or strictly limited NFT books.

We believe that the NFTis technology will empower the next generation of creatives, artists, authors and in general our society. This is why we build Creatokia on and for it, but we also care about our environment. In order to demonstrate how much we care, we will offset 100% of our carbon footprint in collaboration with myclimate – your partner for climate protection.