The Internet Computer — A blockchain greener than Google
One transaction on The Internet Computer uses about 1/4th energy of one Google Search
Blockchain technology is going mainstream, however, amongst other factors like scalability, speed & cost, one big issue that the industry needs to solve for is the problem of not being environment-friendly & sustainable. This has been one of the biggest challenges of the industry since the days of only Bitcoin. Also, if one really wants to imagine a completely decentralized economic & social future built on the blockchain, it needs to be seen in context of not just blockchains, but also traditional IT. Only when a blockchain runs at the same (or even better efficiency) than traditional IT is when this is possible. The Internet Computer is the only blockchain that is re-imagining the entire IT stack, not just on the metrics of the Blockchain Trilemma, but also on important green parameters like energy consumption.
The Internet Computer
A key objective of the Internet Computer is to provide a public compute layer that replaces traditional IT. A natural concern is that this will cause an increase in global energy consumption, which is bad for the environment, because the Internet Computer is a blockchain network. However, this is not the case. In its current state of development, it is already not just orders of magnitude more efficient than other blockchains, it is also designed to be more efficient that traditional IT.
Current State of Blockchains:
The biggest blockchain players , Bitcoin and Ethereum (both Proof-of Work platforms) have faced increasing criticism over the environmental impact of the mining operations that keep their blockchains running.
Based on data from the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index from Digiconomist, the carbon footprint of Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, is equivalent to that of New Zealand, with both emitting nearly 37 megatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, according to a February 2021 CNBC article.
With Ethereum smart contracts, the digital assets in the art world are experiencing a boom, more commonly known as NFTs, a type of guarantee backed by the blockchain. With higher adoption, the carbon footprint also is becoming a big concern.
The carbon footprint of a single Ethereum transaction as of December 2021 was 102.38 kilograms of CO2, which is “Equivalent to the carbon footprint of 226,910 VISA transactions or 17,063 hours of watching YouTube,” according to Digiconomist.
Then came the Proof-of-Stake blockchains that claim to consume small amounts of energy for individual transactions. Cardano claims to consume just 0.5 kWh for a single transaction, while a transaction on Solana consumes 0.00051 kWh of energy. However, each of these blockchains outsources storage and hosting to centralized servers, signaling a hidden carbon footprint as suggested in this Coincodex report.
A comparison with traditional IT:
One Google search is equal to turning on a 60W light bulb for 17 seconds. It uses enough energy to continuously power 200,000 homes.
What makes the Internet Computer so efficient?
The Internet Computer works very differently to other blockchains, and is powered by advanced new cryptography. Internally, the network is able to strictly limit the replication of data and computation, while still providing the liveness and security guarantees expected of a blockchain.
Liveness Guarantee : Liveness means the system will always execute a program (even if it has to slow down) but it’s never off or dead. It’s a key guarantee that blockchains provide.
Replication: Replication determines the amount of energy consumed. It is the number of machines running the same computation. A system with 1000 machines running same computation spends 10x more energy than a system with 100 machines running the same computation.
The Internet Computer network directly applies replication, in combination with advanced cryptography, to create a tamperproof platform with far better liveness guarantees than traditional IT. Yet, it also limits replication compared to other blockchains creating high efficiency.
Services built using traditional IT platform often heavily reply upon replication and the replication is tagged-on, rather than being a core part of how the underlying platform works, making them less efficient.
A peek into the future
A key objective of the Internet Computer is, over time, to provide a public compute platform that provides a more power efficient way for the world to build systems and services. While The Internet Computer today already shows impressive performance, and as per estimates, the energy consumption of the IC will be much lower than currently in the future. At the hypothetically fully utlilized IC, one update call would consume just 38.95 J (Joules) and one query call as low as 0.59 J.
Imagine a decentralized world where there are no big tech organizations ruling our everyday life, where the decision making power lies in the hands of users & not one board of directors, where archaic economic systems are replaced by transparency & trust. All this along with it being greener as well. That’s the Internet Computer mission!
Source : https://wiki.internetcomputer.org/wiki/Internet_Computer_performance_%26_power_consumption
