Nov 3, 2021
Introducing DIA’s Carbon Neutral Oracle Initiative
This initiative is designed to offset DIA’s oracle carbon footprint, in partnership with a DAO chosen program and by leveraging the DIA platform capabilities.
Blockchain and the environmental impact
One of the major criticisms of blockchains has been the environmental impact of their energy consumption. Especially blockchains that leverage proof-of-work consensus mechanisms like Bitcoin or Ethereum require large and increasing amounts of energy to operate. According to Fortune, a single Ethereum transaction consumes as much electricity as an average U.S. household uses in a workweek — and has a carbon footprint equivalent to 140,893 Visa credit card transactions or 10,595 hours of watching YouTube.
There have been a number of innovations and initiatives to address this issue. Inspired by the Paris Agreement of 2015, the Crypto Climate Accord was borned, aimed to decarbonise the crypto industry. DeFi’s backbone network Ethereum, is looking to upgrade to ETH2 and switch to a more energy efficient consensus mechanism known as Proof-of-Stake. Nonetheless, the energy usage of the Blockchain networks and the associated estimated carbon emissions remain a topic of concern.
The DIA Carbon Neutral Oracle Initiative
At DIA, being a blockchain-native project, we are aware of the responsibility which the use of energy-intensive networks entails. As a data provider, we not only leverage blockchain to supply smart contracts with oracles, we are also in a unique position to estimate the impact that the use of decentralised ledgers has.
Embracing this responsibility, we propose to take the first steps to counter externalities of on-chain operations, starting with DIA’s oracle usage. Leveraging DIA’s data infrastructure, we are able to track the volume of on-chain oracle transactions across ledgers and calculate the associated energy consumption. This, in turn, will enable us to approximate the resulting carbon emissions in order to be able to offset them.
We have identified a number of potential partners that can operationalise the offsetting and ask you, the DIA DAO, to help us choose the right one. We introduce each potential partner below and call on the DIA community to engage in the discussion on our DAO forum and cast your vote on your preferred partner.
The next steps in this DAO vote will be:
Wednesday, November 3
- Discussion: open discussion happening in the DAO Forum
- Proposal: community feedback will be collected.
Friday, November 5
- Review: an admin will review it and put it up for a vote
- Vote: DIA token holders will be able to vote on DIA’s Snapshot page
Monday, November 8
- End of vote: voting on Snapshot ends and results will be made public
- Implementation: the DIA core team will work to make the proposal come to life. Outcome will be communicated as the project progress.
Partner Proposals
MyClimate
myclimate offers bespoke solutions for sustainability and climate protection to companies of all sizes. The wide range of services — from emissions calculation to the subsequent measures to reduce them, right through to the development of a climate strategy and an offsetting offer — allows you to take responsibility, as well as to actively shape the future.
AtmosFair
AtmosFair is a German non-profit organization that actively contributes to CO₂ mitigation by promoting, developing and financing renewable energies in over 15 countries worldwide. AtmosFair relies exclusively on voluntary climate payments from private individuals and businesses.
ClimateTrade
ClimatTrade connects companies willing to offset their carbon emissions to a large number of verified environmental projects. ClimatTrade aims to help companies achieve carbon neutrality by providing our innovative emissions offsetting services. ClimateTrade offers traceability with blockchain technology.
Wren
Wren, part of Y Combinator’s S19 class, is a subscription-based service for individuals that offsets carbon footprints by planting trees. Every project on Wren has a monitoring plan to ensure it’s having the promised impact. From monitoring satellite imagery to measuring tree trunks, Wren rigorously quantifies your impact.
Moss
Moss combat efforts by tokenizing carbon credits. The proceeds from this tokenization project have helped to protect indirectly almost 1 mm hectares of the Amazon forest from deforestation. Subsequently, this initiative will serve as a stepping stone toward creating a digital, global solution to thwart climate change.
