What's the environmental impact of blockchain gaming - and what can be done about it today

Jun 29, 2022

Blockchain gaming: on the greener side of the “emission spectrum"? Image: Business Insider.

Moritz Baier-Lentz

Partner; Head, Gaming, Lightspeed Venture Partners

Our Impact

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how Media, Entertainment and Sport is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

Media, Entertainment and Sport

Listen to the article

Have you read?

Energy consumption of Bitcoin mining versus other innovations Image: NYDIG.

Bitcoin and energy consumption Image: Financial Times.

blockchain gaming energy consumption network difficulty

Network difficulty to mine a new block for blockchain. Image: Blockchain.com, as of May 9th, 2022.

blockchain gaming Bitcoin electronic waste generation

Bitcoin electronic waste generation. Image: Digiconomist.

So what is it about blockchain gaming that consumes energy? Image: DeFi Kingdoms.

Blockchain gaming accounted for 112 million in transactions, the highest among the listed categories. Image: Naavik.

bitcoin gaming energy consumption Etherium

The Ethereum Foundation expects PoS will reduce the network's energy consumption by 99.5%. Image: Ethereum Foundation.

blockchain gaming yearly carbon footprint

Yearly carbon footprint of PoS networks compared to a roundtrip flight in business class. Image: CCRI.

Image: Solana.

Comparison of CO2 emissions of Bitcoin transactions with that from one US home, one Ethereum transaction, etc. Image: Polygon.

Image: Polygon.

Bitcoin production environmental friendly coal blockchain gaming

The reason why renewables aren’t more prevalent is simple: Bitcoin production historically was “mainly located in areas using the least environmentally-friendly source, coal. Image: 3rd Global Cryptocurrency Benchmarking Study, Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance.

Image: KlimaDAO as of April 21st, 2022.

Galaxy Digital’s mining arm's research report aptly titled “A Quantitative Approach to a Subjective Question”) showed that Bitcoin’s energy consumption at the time was still far below that of both the banking system and gold. Image: Galaxy Digital Mining.

Image: Statista.

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.