Live Stubs are minted on Polygon, an eco-friendly Proof of Stake blockchain with a low carbon footprint.
With Proof of Work blockchains becoming a hot topic for discussion as far as carbon footprint and eco-friendliness go, where does Polygon — with its Proof of Stake consensus mechanism — rank in terms of its ecological footprint?
As per estimates, the biggest Proof of Work blockchains can consume a yearly quota of anywhere between 35–140 TWh of electricity, with a continuous draw of anywhere between 3–15 GW of electricity. Just the two biggest Proof of Work blockchains would be ranked 27th in yearly energy consumption if it were a country — above the likes of Sweden, Vietnam and Argentina.
It is clear that Proof of Work eats away a huge chunk of the global sustainable energy budget every year.
By contrast, Polygon’s validators approximately consume 0.00079TWh of electricity yearly with an approximate continuous draw of 0.00009GW, orders of magnitude below the energy consumption by the major Proof of Work blockchain networks.
Comparison between Proof of Work blockchains and Polygon:
Energy consumption
Hourly Electricity Draw comparison
With Polygon deploying a Proof of Stake mechanism, instead of having to deploy large computational resources to mine/verify each transaction on the blockchain like Proof of Work, validators can instead stake a certain amount of cryptocurrency on to a smart contract which then delegates the responsibility to validate/verify transactions based on smart contract regulations and amount of cryptocurrency staked. Thus, validators move from a more computationally competitive verifying mechanism (Proof of Work) to one where it’s not a race towards the end, ultimately depending on smart contract execution.
Polygon’s Proof of Stake validators consume electricity energy which is multiple orders of magnitude below Proof of Work-based blockchain miners and that translates to more eco-friendliness and considerably fewer carbon emissions.
Source: https://blog.polygon.technology/