Ethereum-Killer Blockchain Algorand Goes Carbon Negative

Alogrand, one of the popular Ethereum killers, has announced going carbon negative by introducing the first smart contract to automate the offsetting of carbon emissions.

Last week, on the occasion of Earth Day, the company announced the introduction a smart contract that will ensure that the carbon footprint of every transaction on its blockchain is offset without any action by the people or companies making them.

"Climate change is among the most pressing issues the world faces today. Efficiency and a minimal energy consumption footprint simply must be table stakes for all enduring future technology," said Naveed Ihsanullah, vice president of engineering research at Algorand.

It works like this: The smart contract will direct a part of the network fee from the transactions to buy carbon credits through ClimateTrade, a CO2 emissions marketplace that tracks offsets on Algorand's blockchain.

"Algorand, a blockchain leader in this space, is seeing tremendous adoption from eco-conscious brands, creators and developers, and we're proud to take another step forward in our commitment to sustainability with the introduction of smart contracts permanently enforcing our carbon offsetting pledge," Ihsanullah said.

And to make that point, the company blacked out nearly 20 of Times Square’s iconic billboards on April 21.

“We are turning off Times Square for an hour so everybody can just take a pause and reflect for an hour on the importance of mother earth,” Algorand Foundation CEO Staci Warden told PYMNTS.

“With the energy that Times Square uses, we can do 350 million transactions,” she said. “That means 350 million payments.”

That carbon offset becomes a bigger deal when you think about number of payments, she added.

Algorand pitches itself as a power-saving blockchain for decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to micropayments, partly because its proof of stake (PoS) blockchain uses less electricity compared to Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Last year, Algorand partnered with ClimateTrade in order to improve the efficiency of sustainability efforts for corporations.