NFT

Environmental concerns

NFT purchases and sales have been enabled by the high energy usage, and consequent greenhouse gas emissions, associated with some kinds of blockchain transactions. Though all forms of Ethereum transactions have had an impact on the environment, the direct impact of these transaction has also depended on the size of the transaction. The proof-of-work protocol required to regulate and verify blockchain transactions on networks (including Ethereum until 2022) consumes a large amount of electricity. To estimate the carbon footprint of a given NFT transaction requires a variety of assumptions or estimations about the manner in which that transaction is set up on the blockchain, the economic behavior of blockchain miners (and the energy demands of their mining equipment), and the amount of renewable energy being used on these networks. There are also conceptual questions, such as whether the carbon footprint estimate for an NFT purchase should incorporate some portion of the ongoing energy demand of the underlying network, or just the marginal impact of that particular purchase. An analogy might be the carbon footprint associated with an additional passenger on a given airline flight.