Solana Transactions Greener Than Google Searches, Platform Says

Solana transactions use very little energy as compared to its contemporaries, a new report from the blockchain platform states. As per its latest Energy Use Report, Solana claims two Google searches consume more energy than a single Solana transaction. The network unearthed that Solana transactions require 24 times less energy than charging a mobile phone for an hour consumes. The annual energy consumption on Solana is 3,186,000 Kilowatt-hour (kWh), the report says.

While one Solana transaction consumes 1,837 Joules of energy, two Google searches eat up 2,160 Joules of power, the report by Solana said. In terms of crypto, while one Bitcoin transaction consumes 6,995,592,000 Joules of energy, while a single Ethereum transaction gobbles 692,820,000 Joules.

“In total, the entire Solana network — with 1,196 validator nodes and an estimated 20,000,000 transactions — uses an estimated 3,186,000 kWh per year. This is the equivalent of the average electricity usage of 986 American households,” the study said.

This report, establishing Solana is greener than other popular crypto networks, comes at a time several countries have expressed concerns about the high-energy demand of crypto activities.

Between January 1, 2016, and June 30, 2018, the mining operations for four major cryptocurrencies released up to an estimated 13 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

Earlier this month, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said it has foreseen a five-fold increment in energy loads that would be required to support the Bitcoin mining facilities cropping up in the state. Residents, at the time, had linked crypto-related activities to the major power outages they suffered in December last year, leading to hundreds of deaths due to cold.

In September, China imposed a blanket ban on crypto mining and trading.

Commenting on the move, Elon Musk had said, “part of it may actually be due to electricity shortages in many parts of China. A lot of South China right now is having random power outages because the power demand is higher than expected. Crypto mining might be playing a role in that”.

The Solana foundation has pledged that it will release regular reports on its energy consumption, while pro-actively making eco-friendly decisions in the development of the network.

Launched as a competitor to the Ethereum network, Solana launched its beta network in March 2020. Its native token is SOL, with an impressive market cap of $58,818,583,551 (roughly Rs. 4,41,580 crore), as per CoinMarketCap