Green NFTs: A Study on the Environmental Impact of Cryptoart Technologies

Abstract

We introduce a model of greenhouse gas emissions due to on-chain activity on Ethereum, focusing on cryptoart. We also estimate the impact of individual transactions on the environment, both before and after the London hard fork. We find that with the current fee mechanism, spending one dollar on transaction fees corresponds to emitting at least the equivalent of 1.305 kilograms of CO2. We also describe several techniques to reduce cryptoart emissions, both in the short and long term.