The World Wildlife Fund advertised and then quietly scrapped plans to raise money for conservation initiatives by minting its own NFTs last week within a few days of last week’s announcement. WWF’s UK chapter released “Tokens for Nature” portraying 13 endangered species, sparking outrage. A gigantic panda, Javan rhinoceros, and Galápagos penguin are among the animals depicted in the tokens. As a result, they enraged a lot of environmentalists.
“At first, I thought [the NFTs from World Wildlife Fund] were a joke… According to digital currency analyst Alex de Vries, “They’re supposed to be all about sustainable ideas, and they’re getting engaged with one of the least sustainable things on the earth.”
Create an Eco-Friendly NFT
A so-called Layer 2 blockchain connected to the Ethereum network, the World Wildlife Fund appeared to believe it had discovered a solution to the climate problem surrounding NFTs by collaborating with the Polygon. De Vries, however, told The Verge that Polygon is accountable for part of the pollution caused by the notoriously energy inefficient Ethereum and isn’t counting it, despite Polygon’s assertion that transactions on its blockchain consume relatively little energy. With the help of Ethereum, de Vries calculates that a single Polygon transaction is 2,100 times more expensive than what WWF had projected.
The debate stems from the question of whether or not Layer 2 blockchains minimise energy consumption. Ethereum’s method of verifying transactions is slow, expensive, and energy-intensive, despite the fact that most NFTs are a part of it. A growing number of companies are seeking for ways to increase the capacity of Ethereum. To put it another way, think of Polygon as an additional carpool lanes on the Ethereum expressway.
World Wildlife Fund Tried
Layer 2 networks, like a carpool lane, are designed to expedite transactions. In theory, this will save time, money, and — crucially — energy for Polygon. On one of its blogs, Polygon refers to itself as “the eco-friendly Ethereum scaling blockchain.” De Vries estimates that Ethereum’s annual carbon footprint is comparable to Singapore’s, due to its usage of an energy-intensive method to validate transactions. Since Polygon employs a new method to validate transactions, it claims to have a far smaller impact on the environment.