Today Spatial celebrates Earth Day in collaboration with amazing galleries on our platform that serve as activists for the environment. Even though we can make many worlds virtually, we only have one planet Earth. It is important that we all strive to treat Earth with reverence.
NFTs are making a significant impact both on the art market and the environment. Spatial is committed to understanding the ways that trading in cryptocurrencies affect the world and doing what we can to enable sustainable use of our platform. We partnered this Earth Day with projects that are dedicated to conservation and sustainability.
1. ZooLife, the world's first virtual zoo, is livestreaming animals into Spatial. You can walk around and view them as if you were walking around a zoo. ZooLife showcases immersive animal experiences hosted by experts, streaming live from the world's top accredited zoos, sanctuaries and rehabilitation centers. Each animal experience is designed to bring you closer to nature and offer innovative new ways of learning, protecting and engaging with the natural world, from home. In Spatial this exhibit is taking place inside nature photographer Steve Cannon's, "Safari" Gallery.
2. In tandem with Earth Day, it is National Parks Week! National Parks NFT community is vibrant, with 1,800+ outdoor enthusiasts holding unique & beautiful NFT assets. As a member you receive benefits for enjoying the outdoors with your passion for national parks. You can attend meet-ups or trivia and earn points to use to buy real National Park Passes! Supporting our national parks helps conserve wildlife and biodiversity.
3. Sunken Blimp is a vessel for interdisciplinary design explorations. They are a community-based project launchpad designed to bring its community the tools and knowledge necessary to build innovations that deal with the future of living. The approach for Sunken Blimp is phygital, combining fields like Architecture, Design, 3D printing, Projection Mapping, VR & AR among others
4. Terrafor-Meta is a beautiful intergalactic environment that shows off a space-station level view of Earth. Visit for a unique opportunity to float above the world.
As beneficial as NTFs have been for artists and collectors, there has been some concern about the NFT environmental impact in general. Since many of the transactions occur on energy-intensive blockchains, some people argue that NFTs contribute to problems associated with climate change.
Most NFT transactions occur on the Ethereum blockchain. While it does not consume as much energy as the Bitcoin blockchain, it does have an overall energy consumption that would compare to some countries. For those concerned with their NFT environmental impact, keep reading to gain a deeper understanding of how NFTs are evolving to become climate-positive.
This might seem unsustainable on its face, but it is not nearly as bad as it sounds. First, you can’t blame all of Ethereum’s carbon emissions on NFTs. They only account for a very small fraction of the transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. Along with that, you have digital artists and crypto enthusiasts working on ways to make NFTs better for the environment.
1. Carbon Offsets
Carbon offsets will probably be one of the first NFT climate change solutions. An offset is a way to compensate for GHG emissions by engaging in an activity that reduces or removes CO2 or other greenhouse gases from the environment. Things like investing in green energy or carbon capture technology could be examples of carbon offsets. Some NFTs have even experimented with linking transactions to carbon offsets like planting trees as a way to make up for the emissions produced by the blockchain.
2. Green Crypto Networks
Much of the NFT environment issue comes from the energy consumed by the blockchains that verify the transactions. With some of these networks, even a single transaction can consume a considerable amount of electricity. One way to make these networks better for the environment is to get mining facilities to switch to renewable energy. People in the crypto community can encourage miners to set up facilities in places that use more green energy. Even better, miners can save money and contribute to sustainability by installing solar panels to power their facilities.
3. Lazy Minting and Batch Minting
Artists and collectors can also manage the NFT environmental impact by being thoughtful about the techniques they use for minting. As an example, you have options like lazy minting and batch minting. With batch minting, you can mint NFTs in large batches to make them all a part of the same transaction. With lazy minting, you create the NFT and list it for sale, but the minting does not occur until it is sold. This rolls all of the smaller transactions that go into minting and selling an NFT into one transaction. These techniques are usually promoted as ways to save money on fees, but they could also be used as methods to reduce energy consumption on the blockchain.
4. Proof of Stake Mining
One of the problems with many blockchains is that they run on Proof of Work (PoW) mining. With PoW, miners need incredible computing power to validate blocks. As an alternative, some blockchains now use Proof of Stake (PoS) mining. Instead of mining capabilities being determined by computing power, miners have to stake crypto coins. A higher stake means more mining power. The stake is also there to enforce the rules of the blockchain. We already see some NFT marketplaces using PoS blockchains as a way to be more affordable and more sustainable. There are even plans for an Ethereum Proof of Stake upgrade.
There is no magic solution that will eliminate the NFT climate change impact. It is going to require a variety of solutions. With that said, if artists and collectors make their voices heard and people deploy the right solutions, NFTs could become carbon neutral. It might even be possible to make them a force for fighting climate change.
Since our founding as a virtual collaboration platform, it has been our hope that Spatial can make a positive impact in reducing unnecessary travel and carbon emissions. Since working in the NFT space, Spatial has worked hard to accomplish our goal of supporting two proof of stake blockchains by the end of Q2 2022.
