WEF launches Crypto Sustainability Coalition with Stellar Lumens and Avalanche to battle climate change

  • The new coalition will focus on how Web 3 technologies will have an impact on climate change.
  • It will also explore how these technologies can play a key role in decarbonizing current activities.

As the crypto and the blockchain industry advances toward new developments, global organizations are leveraging tech to accomplish key goals. Last month in September, the World Economic Forum (WEF) launched the Crypto Sustainability Coalition.

This initiative works on assessing the role of Web 3 technology in its fight against climate change. Web 3, a term that combines blockchain-based technologies and crypto, has been in the spotlight recently. The World Economic Forum (WEF) seeks to determine whether the use of these technologies has any ill effects on climate change.

Announced last month on September 21, the initiative is called Crypto Sustainability Coalition. It comprises 30 different companies along with educative organizations and other institutions. It also includes some of the well-known cryptocurrency projects such as Stellar Foundation, Avalanche, Solana, Ripple, Circle and NEAR Foundation.

This coalition will work as part of the Crypto Impact and Sustainability Accelerator which is another major initiative launched earlier this year. The coalition will inquire about the different ways in which these companies can work together. Speaking on this development, Brynly Llyr, head of the blockchain and digital assets of the World Economic Forum stated:

An important and unique aspect of Web3 is that it uses technology to support and reward direct community engagement and action. This means we can coordinate the work of many individuals directly with one another, enabling collective action without centralized control.

Understanding key areas of the crypto ecosystem

This new initiative by World Economic Forum (WEF) has created different working groups which will investigate three subjects relating to blockchain, crypto, and its usage. One of these points has to do with the energy consumption of these technologies. The initiative will also work on how these technologies can impact the climate in the future.

There have been several debates on Bitcoins energy use in the past. The Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism that Bitcoin uses requires high-tech equipment which consumes a large amount of energy. The Bitcoin network has also faced major criticism for its energy consumption in the past. Ethereum, which was previously using similar technology, recently switched to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).

Thus, as crypto and blockchain expand into Web 3, the World Economic Forum (WEF) is assessing how this could impact the climate in the future. Another major outlook of the Crypto Sustainability Coalition is how Web 3 technology can advance and help in decarbonizing current activities. The applications might include mining and other decentralized activities.

The third subject will be standardizing and putting carbon credits in the blockchain. These will make the issuance and management of these instruments more transparent.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) looks to leverage different crypto technologies for different purposes. Back in 2020, WEF partnered with Chainlink to build a bridge between legacy systems and blockchain environments.