NFTrade Looks to Sustainability with New Carbon Offset Feature

NFT marketplace NFTrade is going ‘climate-positive,’ by offsetting the carbon emissions caused by NFT transactions in a new partnership with BrokoliNetwork.

In a recent announcement over Twitter, NFTrade revealed its partnership with BrokoliNetwork, a green metaverse project and NFTrade’s tree-planting partner, who promises to plant a tree for every user who chooses to pay an additional $2.

Climate-positive moving forward?

Describing the initiative as a “climate-positive” step forward, questions on whether the feature will offset the carbon cost of transactions moving forward, still remain.

“Right now it really depends on the chain,” NFTrade’s head of communications Harrison Seletsky told BeInCrypto.

“Some chains are more climate intensive in terms of how much [environmental] effect they have. For instance, Ethereum is proof of work so that is more intensive, but chains that are proof of stake such as Avalanche and Binance Smart Chain have less impact. So while we are calling this carbon offset, when we implement it with Avalanche there is going to be a net positive effect in that we’ll be saving more carbon energy than the actual transactions produce.”

While Ethereum remains proof of work for now, the network does have long-standing plans to switch to proof of stake in the future, which should further improve the effectiveness of NFTrade’s tree-planting efforts over time.

An answer to critics?

If NFTrade can help to drive NFTs towards a greener future, then industry critics and outsiders may be forced to rethink their position, but Seletsky is more focused on how carbon offsetting will improve the industry for the NFT community.

“It’s a really nice way to reach out to our community and show them we’re actively looking to solve these problems, it’s not just all about making money, it’s about contributing to and improving this ecosystem,” he said.

That’s not to say that Seletsky is afraid to defend the NFT industry when necessary. In December 2021 the communication chief argued that NFTs are already more environmentally friendly than producing physical art. He affirmed it’s a view he still holds to.

At present, the carbon offset scheme is completely voluntary. Users who want to offset the cost of their transaction can opt-in and contribute around $2 to Brokoli Network, a green metaverse project and NFTrade’s tree-planting partner.

With such a lost cost to high benefit ratio, we questioned why the scheme will remain voluntary, rather than being built-in to the marketplace by default.

“We don’t want to necessarily impose it on people, we want it to be an option, especially in crypto we want users to retain sovereignty,” he said. “By making it easy to access with a single button click we feel that this is the right way to do it.”

The opt-in nature of the scheme means that NFTrade will engage in an interesting experiment. By asking NFTrade users to contribute a small fee for carbon offsetting, NFTrade will uniquely test the industry and the priorities of its users.

Seletsky says NFTrade has set no hard target for the adoption of their tree-planting scheme, but in the weeks and months to come those adoption rates will reveal just how much NFT users really care about the environment.

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