Don’t Buy Meme ($MEME) has taken the DeFi world by storm — since its inception, the community-created token has grown over 900% in value.
Part of the increase in demand is because users need MEME tokens in order to stake them and earn pineapples. Similar to the yield farming craze, to mint these non-fungible tokens (NFTs), one must first stake MEME.
Originally started as a joke (err, meme?), the growing project currently has a 24hr trading volume of $2M and a $16M market cap, as of September 28th, 2020.
So don’t be fooled by the name. MEME is an innovative, experimental platform for digital artists to explore new avenues to share and tokenize their works. Early collectors and fans can stake, farm, then purchase these pieces and keep them for themselves or potentially resell them later if they choose.
Users were explicitly told not to buy meme, but the opposite has occurred.
DeFi Builders & Creators
Sven Eberwein, a digital artist, works at the intersection of computer graphics and internet culture. His works emerge from references he collects around the “World Wild Web” and set to explore their impact and relevance in new contexts. In his words, he produces “Works of the internet, by the internet, for the internet.”
His artist collection series, the first of its kind on Don’t Buy Meme, pays homage to the strong pineapple symbology.
How We Calculated ETH Emissions
We worked with Sven to calculate the CO2 emitted from the $MEME x SVEN pool contract with the following methodology.
In short, we examined the total gas usage of contract interactions from its launch until September 22nd. We then multiplied this value by the emissions coefficient per unit of gas derived from Offsetra’s analysis of the Ethereum network. This emissions coefficient is a function of electricity usage and what’s termed a grid emissions factor, which are available on a per country basis, derived through careful analysis of a country’s electricity generation profiles and the overall efficiency of its power system.
As expected, mining activities in one country may yield vastly different emissions when compared with such activities in another country (some countries have cleaner electricity grids due to the proportion of their electricity generated from non-fossil sources, e.g. wind power).
For a more detailed overview of our methodology, visit our draft document ETH — CO2 methodology.
Importantly, for large mining operations the chief variable of concern is electricity cost — not the climate-friendliness of the electricity. There is a geography which marries these two concerns though; namely, Iceland. Though the Ethereum network would be much greener if all of the computing power was located on that beautiful island, it certainly wouldn’t abide by the principle of decentralization.
Carbon Neutral NFT Release
Sven has offset 22 tonnes of VCUs from the Bull Run Forest Carbon project. The Bull Run project, in addition to having a name familiar to crypto-enthusiasts, is designed to protect 4,650 ha of tropical pine forests, grasslands, and mature humid broad-leaf forest in the Cayo District of Belize, Central America. This area, which lies 23.5 km east-southeast of San Ignacio, Belize, includes 15 IUCN listed endangered species! The property consists primarily of a tropical pine savannah with a small component of tropical mixed broad-leaf forest. Several studies involving bird conservation and protection on the property have been undertaken in the years since the project started, including a study on the threatened orange-breasted falcon.
We’re certain that Sven’s commitment with Offsetra makes this the first carbon neutral NFT release.
Why Does This Matter?
For starters, we’ve been thinking about this awhile — our founding team has been involved in the digital payments and cryptocurrency spaces for a number of years. Whether it’s pineapples being farmed for artwork or sending ETH to someone for building a web application, transactions result in carbon emissions.
Remember using ATI 290x graphics cards to mine Dogecoin in 2013? We do.Alas, the times of mining scrypt-based cryptocurrencies using GPUs has long passed. Nowadays our efforts are focused on understanding the environmental impact of the Ethereum network. For additional reading, you can take a high level look on those efforts in our article, The Climate Impact of Cryptocurrencies.
If you’d like to offset your ETH contract’s emissions or explore other business opportunities, send us an email to info at offsetra.com. You can also evaluate the carbon footprint of your own ETH transactions at carbon.fyi.
Be sure to follow us on Twitter and visit Offsetra for other ongoing developments.
The Offsetra Team
