The research discovered that DOT utilizes only 6.6 times the energy the typical US home uses per year, leaving it as the lowest power-consuming crypto asset among the major chains. For contrast, ETH consumes 1.6 million times what the typical US family uses in power whereas that amount peaks to 8.6 million for BTC, as per the CCRI.
“An average US family spends approximately 10,600 kWh annually and consequently, the least energy consuming network Polkadot consumes roughly 6.6x times the power and the most energy consuming blockchain Solana over 200 times the power (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2021)… Bitcoin uses far more power than any Proof of Stake (PosS) network owing to its Proof of Work consensus (PoW) process, leading to the installation of energy-intensive equipment.”
The data indicates main smart contract platform ETH is close behind BTC with respect to power utilization, followed by rest of the layer-1 protocols Solana (SOL), Algorand (ALGO), Avalanche (AVAX), Cardano (ADA), and Tezos (XTZ) (XTZ).
“Algorand takes up to the multiplier of 9 relative to all other cryptocurrencies such as Cardano and Polkadot. Tezos is in between these two groupings. It takes up to multiplier 5 of the low-energy blockchain networks, but only approximately 50% of Algorand’s intake.”
Polkadot is trading hands for $21.45 while writing this article, a 23% rise from its seven-day peak of $17.42.