Homegrown blockchain co Polygon commits to go carbon neutral this year

Blockchain start-up Polygon, formerly known as Matic, has pledged $20 million to offset the impact of its CO2 emissions and has decided to go carbon-neutral

By Shashank Bhardwaj

Image: Shutterstock

On Tuesday, April 12, the Polygon network announced its intention to become carbon-neutral and climate positive this year. As part of an effort to fully offset the impact of its carbon-dioxide emissions, the platform has also pledged $20 million.

The company state its pledge in the recently released ‘Green Manifesto: A Smart Contract with Planet Earth’ report.

Formerly known as Matic, Polygon is an Ethereum-based software platform that enables developers to build scalable and user-friendly decentralised applications (dApps) at cheap transaction fees while maintaining network security. It was founded in India in October 2017 by Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, and Anurag Arjun.

"Freedom is at the centre of the Web3 ethos," reads the Green Manifesto. “Since the Enlightenment, the concern around liberty has been with oppression inflicted on people by other people. But climate change enters the stage as a powerful non-human actor that threatens to exacerbate all the existing injustices and introduce new ones. If we are serious about changing the world for the better, that’s something we simply cannot ignore.”

As the popularity of digital currencies has grown, the cryptocurrency and blockchain industries have come under fire for their unsustainable electricity consumption.

And this is exactly why Polygon has decided to go carbon-neutral. According to the Green Manifesto published on Polygon's official website, “This means that every transaction is accounted for and its environmental impact is offset. When this goal is achieved, Polygon will work on becoming the first blockchain to be climate positive.”

As part of this latest initiative, Polygon is collaborating with KlimaDAO, an organisation of developers that delivers on-chain carbon offsetting technology. Polygon intends to use KlimaDAO data to calculate and offset the company's carbon emissions and will purchase $400,000 in carbon credits through the decentralised autonomous organisation. According to Nailwal, the company would also sponsor projects to establish carbon credit trading on the blockchain.

“Through our sustainability commitment and community-driven efforts, we can successfully address societal shifts, avoid the worst impacts of climate change, and meet the sustainable development goals set out by the United Nations,” Nailwal said. These scalability and sustainability initiatives from Polygon are part of a larger campaign to encourage the mainstream adoption of Web3 apps.

The writer is a founder at yMedia. He ventured into crypto in 2013 and is an ETH maximalist.

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