The World Economic Forum (WEF) is in the news with the launch of a new coalition on Web 3.0. The Crypto Sustainability Coalition was launched, on 21 September, by WEF in an attempt to understand how Web 3.0 and blockchain tools can be leveraged to achieve positive climate action.
The coalition brings together 30 organizations from the public and private sectors.
Why is the coalition important?
The launch reflects the rising demand for a more eco-friendly crypto ecosystem in recent years. Earlier this month, the Merge marked Ethereum’s transition from the energy intensive Proof-of-Work (PoW) transaction verification mechanism to the energy efficient Proof-of-Stake (PoS) system.
More recently, the Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin noted that he expects PoW blockchains Dogecoin and Zcash to also shift to PoS soon. The WEF coalition takes the sustainability conversation to the next level.
“An important and unique aspect of Web 3.0 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—a powerful accelerator for grass roots action,” Brynly Llyr, head of Blockchain and Digital Assets at WEF, said, explaining the move.
Details about the coalition
The public-private initiative by WEF is going to investigate three relevant climate issues related to the crypto industry:
- Energy use: Taking the push for sustainability further, the Crypto Sustainability Coalition aims to analyze the digital asset industry’s consumption of energy and materials.
- Web 3.0’s potential for climate action: Web 3.0’s transition to sustainable practices needs to keep pace with the Paris Agreement’s targets, and the coalition will help explore the options available.
- “On-chain” carbon credits: The working group is expecting to use blockchain technology’s transparency to create carbon-credit systems. This will help address the lack of transparency around carbon offsets, failure of markets to remove carbon emissions at the scale and pace required, and so on.
The coalition has been launched as part of the WEF’s Crypto Impact and Sustainability Accelerator (CISA). CISA, a grant-funded initiative launched in January 2022, is meant to encourage crypto stakeholders to develop a better understanding of the environmental, social and governance (ESG) impact of blockchain technology.
