Solana releases dashboard tracking real-time emissions

As of today, the Solana Foundation leads the way by making Solana the first significant smart-contract blockchain to have its emissions tracked in real-time.

The emissions monitoring system was created in partnership with Trycarbonara, a carbon data platform, and integrates software directly into Solana nodes, offering the most detailed and precise measurement of the blockchain's carbon footprint so far. This measurement fluctuates according to each validator's throughput, their online and offline status, and changes in the validator network over time. The data now includes the following aspects for the first time:

1. Emissions measurement of RPC nodes through instrumentation of the underlying hardware.
2. Emissions granularity at the server level, factoring in the geolocation of validator and RPC nodes.
3. Marginal (or consequential) emissions, based on the incremental emissions impact of new demand in relation to the overall distribution of grid supply. This framework is beneficial for assessing the environmental effects of alterations and optimizations in energy consumption, taking into account the renewable energy mix from various electricity sources.
4. Embodied emissions, which consider the manufacturing, transportation, and end-of-life management of the Solana Network's hardware infrastructure.
5. Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), is a metric that indicates the overall efficiency of a data center.

The Solana Foundation has consistently commissioned independent third-party evaluations of the Solana network's emissions. The Foundation is dedicated to enhancing the accuracy and comprehensiveness of these measurements over time.

Going forward, the Solana Foundation plans to monitor the introduction of new features anticipated to increase the network's energy efficiency and facilitate environmentally conscious decision-making within the Solana community.

1. On-chain offsets: Multiple teams are working on solutions to introduce tokenized carbon and other nature-based credits on-chain, and the Foundation will support these efforts wherever possible.
2. Wallet-level emissions analysis: The Foundation is exploring options to offer emissions data for users' personal on-chain carbon footprints based on their wallet addresses.
3. Automatic offset purchases: The Foundation is interested in initiatives that enable continuous net-zero status by facilitating automatic offset purchases at regular intervals.

This is another step forward for Solana in the fight against misinformation. From now on, anyone can see real-time emissions of the Solana blockchain.