Yes, you read that right, if the Solana ecosystem tried to run with all its features on Proof-of-Work, it would consume more electricity than the entire world does in a year. Let’s break it down.
Energy consumption
In 2021, solana had an average transaction of 2000-3000 transactions per second, which is 172-260 million transactions per day and 63-95 billion transactions per year.
The average energy consumption for PoS in bitcoin is approximately 1,335 kWh per transaction. If we apply the same average value to every transaction on Solana and its volume in a year, it would give an approximate value of 84,000 – 127,000 TWh.In 2021, the global energy consumption was approximately 25,000 TWh, which is 3-5 times lower than the energy solana would have consumed if it operated on a PoW system, indicating that such a scenario was actually impossible
Mining expense
The cost of mining varies by location, but assuming a price of $0.005 per kWh, typical in low-cost regions, and an estimated energy consumption of 84,000 TWh, which is also or 84 trillion kWh, the annual cost would be approximately $4.2 trillion which is larger than the entire GDP of Germany.
Energy consumption after crypto moving to Proof-of-Stake
Ethereum’s Merge from PoW to PoS cut its energy consumption by ~99.98%. Solana, which launched directly as PoS + Proof-of-History, has always been in that efficient category. If it had started as PoW in 2021 and later “merged” to PoS, its carbon emissions would have dropped by almost 100% overnight.
Solana’s peak year
In 2021, Solana skyrocketed above $200, and people were calling it an Ethereum killer, with everything trending and having a huge amount of volume in the ecosystem.
Pumping tokens everywhere and NFT marketplaces such as Magiceden were all trending with thousands of transactions per second
Could Solana exist without PoS or PoH?
The answer is a clear no. If Proof-of-Stake and Proof-of-History had never been created, Solana as we know it today would not exist. A PoW version of Solana in 2021, handling thousands of transactions every second, would have used between 84,000 and 127,000 TWh of electricity in just one year, that’s three to five times more than the entire world used that same year. The electricity bill alone would have run into trillions of dollars, more than the economy of most countries, and the network would have had to give up its speed and accessibility just to keep going.
Solana’s big moment in 2021, its price shooting past $200, NFTs exploding on Magic Eden, and people calling it an “Ethereum killer”was only possible because it ran on Proof-of-Stake and Proof-of-History. Without them, the network would have collapsed under impossible energy demands instead of becoming the fast and efficient blockchain that made it famous.
