New Wave of Eco-Blockchains – why it matters and how you can act

Maciej Zieliński

07 Feb 2022
New Wave of Eco-Blockchains – why it matters and how you can act

The Blockchain community starts to notice the environmental impact of cryptocurrencies and distributed ledger technologies (DLT). Now, there is a new class of projects which combine sustainability and environment with decentralization, which augments their business utility. In this article, we explore the new wave of eco-blockchains, and why you should get on board quickly.

Table of contents:

  • The carbon footprint of blockchain protocols
  • Why validating nodes is so energy-intensive
  • Proof of Work alternatives
  • Eco-friendly blockchains
  • How to lower the energy consumption of alternative finance
  • Blockchain and carbon neutrality

Though undoubtedly successful and enormously powerful, early Blockchain protocols such as the one of Bitcoin, have suffered from limitations to their scalability and sustainability. Because of their consensus mechanism in encrypting new blocks and adding them to the transaction ledger.

So far, the main race in blockchain technology has revolved around combating high transaction fees, boosting algorithm efficiency, and improving the speed of crypto transactions. Those factors have had a clear impact on crypto prices. 

Electricity consumption and carbon footprint

With the growth in the number of users and transactions, Blockchain systems based on the Proof-of-Work (PoW) mechanism require an increased computing power for miners. That causes increasingly-advanced computations to consume more energy as the network size grows. In turn, PoW-based Blockchains – such as the one of Bitcoin – have over time become environmentally unsustainable, because of their high energy consumption. Proof-of-Stake consensus model – e.g. in Ethereum – requires slightly less energy but does not eliminate the problem of limited scalability. 

Energy consumption

BTC alone represents 43% of the overall crypto traffic, which makes it the most popular cryptocurrency. The Bitcoin network has the greatest carbon footprint due to its energy consumption. According to the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, it’s estimated that Bitcoin mining requires 178 TWh of electrical power – roughly the same as the annual consumption of energy in Poland.  

Because of the environmental impact of mining, cryptocurrencies are criticized and compared to centralized financial tools. For example, one BTC creating a new block requires 1779 kWh of power, while 100,000 transactions operated by the payment card provider VISA, consume 189 kWh only. In one transaction, Bitcoin uses as much electricity as an average American household in 67 days. 

Eco blockchains - more sustainable future

Taking into account all the environmental considerations, the new generation of sustainable Blockchains has emerged in response to skyrocketing consumption of miners in conventional cryptocurrencies. Apart from ethical arguments, the reason for their rising popularity is scalability. With the rising prices of cryptocurrencies, miners need to process a greater volume of transactions; especially in 2021, the problem of rising electricity prices and power consumption became a pressing issue, making eco-friendly Blockchains not only an environmentally-sound proposition but also a very convincing use case in business. 

1. Chia - energy-efficient alternative

The Chia coin, powered by the Blockchain called Chia Network, skyrocketed in mid-2021 after its public mainnet launch. The Chia founder, Brian Cohen, is the author of popular software and protocol, BitTorrent. The platform was valuated at $500 million in a recent investment round. The Chia Network is currently the fastest-growing green Blockchain. It is also a smart transaction platform that allows users to take advantage of available hard drive space. Because Chia is also a smart contract platform, there is a new wave of further innovative projects released on the Chia Network that take advantage of carbon-neutral, scalable solutions of the space-based consensus mechanism. 

The Chia solution uses much less electricity compared to cryptocurrencies powered by PoW or the PoS consensus mechanism and allows more people to start mining at a lower cost. To become a Chia miner, one has to simply devote their disc space or use cloud computing platforms such as Amazon Web Services. Since Chia's launch in March 2021, Chia's computer memory usage has grown exponentially. While in mid-May 2021 it was about half a million terabytes of memory, in October this figure multiplied ten times. 

Unlike previous cryptocurrencies, the Chia coin is powered by a Blockchain using the Proof-of-Space-and-Time mechanism. As a result, Chia mining uses neither GPU nor CPU architecture to enable the exchange of data and value, but computer memory. Miners’ hard drive or SSD space powering the Chia Blockchain is connected to the decentralized network where storing a certain amount of data over a certain amount of time is rewarded in XCH, Chia’s token. 

Chia farming is accessible, with neither specialized equipment needed nor massive amounts of power. This makes it not The network’s blockchain transaction platform can be downloaded at chia.net. Users can decide to dedicate a portion of uncommitted hard drive space to the network and receive XCH in exchange, without significantly affecting computer performance or requiring vastly more energy.

2. SolarCoin 

Unlike Chia, which is a brand-new Blockchain and consensus mechanism, SolarCoin exploits the simple idea of smart contracts. It follows the logic of all other cryptocurrencies, but the key difference is that the platform design aims to incentivize real-world environmental activity: verifiably produced solar energy. The smart contract distributes 1 SolarCoin (SLR) for every MWh (megawatt hour) generated from solar panel technology. 

SolarCoin relies on two forms of Proof-of-Work (PoW) protocol. The first is the traditional cryptographic PoW associated with the most conventional cryptocurrencies (e.g. Bitcoin). The second-layer PoW is a verified mechanism that indicates whether the said 1 MWh of power was proved to be produced from solar energy. Then the smart contract distributes SolarCoins using these two PoWs as a means of rewarding green electricity generation.

3. IOTA

As a great add-on to IOTA’s tech proposition, its environmentally-oriented approach is achieved by eliminating miners, since they are the cause of environmental problems of cryptocurrencies.  IOTA uses an alternative to conventional Blockchain called the ‘Tangle’. Instead of mining, the network is maintained by smaller devices and uses calculations that require less power and thus consume less energy per transaction (0.00011 kWh per transaction), making it the most environmentally sustainable among the leading cryptocurrencies. 

The whole crypto community is getting green – so should you!

There are visible signs that the crypto developers are increasingly aware and active to find new ways of offering all the benefits of cryptocurrencies, with none of the unsustainable and environment-harming drawbacks. 

Leading Blockchain firms and corporations signed the Crypto Climate Accord. Its objective is to decarbonize the crypto industry and make it a net-zero greenhouse gas emitter by 2040. It was signed by such important names as Ripple, Consensys, Polygon – and among corporate giants: KPMG and NortonLifeLock.

Whether environmentally friendly by design or business choice, the crypto industry has very convincing arguments to ‘go green’. In the current form, the most popular cryptocurrencies like BTC have been heavily criticised for their unsustainability. Decentralization efforts cannot be sustained if the environmental costs of powering transactions keep rising. Hence, the rise of a new wave of green Blockchains and green cryptocurrencies a clear call to action for several stakeholders.

Given the early stage of development, environment-neutral cryptocurrencies and decentralized protocols are a great space for entrepreneurs to get involved. They can develop their own solutions based on sustainable Blockchains. Beyond optimizations in consensus mechanisms and DLT architectures, there are some of the most exciting business cases, such as green NFTs, exchanges and storage platforms. 

If you want to know how to build your projects based on eco-Blockchains, contact our experts who will be happy to give you a free consultation.

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AI in Real Estate: How Does It Support the Housing Market?

Miłosz Mach

18 Mar 2025
AI in Real Estate: How Does It Support the Housing Market?

The digital transformation is reshaping numerous sectors of the economy, and real estate is no exception. By 2025, AI will no longer be a mere gadget but a powerful tool that facilitates customer interactions, streamlines decision-making processes, and optimizes sales operations. Simultaneously, blockchain technology ensures security, transparency, and scalability in transactions. With this article, we launch a series of publications exploring AI in business, focusing today on the application of artificial intelligence within the real estate industry.

AI vs. Tradition: Key Implementations of AI in Real Estate

Designing, selling, and managing properties—traditional methods are increasingly giving way to data-driven decision-making.

Breakthroughs in Customer Service

AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants are revolutionizing how companies interact with their customers. These tools handle hundreds of inquiries simultaneously, personalize offers, and guide clients through the purchasing process. Implementing AI agents can lead to higher-quality leads for developers and automate responses to most standard customer queries. However, technical challenges in deploying such systems include:

  • Integration with existing real estate databases: Chatbots must have access to up-to-date listings, prices, and availability.
  • Personalization of communication: Systems must adapt their interactions to individual customer needs.
  • Management of industry-specific knowledge: Chatbots require specialized expertise about local real estate markets.

Advanced Data Analysis

Cognitive AI systems utilize deep learning to analyze complex relationships within the real estate market, such as macroeconomic trends, local zoning plans, and user behavior on social media platforms. Deploying such solutions necessitates:

  • Collecting high-quality historical data.
  • Building infrastructure for real-time data processing.
  • Developing appropriate machine learning models.
  • Continuously monitoring and updating models based on new data.

Intelligent Design

Generative artificial intelligence is revolutionizing architectural design. These advanced algorithms can produce dozens of building design variants that account for site constraints, legal requirements, energy efficiency considerations, and aesthetic preferences.

Optimizing Building Energy Efficiency

Smart building management systems (BMS) leverage AI to optimize energy consumption while maintaining resident comfort. Reinforcement learning algorithms analyze data from temperature, humidity, and air quality sensors to adjust heating, cooling, and ventilation parameters effectively.

Integration of AI with Blockchain in Real Estate

The convergence of AI with blockchain technology opens up new possibilities for the real estate sector. Blockchain is a distributed database where information is stored in immutable "blocks." It ensures transaction security and data transparency while AI analyzes these data points to derive actionable insights. In practice, this means that ownership histories, all transactions, and property modifications are recorded in an unalterable format, with AI aiding in interpreting these records and informing decision-making processes.

AI has the potential to bring significant value to the real estate sector—estimated between $110 billion and $180 billion by experts at McKinsey & Company.

Key development directions over the coming years include:

  • Autonomous negotiation systems: AI agents equipped with game theory strategies capable of conducting complex negotiations.
  • AI in urban planning: Algorithms designed to plan city development and optimize spatial allocation.
  • Property tokenization: Leveraging blockchain technology to divide properties into digital tokens that enable fractional investment opportunities.

Conclusion

For companies today, the question is no longer "if" but "how" to implement AI to maximize benefits and enhance competitiveness. A strategic approach begins with identifying specific business challenges followed by selecting appropriate technologies.

What values could AI potentially bring to your organization?
  • Reduction of operational costs through automation
  • Enhanced customer experience and shorter transaction times
  • Increased accuracy in forecasts and valuations, minimizing business risks
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Want to implement AI in your real estate business?

Nextrope specializes in implementing AI and blockchain solutions tailored to specific business needs. Our expertise allows us to:

  • Create intelligent chatbots that serve customers 24/7
  • Implement analytical systems for property valuation
  • Build secure blockchain solutions for real estate transactions
Schedule a free consultation

Or check out other articles from the "AI in Business" series

AI-Driven Frontend Automation: Elevating Developer Productivity to New Heights

Gracjan Prusik

11 Mar 2025
AI-Driven Frontend Automation: Elevating Developer Productivity to New Heights

AI Revolution in the Frontend Developer's Workshop

In today's world, programming without AI support means giving up a powerful tool that radically increases a developer's productivity and efficiency. For the modern developer, AI in frontend automation is not just a curiosity, but a key tool that enhances productivity. From automatically generating components, to refactoring, and testing – AI tools are fundamentally changing our daily work, allowing us to focus on the creative aspects of programming instead of the tedious task of writing repetitive code. In this article, I will show how these tools are most commonly used to work faster, smarter, and with greater satisfaction.

This post kicks off a series dedicated to the use of AI in frontend automation, where we will analyze and discuss specific tools, techniques, and practical use cases of AI that help developers in their everyday tasks.

AI in Frontend Automation – How It Helps with Code Refactoring

One of the most common uses of AI is improving code quality and finding errors. These tools can analyze code and suggest optimizations. As a result, we will be able to write code much faster and significantly reduce the risk of human error.

How AI Saves Us from Frustrating Bugs

Imagine this situation: you spend hours debugging an application, not understanding why data isn't being fetched. Everything seems correct, the syntax is fine, yet something isn't working. Often, the problem lies in small details that are hard to catch when reviewing the code.

Let’s take a look at an example:

function fetchData() {
    fetch("htts://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts")
      .then((response) => response.json())
      .then((data) => console.log(data))
      .catch((error) => console.error(error));
}

At first glance, the code looks correct. However, upon running it, no data is retrieved. Why? There’s a typo in the URL – "htts" instead of "https." This is a classic example of an error that could cost a developer hours of frustrating debugging.

When we ask AI to refactor this code, not only will we receive a more readable version using newer patterns (async/await), but also – and most importantly – AI will automatically detect and fix the typo in the URL:

async function fetchPosts() {
    try {
      const response = await fetch(
        "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts"
      );
      const data = await response.json();
      console.log(data);
    } catch (error) {
      console.error(error);
    }
}

How AI in Frontend Automation Speeds Up UI Creation

One of the most obvious applications of AI in frontend development is generating UI components. Tools like GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, or Claude can generate component code based on a short description or an image provided to them.

With these tools, we can create complex user interfaces in just a few seconds. Generating a complete, functional UI component often takes less than a minute. Furthermore, the generated code is typically error-free, includes appropriate animations, and is fully responsive, adapting to different screen sizes. It is important to describe exactly what we expect.

Here’s a view generated by Claude after entering the request: “Based on the loaded data, display posts. The page should be responsive. The main colors are: #CCFF89, #151515, and #E4E4E4.”

Generated posts view

AI in Code Analysis and Understanding

AI can analyze existing code and help understand it, which is particularly useful in large, complex projects or code written by someone else.

Example: Generating a summary of a function's behavior

Let’s assume we have a function for processing user data, the workings of which we don’t understand at first glance. AI can analyze the code and generate a readable explanation:

function processUserData(users) {
  return users
    .filter(user => user.isActive) // Checks the `isActive` value for each user and keeps only the objects where `isActive` is true
    .map(user => ({ 
      id: user.id, // Retrieves the `id` value from each user object
      name: `${user.firstName} ${user.lastName}`, // Creates a new string by combining `firstName` and `lastName`
      email: user.email.toLowerCase(), // Converts the email address to lowercase
    }));
}

In this case, AI not only summarizes the code's functionality but also breaks down individual operations into easier-to-understand segments.

AI in Frontend Automation – Translations and Error Detection

Every frontend developer knows that programming isn’t just about creatively building interfaces—it also involves many repetitive, tedious tasks. One of these is implementing translations for multilingual applications (i18n). Adding translations for each key in JSON files and then verifying them can be time-consuming and error-prone.

However, AI can significantly speed up this process. Using ChatGPT, DeepSeek, or Claude allows for automatic generation of translations for the user interface, as well as detecting linguistic and stylistic errors.

Example:

We have a translation file in JSON format:

{
  "welcome_message": "Welcome to our application!",
  "logout_button": "Log out",
  "error_message": "Something went wrong. Please try again later."
}

AI can automatically generate its Polish version:

{
  "welcome_message": "Witaj w naszej aplikacji!",
  "logout_button": "Wyloguj się",
  "error_message": "Coś poszło nie tak. Spróbuj ponownie później."
}

Moreover, AI can detect spelling errors or inconsistencies in translations. For example, if one part of the application uses "Log out" and another says "Exit," AI can suggest unifying the terminology.

This type of automation not only saves time but also minimizes the risk of human errors. And this is just one example – AI also assists in generating documentation, writing tests, and optimizing performance, which we will discuss in upcoming articles.

Summary

Artificial intelligence is transforming the way frontend developers work daily. From generating components and refactoring code to detecting errors, automating testing, and documentation—AI significantly accelerates and streamlines the development process. Without these tools, we would lose a lot of valuable time, which we certainly want to avoid.

In the next parts of this series, we will cover topics such as:

Stay tuned to keep up with the latest insights!