Green Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Mining Optimisation

Abstract

This dissertation report reviews and examines the critical challenges of blockchain’s high energy consumption and its carbon footprint by analysing leading consensus protocols. It introduces a novel smart contract named Proof of Green (PoG), built on top of existing Proof of Work (PoW), which identifies energy-efficient hardware and incentivises their participation through a rewarding system—moving it toward the green energy revolution and zero-carbon emissions in mining practices.

This research adopts a qualitative dual-methodology: First, a Python-based simulation to compare five consensus protocols—Proof of Work (PoW), Proof of Stake (PoS), Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS), Proof of Authority (PoA), and Proof of Space and Time (PoST)—based on three performance metrics: energy consumption, validation time, and transactions per second (TPS). Second, a PoG smart contract prototype was developed to simulate the selection of the most efficient miners and reward distribution using real NVIDIA GPU energy consumption data.

The findings show that PoW is secure but unsustainable, while DPoS and PoA have achieved the highest performance in terms of speed, sustainability, and efficiency; however, these improvements come with a reduction in their level of decentralisation. The PoG prototype shows that rewarding energy-efficient miners can reduce environmental and economic impact without compromising fairness.