Arkreen Renewable Energy Certificate Protocol on Solana: Pioneering On-Chain Offset for A Sustainable Solana Ecosystem Future
AREC, Arkreen Renewable Energy Certificate, the leading on-chain digital REC protocol, has seen remarkable success. To date, over 129,520 tokenized REC ARECs, representing 129 GWh of green renewable energy, have been issued on-chain via the AREC protocol. Nearly 5 GWh of that green energy was generated by distributed residential solar panels from Arkreen community members, while the remaining 125 GWh was tokenized through the bridging of traditional RECs issued from I-REC.
Tens of thousands of Arkreen community members have been using tokenized REC token ART to offset their daily brown energy consumption or participate in public-good green energy initiatives. A standout example is the GreenBTC.Club, which unites the Web3 community to offset the historical carbon emissions of bitcoin network collectively. Nearly 20% of early bitcoin blocks have been greened by burning ART tokens to on-chain offset the historical carbon emissions caused by bitcoin's brown energy consumption.
The AREC protocol is already deployed on the Polygon and Celo networks, enjoying widespread adoption within their ecosystems. The next exciting step is Solana, renowned for its high transaction throughput and excellent user experience. Home to numerous exceptional DEPIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks) projects, Solana has an inherent need for solutions to on-chain offset brown energy consumption. Expanding the AREC protocol to Solana will significantly extend the market reach for Arkreen's tokenized REC environmental assets and on-chain offset solution.
Solana’s technical stack differs significantly from EVM-based ecosystems, presenting higher development challenges. After several months of development and testing, the AREC protocol and its dApp, based on native Solana technology, have been completed. They have successfully passed internal trials on Solana’s devnet and are ready for formal deployment on the Solana mainnet.
The AREC protocol on Solana supports the issuance of self-certified tokenized RECs based on green energy generation data from the solar panels in Arkreen Network, alongside the classic REC bridging from the traditional world. Similar to its deployment on Polygon and Celo, tokenized REC assets are first minted as NFTs and then liquidated to mint ART, the native SPL token on Solana. ART token can easily be integrated with various Web3 projects within the Solana ecosystem to meet their needs of achieving carbon neutrality via on-chain offset.
Solana has started to release Solana Energy Use Reports every year since 2021 ((1) (2)). A real-time emissions dashboard ((3)) is also developed to measure and illustrate the Solana network’s annual electricity consumption and carbon footprint. This allows for precise calibration of the electricity usage of each Solana transaction and enables on-chain offsetting of their brown energy consumption via Solana-native ART tokens.
In 2023, Solana purchased carbon credits to offset its network’s carbon footprint, setting an example for Web3 projects within the ecosystem. However, due to the absence of native carbon assets in the Solana ecosystem, this climate action occurred outside the Solana blockchain. The introduction of the AREC protocol addresses this gap. As the first environmental asset natively integrated into the Solana ecosystem, AREC will significantly accelerate the progress toward achieving carbon neutrality for the Solana and ecosystem partners.
The AREC protocol’s deployment within the Solana ecosystem will reinforce its position as the world’s leading on-chain digital REC protocol. We are planning this official launch of the AREC protocol and eagerly anticipate its widespread impact on the 100% renewable energy movement within the Web3 ecosystem.
Stay tuned for more updates and the exciting future of AREC on Solana for 100% renewable energy!