A comprehensive survey on green blockchain: Developing the next generation of energy efficient and sustainable blockchain systems

Abstract

Although Blockchain has been successfully used in many different fields and applications, it has been traditionally regarded as an energy-intensive technology, essentially due to the past use of inefficient consensus algorithms that prioritized security over sustainability. However, in the last years, thanks to the significant progress made on key blockchain components, their energy consumption can be decreased noticeably. To achieve this objective, this article analyzes the main components of blockchains and explores strategies to reduce their energy consumption. In this way, this article delves into each component of a blockchain system, including consensus mechanisms, network architecture, data storage and validation, smart contract execution, mining and block creation, and outlines specific strategies to decrease their energy consumption. For such a purpose, consensus mechanisms are compared, recommendations for reducing network communications energy consumption are provided, techniques for data storage and validation are suggested, and diverse optimizations are proposed both for software and hardware components. Moreover, the main challenges and limitations for reducing power consumption in blockchain systems are analyzed. As a consequence, this article provides a guideline for the future researchers and developers who aim to develop the next generation of Green Blockchain solutions. • A detailed analysis of the essential components of a blockchain in order to determine the main software and hardware contributors to energy consumption. • The most relevant energy-saving strategies for each component of a blockchain system, including consensus mechanisms, network architecture, data storage and validation, smart contract execution and mining/block creation. • The main challenges and limitations for implementing energy-efficient blockchains are discussed, considering the trade-offs between energy efficiency and security, the problem of estimating energy consumption in blockchain, the regulatory and governance aspects that impact energy efficiency and sustainability, or the scalability/performance implications of energy consumption reductions.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Sustainable Computing Informatics and Systems, 2026 · DOI ↗