World Earth Hour: Q&A with Nano

• Discover how Nano is raising the bar for sustainable crypto 
• Learn why Nano is different, eco-friendly, and what the future holds for this decentralised digital money 
• Join us in celebrating World Earth Hour with Nano! 

Environmentality and crypto is a highly debated topic, but there are many initiatives and players in the space that are raising the bar and proving that crypto can be sustainable. One of these coins is NANO (Nano), a decentralised coin that doesn’t require energy-intensive mining. 

Today is Earth Hour, an annual event created to encourage everyone to consider their environmental impacts and turn off their lights for an hour. And with the NANO coin available to purchase on the Wirex platform, we thought we’d talk to their team to get an insight into what Nano is and why they are one of the most environmentally-friendly cryptos in existence. 

What is Nano and what makes it different to other cryptocurrencies? 

Nano is decentralised digital money that can be sent and received anywhere in the world. Just like cash in your pocket, you don’t need a bank to transact. You send the money directly from one person to the other. 

Nano is different in that it has 0 fees for creating an account, sending, receiving and storing Nano. This combined with the ease of use, makes the barriers of using nano as low as possible.  

Also, Nano doesn’t use mining, where the incentive to run a node is to be able to use the network trustlessly, similar to the incentive of running a bitcoin node. This also means there’s no inflation with Nano - the network has a fixed supply and there will never be any new nano created!   

How is Nano eco-friendly? 

Nano does not use mining to reach consensus. Instead, it uses a form of delegated voting which is extremely energy efficient, meaning that the nodes running the network require few resources and therefore don’t receive any direct monetary reward. One of the issues with proof of work mining is the annual hardware waste associated with it; the waste of the bitcoin network is comparable to that of a country like the Netherlands.  
  
Additionally, Nano is made to be as efficient as possible, meaning the network is super lightweight. This combined with a highly efficient consensus algorithm, means that the energy used for 1 bitcoin transaction is equivalent to the combined energy use of 17 million nano transactions! In fact, the Nano network’s energy is comparable to the energy provided by a single wind turbine!

Why is sustainability important in crypto? 

Digital money should not cost the earth. Sustainability and environmental awareness have to be considered when it comes to any new technology, including crypto. Through new innovations, such as replacing proof of work with a more energy efficient and sustainable consensus algorithm called Open Representative Voting and a block-lattice structure, we can make nano sustainable in the long term. 

How has attitudes towards sustainability and the environment changes in the crypto sector in the past few years? 

Over time, sustainability and environmental awareness is becoming more and more important in the cryptocurrency space. Especially with the growing energy consumption of mining, we’ve seen different cryptocurrencies innovate towards more efficient approaches. We’ve also seen increasing regulatory pressure on energy intensive systems. 

What does the future of crypto look like for you? 

We think that we’ll see a shift from speculitve investments towards utility. As crypto adoption grows, new use cases will be discovered, particularly in emerging economies such as Nigeria where not everyone has access to banking infrastructure. The ability to easily, quickly and cheaply connect the world through crypto will also allow new business models and innovative business models. We’ve already seen the start of this, such as tipping on twitter using SendNano and Nanobyte Pay, live-streaming with real-time nano payments using Perseeve and even micropayments in nano to reward translators using Fyncom!  

What does Earth Hour mean to you at Nano? 

Climate change is a pressing issue that is growing by the day, but it’s easy for people to forget about the planet. But people need to take time to switch off for an hour and put things in perspective, as what we do is irrelevant if we, or future generations don’t have a planet to live on. The planet is a focus for us at the Nano Foundation, and on our energy consumption is something we should be mindful of. 

Where do you see Nano in a year’s time?      

We foresee further adoption of nano in places where it’s really needed and can provide direct benefit to people, in emerging economies for example. To achieve this, we want to make nano easier to access globally, as well as information about nano through translations. We’ve got some exciting use cases and businesses using nano coming to fruition this coming year. 

We’re also further expanding our network with our community program using ambassadors around the globe to spread information about nano, organise meet ups, and help businesses integrate nano.