MiCA
Creditcoin's MiCA report
1. Creditcoin
Creditcoin is a PoS (Proof of Stake) Layer 1 blockchain empowering organizations with bold missions to achieve greater global social impact. Creditcoin is EVM-compatible, so anyone can program new smart contracts for Creditcoin using the same programming language and techniques used by Ethereum and other EVM-compatible blockchains.
2. MiCA
The EU Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation mandates that token issuers and crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) provide disclosures related to resource use and sustainability.
3. Methodology
In order to estimate the power consumption of the entire network, this methodology estimates and combine power consumption by components operated by the Creditcoin Foundation, as well as components operated by our community. Since Creditcoin is a Decentralized Network, community members are welcome to operate blockchain components which can include:
General archive or full nodes
RPCs (remote procedure call) nodes
Bootnodes
Validators
The methodology is summarized by those steps:
Obtain power consumption information for recommended hardware
Estimate energy consumption by components operated by the Foundation
Estimate energy consumption by components operated by the Community
Remarks on energy consumption of auxiliary components
3.1. Hardware
Recommended specs
The Creditcoin Foundation has hardware recommendations in its Developer Guide which will be used in this document to calculate the Community’s power consumption as well as parts of the Foundation’s operated components.
The minimum specs recommended is:
Intel Core i5-8400 6 Cores @ 2.8Ghz **
The recommended processor has a TDP (W) of 65.
Due to the decentralized nature of Blockchains, it is not possible to obtain specific hardware specification of Community members hardware. The most accurate total power consumption figures can be obtained by using the recommended processor since while some community members may run slightly different specs, they can’t run specs that deviate significantly from the recommendations. If they did, they would either not have a strong enough machine to operate their components or they would have economic disincentives to do so.
Data collection and metrics
The Creditcoin Foundation operates components to provide services to the community and to participate in its decentralized network. The Foundation collects metrics of the components it operates, for technical as well as environmental purposes. The data collected includes the percentage usage of resources such as CPU, which can then be combined with the power consumption disclosures by chip makers to provide more accurate estimates of power consumption.
RPCs - The Foundation currently operates 12 RPCs. Its 30 days average mCPU (used to determine % CPU used) usage is 81. We then can use that number to divide the TDP, to obtain a more accurate estimated power consumption per RPC.
Total CPU available
6000 mCPU
CPU TDP (W)
65
Power usage per mCPU used (W/mCPU)
0.01083333333 W
RAM Average Power Use (W/GB)
0.3125 W
30 days average CPU power usage for one RPC instance in Watts
= Power usage per mCPU used * avg used mCPU = 0.01083333333 * 81 = 0.877 Watts.
Validators - The Foundation currently operates 3 validators and up to 10 other nodes such as archive and bootnodes. Its 30 days average mCPU (milli CPU which can be interpreted as % used) usage is 152. We then can use that number to divide the TDP, to obtain a more accurate estimation of power used per validator or general nodes.
30 days average power usage for one validator or general node in Watts
= Power usage per mCPU used * avg used mCPU = 0.01083333333 * 152 = 1.646 Watts.
RAM power usage per node, based on recommended specs
= Power usage per GB * RAM size = 0.3125 * 8 = 2.5 Watts.
3.2. Creditcoin Foundation power usage
The current total power consumption of the Blockchain components operated by the Foundation can be obtained by multiplying the power consumption of one node type by the number of instances.
Blockchain node type
CPU power consumption per node
RAM power consumption
Instances
Total CPU power consumption
Total RAM power consumption
Total Daily power consumption
RPC
0.877 Watts
2.5 Watts
12
10.52 Watts
30 Watts
0.97 kWh
Validator
Bootnode
Archive node
1.646 Watts
2.5 Watts
13
21.39 Watts
32.5 Watts
1.29 kWh
3.3. Community power usage
Due to the decentralized architecture of the Creditcoin blockchain, it can be challenging to know exactly how many nodes are running at any given time. However, we estimate based on the following facts and presumptions:
Community members operate their nodes with recommended specs
47 validators are currently operated by the community
On average, 5 validators are in the waiting set to become one of the 50 active validators
The community mostly operates validators, but it can run other type of nodes if it desires.
Based on those assumptions, we can obtain the power consumption of the community with:
Blockchain node type
CPU power consumption per node
RAM power consumption
Instances
Total CPU power consumption
Total RAM power consumption
Total Daily power consumption
Active Validators
1.646 Watts
2.5 Watts
47
77.36 Watts
117.5 Watts
4.67 kWh
Waiting Validators
1.646 Watts
2.5 Watts
5
8.23 Watts
12.5 Watts
0.50 kWh
3.4. Remarks on energy consumption of auxiliary components
This document aims to give a comprehensive energy consumption of the energy requirements of operating the Creditcoin blockchain. Typically, blockchains also have auxiliary components such as explorers, wallets, dashboards and other websites and third party components operated specifically for a given blockchain or provided as a service that can adapt and connect to multiple blockchains.
The ecosystem surrounding the Creditcoin blockchain does include components such as explorers and wallets. However, since they do not typically scale with the number of nodes or transaction on a blockchain, those components will not be included as part of the calculation of the energy consumption of the blockchain.
4. Report on total energy consumption and energy used per transaction
Now that we have obtained energy consumption per component as well as for the entire blockchain operations, we can obtain power usage per transactions, by dividing the total power consumption by the amount of transactions finalized per day.
Summary of power consumption:
RPC
0.97 kWh
-
0.97 kWh
Validator
Bootnode
Archive node
1.29 kWh
5.17 kWh
6.46 kWh
Total: 7.43 kWh *
Summary of transactions count:
Average daily transactions (Available on Subscan): 151,366
Estimated power consumed per transaction:
= Daily energy / Daily avg txns = 7.43 kWh / 151366 = 4.90e-5 kWh
As adoption and usage of the blockchain increases, power consumption may slightly increase. However, we want to highlight that it will not increase linearly with transaction count. Transactions increase would need to very significant for the current recommended specs to no longer be sufficient to operate nodes, which would be the primary driver of increasing energy demand.
In conclusion, it is good to reiterate that due to the decentralized nature of a blockchain, the amount of nodes operated by the community and the Foundation is subject to change. Community members are free to join and leave the network as they wish, using hardware of their choice. The power consumption of the entire network thus varies from one moment to another. However, the data collected by the Creditcoin Foundation operating its own nodes, combined with its recommended specs, provide valuable insights in the Creditcoin blockchain energy consumption.
* Due to variability in hardware configurations and usage patterns, actual consumption may vary ±10–15%.
** Subject to change. Equivalent or slightly different specs may provide sufficient and comparable performance for comparable energy used.
Definitions
TDP (Thermal Design Power) is used as a proxy for maximum CPU power draw. Actual usage is based on reported average utilization.
mCPU stands for "milliCPU" and represents a thousandth of a CPU core
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