Blockchain Energy Consumption: Unveiling the Impact of Network Topologies

Blockchain is one of the most promising emerging technologies, but its large-scale deployment raises sustainability issues, specifically in terms of energy consumption. In addition to consensus algorithms, energy efficiency is influenced by several other parameters, including network topology. We present a systematic analysis of the impact of five distinct network topologies (fat-tree, full mesh, hypercube, scale-free, and torus) on the energy consumption of five blockchain platforms (Algorand, Diem, Ethereum Clique, Quorum IBFT, and Solana) under three different workloads (PayPal and VISA transaction processing and GAFAM smart contract execution). Our results reveal that fat-tree and full mesh are the most energy-efficient network topologies, in particular under heavy workloads. Moreover, they show that Algorand and Diem exhibit the lowest energy consumption per transaction, while Ethereum Clique features the highest energy consumption – regardless of the used topology – and Quorum IBFT and Solana lead to higher energy costs under intensive workloads as the network size increases.