WWF claimed that its NFAs were “environmentally friendly”, unlike ordinary NFTs. The charity had suggested in its statement that the sale of the 8,000 or so NFAs would have a carbon footprint similar to that of a bottle of milk or half a dozen eggs. The reason for this negligible impact, they claim, was a smart blockchain application called Polygon, which would have allowed the WWF project to have fewer direct interactions with the Ethereum blockchain. WWF would then not have had to assume so much responsibility for its share of Ethereum’s huge carbon footprint. But the WWF’s hypothesis was tricky, and the reality is far more complex.
