Can NFTs Be Issued at Scale?

And that’s before NFTs even enter the picture. Creating an NFT, as with any transaction on Ethereum, is both cost-intensive and bad for the environment. Let’s not forget that, whatever Vitalik Buterin’s utopian plans might have been, his brainchild still runs on a proof-of-work protocol, so minting 10 million NFTs right now would cost $331,200,000 – much of that going into coal-fired energy. Another slice of that pie goes to preventing or mitigating the effects of spammers on the network. That’s a hidden expense – it’s just part of the fee structure – but it’s a real cost nonetheless and the NFT issuer is stuck with the bill.