Following a backlash from a number of people, including the Mozilla Project’s founder, the Mozilla Foundation has suspended the ability to accept cryptocurrency donations.
The foundation, which oversees the development of the Firefox browser, acknowledged on Thursday discussions about the potential environmental impact of cryptocurrencies and said it is reviewing whether its current policy on crypto donations “fits with our climate goals.”
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“Decentralized web technology remains an important area for us to investigate, but a lot has changed since we began accepting crypto donations,” the foundation said in a tweet thread, promising to keep the public updated on the status of its review.
After inviting people to donate to the American nonprofit firm using a variety of crypto tokens, including bitcoin, the foundation began to face backlash.
Jamie Zawinski, a Mozilla founder, expressed his displeasure with the foundation’s decision in response to its tweet. “Everyone involved in the project should be utterly ashamed of this decision to collaborate with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters,” he said, before adding an expletive.
The founder of Gecko, the engine that powered the browser, Peter Linss, joined the conversation, telling Mozilla that it was “meant to be better than this.”
This is not the first time a major corporation has faced backlash – or distanced itself from Bitcoin – due to environmental concerns. Tesla stopped accepting bitcoin as payment for its vehicles in May of last year, just months after introducing the option.
Musk stated that the company is “concerned about the rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels, particularly coal, for Bitcoin mining and transactions.” Weeks later, he stated that the company will “most likely” accept bitcoin again once the cryptocurrency’s mining rate reaches 50% renewables.
The creation of various tokens has been linked to questions about Bitcoin’s environmental footprint. To power their networks and create new blocks of each currency, Bitcoin and Ethereum employ a mechanism known as proof-of-work. This calculation has become more complex by design over the years as the networks grew, giving rise to an industry of firms that run thousands of GPUs around the clock to participate in solving the puzzle.
According to the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, bitcoin mining consumes approximately 148 terawatt-hours of energy per year. Many cryptocurrency supporters, on the other hand, have either disputed such findings or made a case for why it is worthwhile.
In recent months, a broader divide in the industry has begun to emerge. Some of web3’s fundamental value propositions have been challenged by critics. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who supports Bitcoin, has refuted the claim that venture capitalists aren’t making the most money from web3 projects.
Many businesses have scaled back their web3 ambitions in the midst of the ongoing debate. In November, Discord put a halt to its exploration of crypto and NFTs in response to widespread opposition. GSC Game World cancelled its plan to include NFTs in its upcoming title “STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl” after receiving negative feedback from several gamers.