ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Blockchain
Sec. Blockchain in Industry
Sustainability Assessment of Blockchain Systems in Timber Supply Chains: Environmental and Economic Impacts
Provisionally accepted
Lukas Stopfer1*
Eugen Buss2Alexander Kaulen3Ferréol Berendt4
Felipe De Miguel-Díez5Marcel Püls6Stefan Lier2
Mirella Elias7
Stelian Alexandru Borz7
Marc Hanewinkel5Thomas Purfürst8- 1University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
- 2Fachhochschule Sudwestfalen, Iserlohn, Germany
- 3German Centre for Forest Work and Technology, Groß-Umstadt, Germany
- 4Hochschule fur nachhaltige Entwicklung Eberswalde, Eberswalde, Germany
- 5Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
- 6Conservation Department, Government of Swabia, Augsburg, Germany
- 7Universitatea Transilvania din Brasov, Brașov, Romania
- 8Technische Universitat Dresden, Dresden, Germany
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This study quantifies the energy use, carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) emissions, and transaction-related costs of distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) in the context of timber traceability. It combines: (i) a PRISMA-guided systematic review of empirical studies on DLT energy consumption; and (ii) benchmark values derived from continuously updated online monitoring sources, captured at defined access dates and fully documented in the supplementary material (Stopfer and Buss 2025). Comparable metrics are reported at the level of individual traceability events (kWh/tx, gCO₂e/tx, and USD/tx) and are related to a realistic timber supply chain transaction model that was empirically validated in a pilot study. The results reveal substantial differences in sustainability performance across consensus mechanisms. Proof-of-Work (PoW) networks exhibit prohibitively high energy demand and CO₂e emissions for frequent traceability notarizations. In contrast, Proof-of-Stake (PoS), PBFT-based, hybrid, and Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) architectures enable low-energy and low-cost event logging. This study bridges the gap between established DLT sustainability research and the operational requirements of regulated forestry traceability by providing a transparent and reproducible benchmarking workflow that includes URLs, access dates and calculation spreadsheets.
Keywords: consensus5, distributed ledger technology3, Energy consumption4, logistics1, traceability2
Received: 12 Nov 2025; Accepted: 16 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Stopfer, Buss, Kaulen, Berendt, De Miguel-Díez, Püls, Lier, Elias, Borz, Hanewinkel and Purfürst. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Lukas Stopfer
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.