AI-Based Cross-Currency Energy Modeling and Explainability for Blockchain-Driven Sustainable Metaverse Economies
Abstract
Hakan Kaya
In this research, the energy consumption models of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin are analyzed using Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) models aided by the three stages of analysis involving Digiconomist data from 2022 to 2025: (1) exploratory data analysis for the nature of energy consumption, (2) model identification of influential variables using Random Forest models enhanced with SHAP values, and (3) an LSTM transfer learning method for predicting the energy consumption of Ethereum and Dogecoin using a model developed with Bitcoin data. The initial results show that while both assets vary largely when it comes to their normal usage level, Ethereum sees a sharp drop after the changeover from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake as a mechanism. The XAI analysis indicates that energy use is largely a consequence of past use, seasonality, and annual patterns. In addition to this, the models show a high level of accuracy for Dogecoin (R2: 88.4%, MAPE: 13.45%) and Ethereum (R2: 86.2%, MAPE: 11.47%) when it comes to predicting energy usage using the concepts of transfer learning.