my favorite Blockchain: Energy Web Chain (EWT)

It is a really close call to point out Energy web chain as my favorite blockchain. Here comes the reasoning why:

a) In short:

EWT creates a digital business for sustainable energy generation on a decentralized globally shared infrastructure.

It provides the opportunity to decarbonize everything (e.g. Bitcoin).

b) In detail:

• Multi impact purpose: The purpose of energy web chain is a game changer; improving life conditions on earth.
• Innovation homerun: Making use of many blockchain merits to create a new business model – and solving real life ‘now’ problems.
• Calibration of tech architecture and business context: adapting tech design choices due to industry conditions.
• Global adoption capability: frequent onboarding key players on the assett and utility side across the globe.
• Masters of change: successfully introducing a shared standard in an otherwise locally and globally fragmented industry.
• Incentivising sustainability: making sustainable energy an accessible business.
• Solution to crypto’s energy impact: Potential to neutralise “Energy intensive mining” as Bitcoin critics favorite counter argument.
• Collaboration excellence: Neutralising barriers via organisational design choices: Non-Profit Foundation and OpenSource.
• DEFI connection: EWT Token holders can participate also in DEFI via token bridge.

Multi impact purpose

The purpose of energy web chain is turning sustainable energy into an assett. This is a game changer because the business incentive for sustainable energy generation raises huge awareness. The positive effects on our planets and our own health as humans and societies are very promising if this approach succeeds and therefore becomes impactful opportunity.

“…connect the billions of customers, assets, and myriad physical technologies that comprise the 21st-century grid with any market or program one can imagine… enabling pioneering market and businessmodels that provide clear societal, environmental, and economic benefits.”

(Combination of Whitepaper and Whitepaper EW DOS, see sources below)

Innovation homerun

In terms of innovation EWT presents itself as a “double whammy”: The public chain with its applications is an innovation by itself. However, the “framework” provides also everything for innovation accelaration in the sector.

The problems of the energy sector on a local and global scale is the derived from its regional split centralization and “single” dependency issue of few utility providers. An example of this is are the few different energy market regions in the US of which Texas is one of them. The recent Texas outtage, which is a disjointed grid region, is a great example for the resilience risks of this. Despite this anecdote, key problems derived from this nature in sum are grid resilience, integratability with 3rd party assetts and solutions. The innovation scaling rate seems also negatively impacted by this setup.

The merits of blockchain: decentralization, security, transparency, global public accessibility, integratability and unified standards are a perfect match tackling these issues. EWT employes these merits to offer common ground for all industry agents, employing a decentralized and shared infrastructure for the industry players. A shared universally accessible infrastructure cuts down the individual islands, providing a platform to scale the global rate of innovation in the sector.

Here is my favorite part about the solution: EWT employs blockchain technology by packaging into a new business model that comes with its own revenue stream justifiying the engagement for market participants. The remarcable side effect is that this solves the above problems as a side effect so to say.

Calibration of tech architecture and business context:

What I most like about the EWT blockchain design choices: they match the industry context and thus are conducive to user adoption.

Consensus via Proof of Authority (POA): The POA choice is a match to the industry context and conducive to participation, as it is a “few big players” game on the one hand, providing revenue and a sense of ownership on the other hand. Having a product like EW Zero that aims for emission neutrality requires the chain inevitably being a living proof of ressource efficiency. The POA choice’s benefit is ressource efficiency, both in terms of sustainability and transaction performance, as opposed to Ethereums current proof of work consensus mechanism.

“The Energy Web Chain is one of the only public blockchains among any industry worldwide whose validator nodes are run by known corporations, many of them some of the largest and most-respected energy companies globally.”

Link: energyweb.org

Building upon an existing and mature stack: In my experience, there is no need to spend time and ressources to build what is already there. This philosophy is one of the reasons Chainlink’s Sergey Nazarov frequently mentions as key for the rapid success and development of DEFI for instance. EWT built upon Ethereum to begin with using core ethereum power houses such as Gavin Wood’s “Parity” to jump start the development with force. Not only in terms of technology capability, but also in terms of developer sourcing and open source reach, this seems like a move; that is again very well matched to the context of the blockchain industry, where Ethereum has the largest developer community. Furthermore it provides ample customization opportunity to enable for instance transaction privacy on a public chain.

Adapting quickly to technological opportunities: Complimentery to the capabilities Ethereum is offering today and promises to offer in future, the EWT team seems to develop towards a Polkadot parachain. Since the polkadot universe is still in the build-up phase, it would be too early to say how this is architecturally leveraged. The fact that they were able to seize opportunities and secure a spot seems like another sign of the organisations understanding and flexibility to take technology vision, attitude and action.

Masters of change: Global adoption capability

The ability to effect change is at the heart of making a blockchain, or any new solution, successful. EWT shows myriad signs of change, collaboration and execution capacity. The global spread of the users, validators and affiliates is simply impressive. To just name a few highlights, first dApp being built for a Singapore use case, working with the US based Rocky Mountain Institute Energy Think Tank, the inventor of the Ethereum EVM, Gavin Wood, being involved, the german federal energy agency DENA committing on a proof of concept with EWT, Vodafone and Engie being part of the validator network… the list is long, all about working partnerships to build together.

Incentivizing energy sustainability

The context of this point is the experience of german government subsidies on solar power. In short, subsidies drove solar technology. When they were discontinued by the government, the german solar industry dropped significantly. What EWT is doing, is providing a business model, a continuing stream of income to be more precise, for alternative energy producers and technology providers. In contrast to government subsidies, this seems like a reasonable incentive to actually supply sustainably derived energy.

Solution to Crypto’s energy impact

One of the most widespread crypto “party pooper” point is the “energy consumption footprint” and its entry barrier to meet sustainable finance goals (ESG). The leading anecdote is of course the bitcoin proof of work energy consumption. In short, EWT Zero is probably the strongest contender to solve that issue for Bitcoin, any other chain and literally any industry player looking to source digitally sustainable energy.

“This application helps simplify the procurement process, increase transparency about available options, remove entry barriers, and reduce various costs associated with matching renewable energy buyers and sellers, transferring ownership over energy attribute certificates (EACs), and reporting the resulting environmental impacts.”

energyweb.org

One example of this in “operation” mode is EW Zero decarbonizing “ripple’s XRP chain”. In the march AMA Jesse (COO) hinted that EWT is in talks to be part of the solution regarding BTC’s carbon footprint.

The potential of EW Zero is nothing less than enabling the entire industry’s sustainable finance proposition and fit. Full stop.

Collaboration excellence

The Energy Web non-profit Foundation is producing a decentralized shared open source public infrastructure. This sentence contains several heavy success reasons to make this blockchain work:

The Non-profit nature of the organization is an essential piece to underline the notion of trust and selflessness as opposed to private company owned initiatives.

The code is open source and the applications on EWT are built for decentralized usage and built upon the ethereum open source stack. This choice maximizes the notion of a shared good, that belongs to the largest opensource community in the crypto space.

All the above mentioned is conducive for collaboration and thus “adoption”.

DEFI connection

Feedback

Revealing you my high level summary why EWT is my favorite blockchain. I would love to get feedback on this. Please feel free to shoot me an email or write a comment.

Sources

• Whitepaper (General)
• Whitepaper EW DOS
• Token Bridge
• Uniswap
• decarbonizing
• AMA
• EWT Zero
• sustainable finance goals (ESG)
• german federal energy agency DENA