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Blockchain is in vogue right now for every industry under the sun. It’s a race to see how each vertical can find a way to implement blockchain to be considered tech forward. Especially for antiquated industries needing a facelift, like electricity. Where do the utility companies lie within the realm of blockchain?

From what I’ve seen with some utility companies, most are dipping their toes into the water by trialing a few pilot projects. Some for demand response like Omega Grid, some for carbon credits for cars, and some for testing microgrids. When it comes to utility company blockchain pilots, should their ledgers be public or private?

The purpose of blockchain is to be decentralized, permissionless, and transparent. But utility companies are not always the case. Even I don’t fully understand some of the line items on my monthly electricity bill.

Utility companies so far have been favoring enterprise solutions with private blockchains. Many feel that public blockchains are not sufficient because: public blockchains can expose sensitive data, they aren’t scalable for commercial use, and they are costly. More are inclined to use private chains because they closely resemble a hybrid solution of embracing technology but not going overboard. I equate this idea to a company’s intranets. Good in theory, but pales in comparison to the internet with its full-fledged adoption.

Advantages of public blockchains

I believe that public blockchains offer more value to utilities because they offer interoperability and innovation while mitigating risks of outdated. Public blockchains allow anyone to build on it with pre-existing open source tool kits meaning utilities will not need to invest in specialized training. Interoperability is important because it’ll allow more smart devices to tie into the grid. Especially for smart meters and EV chargers. Finally, public blockchains offer transparency with governance. Governance decisions on public networks are made by a multiplicity who are often public stakeholders. Open platforms are community focused and driven by creating value for everyone.

Have you even read claims on Twitter and wondered if they were true? Like “Ethereum is centralized,” “Bitcoin uses more energy than Denmark,” and “Tron’s white page is plagiarized.” With all the crypto influencers, experts, and scammers, it’s hard to figure out what is real and what is bullshit. Where are the crypto truths? Who is doing the fact-checking with all the noise in the space?

Enter TruStory. Trustory is a blockchain based crowd-sourcing social platform. It employs an army of volunteers interested in the crypto space who argue/debate crypto news with facts, logic, and skin in the game. The hope to launch an app where people post stories/claims and other people tear them apart or validate if these claims seem truthful. Until the app launches, the discussion lives on TruStory’s Discourse page.

I’ve started to contribute some of my time to the cause. It’s nice to debate and learn from people are just as passionate about blockchain as I am.

Here are a few claims that I’ve started digging deeper into:

• 70% of France is threatening to withdraw their fiat for crypto.
• Google Ads blacklists the word “Ethereum” in some countries.
• 1 mid-size cruise ship emits enough particulates as 1 million cars. (Sorry Joe Rogan — I debunked your claim)

Hope to see y’all debating with me soon!

There’s been a lot of signal and noise about EOS over the last few months. I thought I’d do a quick dive about it. I don’t personally own any EOS only because I have a hard time understanding what it is used for. And, well because on Twitter I read about too many EOS scammers and pumpers that I can’t measure network adoption reliably.

EOS (Ethereum Operating System) is hoping to be a decentralized operating system that can support commercial sized applications. Similar to AWS. EOS aims to remove transaction fees and support up to 1 million transactions per second.

From what I’ve gathered about EOS it’s in the middle of traditional websites supported by AWS or Azure and smart contract systems like Ethereum. I would think the use case for EOS is for people who fear their website would be shut down from regulation or government oversight. EOS is best for applications that fear platform security is an issue because it cannot be shut down at all like AWS or Azure. I could see it being used for more illicit purposes like dark web markets or gambling since there are no regulators.

The advantages of EOS are plentiful:

• Transaction volume is 1000/s (Ethereum is 15/s)
• Security
  1. The platform cannot shut down because it’s distributed
  2. Difficult for hackers because it’s more secure than AWS
• Censorship Resistant

Where I fail to see is real network adoption. I don’t know how many people feel like building with AWS or Ethereum isn’t sufficient for their needs. EOS is utterly path dependent on regulators value it.

Calling out to all developers out there building on EOS — can you explain to me what real-world problem EOS solves for you? Not questioning you, I  genuinely just want to know!

Last month we took a brief look into non-Bitcoin and non-Ethereum protocols. This month I’d like to continue to focus on a few more that I personally am excited about!

MimbleWimble

MimbleWimble is thought to be a blueprint proposal for private transactions on blockchains. It hopes to make transactions completely concealed but still allows for external validations. The cryptography is unique because it hopes to shrink the size of the blockchain dramatically. It uses 10% of the storage required on the Bitcoin network. Scalability wouldn’t be an issue here like other privacy centered protocols like Monero or Zcash.

The first two coins to launch on this network are called Grin and Beam. Grin aims to be a scalable privacy coin that has no addresses, no amounts, and hence less storage intensive than other privacy coins and digital currencies. Its mining algorithm is ASIC-resistant which means you can mine away on your laptop (sorry CPU).

Beam has the same privacy-focused goals as Grin but takes a different approach to governance. It operates more like a company that uses a treasury model to be able to repay investors.

What’s not to love about a privacy inherent protocol where it’s named for a Harry Potter spell!

It will launch in early 2019.

Cosmos Network

Cosmos is a decentralized protocol network that is scalable and most importantly, interoperable between different blockchains. It’s an “internet of blockchains.”

Cosmos is guided by Tendermint Core, an open-source developers tool. Tendermint is a customizable foundation for blockchain applications.

Cosmos also uses Inter-Blockchain Communications protocol. It is like software that links together the zones and hubs within the network and allows the exchange of tokens between heterogeneous chains.

The final component is the Cosmos SDK. This is a modular framework that simplifies how to build secure blockchain applications. Together, these three tool kits allow you to build on Cosmos.

The goal is to operate within different blockchains and tokens without having to switch back and forth. Basically atomic swaps for all!

Cosmos will go live in early 2019.

The blockchain game is pretty much dominated by the Bitcoin network. As the first blockchain to come out nearly 10 years ago, it shows the most adoption and critical mass. Leading the charge after the Bitcoin network is the Ethereum network. A smart contract enabled network that functions as a layer for decentralized applications (dApps) to be built on. But after those two leaders, what other protocols are there?

Neo

Neo is a blockchain platform designed for scalable dApps from China. Considered to be a “smart economy,” Neo is focused on asset management and exchange transactions. Since Neo is coded on mainstream coding languages (Java, Python, Go), more developers are inclined to build on it.  

Hyperledger

Formed by the Linux Foundation with a consortium of partners (IBM, Intel, SAP), Hyperledger is a permission blockchain that only explicitly trusted parties can join it. It’s thought to be an enterprise blockchain solution. It caters to finance, banking, and supply chain industries.

Ripple Consensus Network

With visions of cheap cross-border payments, Ripple is an open-source distributed consensus ledge. It supports tokens that can be used to represent fiat, cryptocurrencies, commodities, or other value units (store credits, phone minutes). The idea is to be able to send cheap transactions from any medium of exchange, including its native token, XRP. It’s becoming popular with banks.

Venezuela has launched a oil-backed cryptocurrency this week. Petro can be purchased directly from the country’s treasury via the coin’s website or by approved government crypto exchanges. The coin can be purchased for fiat (U.S. dollars and Euros) or crypto (Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum).

My understanding of Peto Coin is that it’s a pseudo-digital token that supposedly backed by the country’s mineral and oil reserves. Venezuela has approximately 297 billion barrels of oil reserves (read: some of the largest in the world). The hope is that it will supplement the highly inflated Bolivar and prove to be a workaround U.S. sanctions on Venezuela for capital.

My thoughts — it’s a scam. I honestly can’t believe that the President is squandering the birthright of all his citizens, oil. It’s literally a way for the government to raise money from people who are more ignorant than they are. There’s no complex math to mine Petro coins. You can only buy it from it’s corrupt, centralized government. And, you cannot even pay for the coin with Bolivars!

Seriously, what is this nonsense! I don’t like it when oil gets a bad reputation with crypto.

Hello from SF! It’s been a whirlwind week for Omega Grid and I. We’ve just finish debuting at Tech Crunch Disrupt 2018 as one of the best picks for Blockchain (here).

In addition, I was invited to do my first panel with Green Tech Media! I’m a huge fan of GTM’s thorough analysis of the renewable energy industry.  Definitely a day for the books for me!

Catch my discussion of Blockchain as a Marketplace, here!

Most of the heavily publicized energy blockchain projects are peer to peer energy trading based. Are there any others out there that are making meaningful progress? Here are a few that I’m excited about!

Share & Charge

An Airbnb like marketplace for electric vehicle charging. Why is it needed? 1 million electric vehicles are currently in the United States. That number will only rise with consumer demand for clean energy vehicles. Charging stations aren’t plentiful everywhere and most people rely on installing charging stations in their homes. But what if you’re on the go and need to charge ASAP? Enter Share & Charge, where people are offering up their home charges and getting paid with blockchain transactions.

Veridium Labs

Veridium is creating a tokenized marketplace for carbon credits. They make it simple for companies to calculate their carbon emissions and offset their environmental impacts. In theory,  a company can be issued a carbon credit after making a contribution to a greenhouse project, to balance out their own carbon emissions. These companies could also purchase carbon credits from the market.

Usizo

Usizo is a crowd-funding platform that connects blockchain ready smart meters to underprivileged schools in South Africa. The goal is for donors to pay the school’s electricity bills directly with the transparency of blockchain. Donors are assured that there is no mismanagement of donations since every transaction is recorded on the blockchain.

I’ve been mining Monero for some months now. I love it — I’ve learned to set up wallets, sell back to exchanges, met fellow miners, and basically understand the entire farm to table experience.

Here is where I lie confused… How much energy do I consume when I mine. The U.S. Department of Energy believes that 63% of our electricity comes from Fossil Fuels (35% natural gas and 28% coal), 19% from Nuclear, and 17% from Renewables. As a petroleum engineer, it’s safe to say that I don’t care about coal (obsolete energy source with high emissions) or nuclear (clean burning, but can cause catastrophic disasters to human life). But, I do value natural gas and renewable energy. I think natural gas is a superior interim energy source for our electric grid until we reach a point where the U.S.’s supply and demand can accommodate 100% renewables. It may be a while…

Do I think fossil fuels should be used to mine crypto? No. I’m all about technology/innovation and I like fossil fuels. I think fossil fuels should be optimized since we have a fixed amount left. I don’t think crypto counts as an optimization when basic electricity in some countries isn’t the norm.

This is why my mining is 100% renewable and carbon neutral. I pay a marginal 1-2 cents more per kilowatt hour just to make sure my electricity to mine is sourced from community solar farms. It’s important to me to support the crypto ecosystem, the sustainability ecosystem, and community solar farmers!

Monero’s hashrate is about 475 MH/s (diminutive, I know). If your rig generates 2000 hashes/s (Vega 64), you could be looking at 3-4 kWh/day. It may seem small, but what if you own 1000s of rigs? As more coins are mined, the hash rate becomes larger making it difficult to mine and costly.

My philosophy is to stop mining a coin when it’s about 60% mined because I don’t want to mess around with high demand hash rates. I would love to see more coins based on proof-of-stake algorithms that do not encourage mining. Most people aren’t using sustainable energy sources.

Today I’m happy to announce that I’m taking on a new client, Omega Grid! Omega Grid is a blockchain based energy rewards platform. Essentially what it does is incentivize demand response management for the electric grid.

What’s demand response for the electric grid? And why is it important? Demand response is the voluntary actions utility companies offer to customers to reduce strain on the electric grid during peak hours. Some examples are use rate increases, bill credits or other incentives to control demand on the electric grid during periods when electricity demand is threatening to outpace the electricity supply.

I like to think of it as an Uber scenario. Let’s say there’s a huge football game going on and right after the game ends, people make a mad dash to hail a ride. Everyone opens the Uber app the get a ride, causing 1) a traffic jam and 2) surge pricing for all those rides. A similar case happens during peak hours with electric grids. Peak hours are when electricity demand is greater than supply. Too many people are causing “traffic jams” on the grid which can lead to electrical fires on the grid. Furthermore, utility companies have to acquire more electricity to meet the demand which is more expensive. Basically causing surge pricing with the customers.

Here’s where Omega Grid comes in to play. Omega grid has built a grid management software that helps facilitate demand response actions with the end users, the customers. How it works is that we work with utility companies to provide incentives for positive demand response actions.

I’ll share our first pilot project. Omega Grid is piloting its software with Burlington Electic Municipality (utility provider for Burlington, VT). We’ve signed up residents for our app based demand response dashboard. When electricity is witnessing peak hours, the customers are sent a notification that if they reduce their electricity consumption they will receive a token in their app wallet instantly. The token can then be redeemed at local vendors (movie tickets, a drink, ice-cream, etc.) or sold for cash later. With this incentive, customer not only saves on their monthly electricity bill but also can rack up tokens of rewards.

What drew me to this project is that Omega Grid is constantly promoting clean, sustainable energy. Often times when there is peak energy demand, that is when electricity is the dirtiest, coming from fossil fuels like coal and natural gas. But by reducing peak demand usage, we promote cleaner energy. Omega Grid’s vision is to be able to add community solar farms, battery storage, and wind energy to the demand response software.

That’s one goal I can 100% commit myself to, a more sustainable world!