Energy Web: Fundamental Analysis

February 16, 2021

With the progress in technology, it is expected that electric vehicles will make up over 50% of the vehicle market in the near future. When this happens, a greater need for efficient and affordable energy solutions will be sought.

This will also increase the opportunities for blockchain and tokenization to aid the energy sector. Energy Web Chain is one of such opportunities that claim to uplift the energy sector.

What is Energy Web?

Launched in mid-2019, the Energy Web Chain is a public, enterprise-grade, Proof-of-Authority Ethereum Virtual Machine blockchain platform that is designed to support and manage the energy sector and its regulatory needs. This blockchain-based platform has now become the industry’s leading choice as it possesses a foundational digital infrastructure that helps build and run blockchain-based decentralized applications (dApps).

The platform is specifically designed to increase transaction capacity and decrease energy consumption as compared to other public blockchains. Energy Web Chain also supports features like privacy preservation and security making it possible to control data access for energy market applications.

The Energy Web Technology

Energy Web Chain is a publicly-accessible network that is hosted by EWF Affiliate organizations. The network is based on a Proof-of-Authority consensus mechanism and has a capacity for a 30x performance improvement compared to Ethereum.

Energy Web Foundation

Energy Web Foundation is a non-profit organization and acts as an integrator and a developer of decentralized technology solutions. Moreover, EWF is also running two test networks: Tobalaba and Volta to support research and innovation in the energy blockchain space. Tobalaba is a pure sandbox environment for experimentation, while; Volta is used for testing updates to the production EW Chain client. The former is EWF’s beta test network, while; the latter is its pre-production staging network.

In addition to that, EWF also develops software and hardware modules to minimize the cost of application development. Hence, Energy Web Chain’s roadmap encourages further innovation in the ecosystem, both technically and in terms of governance.

How Does Energy Web Work?

Energy Web Chain offers a lot when it comes to innovating the blockchain industry. The network’s main objective is to accelerate the global trends towards a decentralized, decarbonized, and digitalized energy system. The network uses a three-layer operating system. These are:

Trust:This layer anchors and supports self-sovereign decentralized digital identities (DIDs). It also allows time stamping immutable data-sets in smart contracts via the public Energy Web Chain.

Utility:The utility is the middleware layer of the Energy Web Decentralized Operating System stack, which provides dedicated solutions to simplify the experience of creating and using decentralized apps. This layer is specifically designed to support enterprise-grade decentralized applications that are quite similar to a regular IT experience.

Toolkit:This is the third and final layer that is a free, open-source template for building applications that facilitate renewable energy market, DER market participation, and e-mobility programs.

Energy Web Chain Tokenomics

Token utility:

Energy Web Token is the native token of Energy Web Chain and is an ERC-20 utility token. The token was developed by Energy Web Foundation and is the native first-layer utility token running on EWF’s Energy Web Chain.

EW Token utilities:

EWT has the following primary utilities:

  • It aims to protect the network against risks and potential threats.

  • EWT can also be used to pay for services like Bridges and Oracles making transaction payments more secure and easier.

  • It also compensates validators via block validation rewards and transaction fees.

The network plans on increasing the EWT utility in the future with the help of Developers. Developers who build on the EW Chain pay transaction fees on the network.

EWT SUPPLY:

The supply of EW tokens is 100M. These tokens are divided as locked and circulating supply. Let’s have a look!

Locked supply:

Out of the total supply, over 40% of the EW tokens are unlocked.

Circulating supply:

According to the official statements, the circulating supply is 47,980,783EWT.

Being a decentralized platform running on its own native chain, it gets tricky to know who holds what and how many coins.

Token distribution:

The EW tokens are distributed in the following manner:

  • 37% of the total supply will be distributed as an EWF community fund.

  • 15% is allocated for Round B Affiliates.

  • 10% of the remaining tokens are reserved for the EWF operating fund.

  • 10% is allocated for REWF endowment.

  • 10% of the remaining tokens are reserved as a Validator block reward.

  • 10% is distributed as Founder tokens.

  • 5% are distributed among Round A affiliates.

  • The remaining 3% will be reserved for Round C affiliates.

REWARDS:

Each block created at the EW chain rewards only two entities. These are:

The validators:

The reward received by the validators is defined by a discrete S curve and decreases over time. Validators can also use a payout address different from the one that they are using for sealing blocks.

The community fund:

The community fund is assumed to be a multisig wallet. It was initially controlled by EW Foundation, and then later controlled by the EWF blockchain community. Moreover, the community reward amount remains constant with each new block.

How Can You Store EWT?

You can store your EW tokens on many popular wallets and interact with the Energy Web Chain. You can store on MyCrypto, MetaMask, and hardware wallets such as Ledger and Trezor.

Moreover, EW Chain has deployed a web-based custom wallet that is based on the open-source MyCrypto wallet. This custom wallet is pre-configured that helps you connect to the Volta test network. The network is also tested with hardware wallets such as Ledger and Trezor.

Partnerships:

Energy Web has a wide range of partnerships that are nothing short of impressive. The Energy Web ecosystem has over 100 member organizations, making it the world’s largest energy blockchain ecosystem.

Some of the partners include Shell ($388B), Tepco ($63B), Siemens ($94B), Exelon ($36B), and Centric ($37.1B). The total revenue of the partnerships in the ecosystem ranges to $1.5 trillion per year. Hence, the project is quite under the radar in terms of adoption and partnerships.

The Takeaway:

Being a project that is listed on one exchange, Energy Web has a great potential in terms of adoption in the space. The network is open to all utilities, users, and devices with a virtual machine identical to Ethereum. Another plus point is that developers can write smart contracts and dApps with little to no additional learning curve.

Overall there is a lot to love about the project that makes it a great platform to invest in.