Staking comes to energy sector blockchains

Energy Web and Power Ledger are offering staking opportunities reflecting the evolution of their blockchain offerings and opening up wider community participation.

In Energy Web’s case staking is now live as an alpha release on the organisation’s Volta test network using its Volta tokens (VT). Australia-based Power Ledger’s staking is with its POWR token on the newly implemented Solana blockchain platform.

Staking is a process where token holders escrow or lock their tokens in a particular wallet that gives them access to participate in a proof-of-stake blockchain network.

Validators, who also may be stakers, are responsible for creating blocks and approving transactions on the network. In return the validators receive a network fee, which they share with the stakers in the form of a reward.

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Staking is seen as a means of decentralising the network as it ultimately enables anyone with the tokens to participate in its functionality.

In general, the greater the stake and/or the length of time the stake is made, then the greater the rewards. Stakes also might be pooled to increase their value or delegated to another party.

The scheme also allows for incentives for performance and penalties for non-performance, with individual networks setting the requirements for the various levels of participation. Validators also may set conditions for stakers, which may impact the potential rewards.

Power Ledger is recruiting validators and has set out a reward structure for an initial four years.

Power Ledger’s migration to Solana is based on speeding up the transaction throughput and improving energy efficiency to enable a scaling up of its services, which include currently peer-to-peer trading, flexibility services and energy traceability.

“As this is a project for our POWR community to help change the world with us, we will be providing delegated staking opportunities on our new Powerledger Energy Blockchain,” said technical director John Bulich in the Solana migration announcement.

Energy Web expects shortly to shift its ‘EWT Escrow Model’ from the test net with the beta release on the Energy Web Chain, with an initial cohort of validators – ‘service providers’ in EW jargon – from its current validator community.

Thereafter additional participants should be onboarded alongside scaling of the utility layer service network.

Energy Web describes the launch of staking as a “first step towards our decentralized software as a service (dSaaS) infrastructure, allowing for decentralised, community driven service provision for Energy Web utility services and applications.”

The EWT Escrow model is an escrow and subscription model for services in the utility layer of the EW-DOS stack, which powers the apps running on the EW Chain. It is designed to establish decentralised service level agreements and ‘-as-a-service’ subscriptions within the context of a public network.