What’s new in EW-DOS?

In this three-part series, we explain how companies can use the Energy Web Token to build and operate enterprise-grade decentralized applications on a public digital infrastructure.

Alexander Popov | Unsplash

Parts

• Part 1: What’s new in EW-DOS?
• Part 2: The Utility of the Utility Token for Utilities
• Part 3: How companies benefit from participating in the public EW-DOS infrastructure

TLDR summary:

• We recently updated the architecture of the Energy Web Decentralized Operating System (EW-DOS), a foundational digital infrastructure for global energy systems.
• EW-DOS now has three distinct layers: a trust layer to anchor data on the Energy Web Chain, a utility layer to simplify the experience of developing and managing enterprise applications, and a toolkit layer to accelerate the application development lifecycle.
• In addition to paying for transaction validation on the Energy Web Chain, Energy Web Tokens (EWT) can be used to pay for eight additional services that are being developed in the Utility Layer of EW-DOS. These include decentralized messaging, data storage, and Energy Web Name Service.
• Using EWT to forward-purchase Utility Layer services represents a major step towards mainstream enterprise adoption, as it allows companies to better forecast and control costs for onboarding millions of renewable and distributed energy resources via EW-DOS.

The EW-DOS Technology Stack

To deal with the megatrends of decarbonization, e-mobility, and distributed energy resources, utilities need to invest in digital technologies. Today they are doing so in spectacular fashion — to the tune of tens of billions of dollars annually. But to truly enable the global energy transition, digitalization cannot just mean more sensors, smarter devices, bigger databases, and better algorithms.

At Energy Web, we believe that public open digital infrastructure will be as integral as physical infrastructure for the secure, reliable operation of a highly decarbonized and distributed electricity grid. Just as grid operators have built and operated the grid’s physical infrastructure over the last century, our vision is for grid operators to invest in, build, and operate digital systems that securely integrate millions of customers and customer-owned DERs into core operation and planning functions.

That’s why we’ve designed the Energy Web Decentralized Operating System (EW-DOS) as a “narrow-waist” protocol, purpose-built to connect an unlimited number of applications (and market/program designs) with the billions of customers, assets, and myriad physical technologies that comprise the grid. We intend for EW-DOS to become a de-facto global standard for digital infrastructure in the energy sector.

We published the first EW-DOS paper in December 2019, based on detailed business and technical requirements from the global energy blockchain community. Since the initial publication we’ve delivered multiple new open-source libraries and refined our technical roadmap through ongoing collaboration with our members. Consequently, we recently released an updated EW-DOS paper in two parts: one for a general audience, and one focused on technology details.

EW-DOS now comprises three distinct layers: 1) the Trust layer, which makes EW-DOS open and reliable by providing consensus and immutability via the public Energy Web Chain; 2) the Utility layer, the “middleware” layer of the EW-DOS stack which simplifies the experience of creating and using decentralized solutions; and 3) the Toolkit layer, which provides open-source templates to speed the development of applications for renewable energy markets, e-mobility programs, and DER market participation.

When EW-DOS is fully deployed, anyone — from utilities, to startups, to individual customers — will be able to write an application on their laptop and instantly deploy it at enterprise scale without needing any of their own infrastructure. The global network of EW-DOS nodes will provide all the infrastructure needs (such as messaging, storage, and consensus).

Why EW-DOS has evolved

As we celebrate the Energy Web Chain’s first birthday, we’re more confident than ever that the EW-DOS technology stack is uniquely positioned to solve real problems and deliver real value to our members and the broader energy sector. Yet as is the case with all novel technologies, questions remain about mainstream adoption of EW-DOS.

Isn’t blockchain too clunky/complicated/scary for customers to use?

How do we transition decentralized technologies from R&D into core business operations?

Do you really expect multi-billion dollar companies to embrace a public blockchain powered by a token?

Let’s face it: there are a lot of incredible decentralized technologies out there today, but the list of blockchains and utility tokens that are delivering against their stated purpose at scale is… short.

Rather than getting bogged down in skepticism and address these points one by one, it helps to take a step back.

How many customers know whether their utility uses on-premise or cloud storage? Who can name the vendor that provides their utility’s billing software, or mobile app? Customers don’t need to know or care about the underlying technology that supports a digital product or service — it just has to work.

The same logic applies to internal utility stakeholders. I know from personal experience that no more than five years ago, among operations teams cloud computing was discussed like theoretical physics: interesting, but not particularly applicable. But once there was an understanding of the technology and the business model (i.e. SaaS), cloud-based solutions took off.

By now utilities have well-established operational and accounting practices for integrating new digital technologies into their businesses to deliver novel products and services for their customers.

Yes, in some ways blockchain and decentralized technologies are more complicated than “conventional” IT, but this is exactly why we are revamping EW-DOS (the Utility Layer in particular) and introducing a straightforward EWT payment mechanism: we aim to make EW-DOS indistinguishable from existing enterprise software from a procurement perspective, yet truly distinctive in terms of operational capabilities.

Introducing the EW-DOS Utility Layer

The Utility Layer is the newest component of the EW-DOS stack, and it complements the existing Energy Web Chain and Toolkits. Just as the Trust layer (Energy Web Chain) is powered by a network of validator nodes, the Utility Layer is powered by a network of utility nodes.

From a technical perspective, validator and utility nodes are separate (i.e., they operate different software, perform different functions, and are hosted on different machines). From an operational perspective, we expect that many organizations will host both types, but there will not be a precise one-to-one relationship. (Operating a validator or utility node requires configuring specific Docker images on a host machine. Each organization will make its own decisions about which containers to run. From a governance perspective, all utility nodes must initially meet the validator eligibility requirements.)

As of today, there are four new Utility Layer services in production with another four in an experimental phase. These services, which are priced and paid for in EWT, dramatically simplify the process of building and using decentralized applications. For full detail about each service, see the EW-DOS Technology Detail paper here.

Live Today

• Energy Web Name Service: Enables users to map human-readable names (e.g. name.ewc) to their DID address and create a sub-name for other resources, like an email address or smart contract (e.g. resource.name.ewc.). This is an implementation of the Ethereum Name Service on the Energy Web Chain.
• Bridges: The first two production bridges are designed to transfer tokens between the EW Chain and the main Ethereum network; one enables users to transfer native EWT from the EW Chain to an ERC-20 representation on Ethereum and the other enables users to transfer DAI stablecoins from the Ethereum network to a bridged DAI on the EW Chain. Over time functionality will expand to enable any arbitrary data or transaction to occur between networks, for example using the Arbitrary Message Bridge to trigger interactions between smart contracts on EW Chain and Ethereum.
• Oracles: For use cases where it’s beneficial to leverage multiple input sources (e.g. monitoring of local voltage for multi-party reconciliation, reporting of distributed solar for renewable portfolio standards accounting), we are building on top of emerging open-source protocols, particularly the Chainlink protocol, for establishing a network of independent nodes to provide event data to on-chain contracts.
• Identity Directory: The EW Chain DID implementation is based on the W3C DID standard. The Identity Directory is a smart contract that contains the universal list of DIDs and associated claims on the EW Chain.

In Development

• Key Recovery: A multi-signature wallet that governs ownership over a DID, solves the “password reset” problem, and prevents adversaries from unilaterally gaining control over a DID (itself a smart contract governed by a key pair) in the event that the identity owner loses access to their original key pair.
• Transaction Relay: Enables end-users to interact with the EW Chain without needing to hold or manage tokens via a relay service that allows delegated proxy nodes to pay for transaction fees in EWT on behalf of users and applications.
• Messaging: A decentralized messaging service for high-volume, low-latency (e.g. machine-to-machine) communications that can be integrated with on-chain transactions and signatures.
• Storage: A decentralized storage solution for content addressed data (those which must not be editable) and key-value data (which contains things that need to have a predictable key or an arbitrary key). In many cases we expect decentralized storage to complement, rather than replace, existing storage solutions (e.g., either private cloud or on-premise databases). In all implementations, the messaging and other chain abstraction services will serve as a connective tissue to on-chain components.
• Other Chain Abstraction: Going forward we will continue to develop other services and tools that make it easier for users and applications to interact with the EW Chain. Examples include a smart contract application programming interface (API) generator that provides a standard communication interface between on-chain identities and contracts and off-chain systems and data through usage of GraphQL or RESTFul middleware, the EW Chain station (which enables applications to fetch real-time gas prices (in Gwei) from a public end point), and the EW Wallet, which provides a simple user interface for managing EWT. Additionally, most enterprise implementations will feature custom architectures of orchestration services that securely connect legacy IT systems (e.g., customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, billing engines) as well as IoT devices to on-chain components. Designs range from server-side integrations into big SCADA systems to small, lightweight implementations that can run on a small IoT device.

As described above, the new EW-DOS architecture (and the Utility Layer in particular) is designed to support enterprise-grade decentralized applications that look and feel like “regular” IT from an operational and end-user experience. In Part 2, we explain the two primary uses of the Energy Web Token (EWT) in the updated EW-DOS technology stack:

1. Transaction payments — primarily for gas consumption on the EW Chain but also for services like Bridges and Oracles — made on a pay-as-you-go basis
2. Bundled Utility Layer service payments — a mechanism that grants DIDs access to five distinct services — an EWNS name, the transaction relay, key recovery service, messaging, and storage — for one flat EWT payment.

Navigation

• Part 2: The Utility of the Utility Token for Utilities →