Energy

In November, Grid+Texas began on-boarding an initial set of alpha customers, and we have grown to servicing 17 homes at present. The purpose of this group is to do “live” testing of our integration to the electrical grid. We have smoothed out most of the initial issues and are nearing a larger beta program rollout. We are targeting 300 new customers for this next group.

Currently, the only major blocking factor is an integration with a third party credit check service. Until now, we have only taken on customers (without deposits) who we trust will not default on us. This group is largely made up of friends, family, and long-time Grid+ supporters from our Telegram group. Before pushing forward with a larger roll-out, it is important that we have the ability to determine a customer’s credit-worthiness prior to on-boarding them.

Credit rating is not a long-term gating factor for customers whose Lattice1 device will be operating against a deposit on a shorter settlement interval, but it is necessary in the near-term for all beta customers (since we have not shipped any production Lattices to date) and in the long-term for more traditional customers who are not interested in real-time payments. Recall that we currently serve post-pay, fixed-price contracts, which are more traditional products. Although we anticipate the faster-settled Lattice1 customers will see larger savings, we would like to give all customers as many options as is possible. Further, in Texas, we cannot deny customers based upon credit ratings, thus we need to ensure our deposit infrastructure in a segregated bank account is also able to scale to dozens of customers on-boarded daily. Everything is set up on the banking side, but the beta will begin to stress-test this functionality as well.

Pending the credit check integration, as well as a relatively small website update, we will feel comfortable taking on new customers in greater numbers. Unfortunately, this is an enterprise-level integration (occurring around the holidays) and is thus a very slow process relative to the other work in our fast-paced startup environment. We will post more updates as they become available, but we are still comfortable with an early Q1 2019 opening of the beta program. If all goes well, the best estimate is to begin the beta in late January, barring any setbacks. For beta, we plan to accept USD via ACH, credit cards and DAI, as well as ether and bitcoin for payments.

Replacing the Samsung Artik with a Onion Omega2+ for the general compute environment (GCE)

Lattice1 Manufacturing Update

In mid-December, Samsung informed us that they plan to discontinue manufacturing an electrical component that the Lattice1 planned to use. Although we have already decided on a replacement part (this time with a more dependable supply chain!), the change does necessitate additional engineering prior to bringing the Lattice1 into production. This is mostly due to the fact that we now have to re-work the motherboard and get the electricals working with the new design.

Although this news was a shock to our team, the change isn’t all bad:

The new chip we plan to use is less resource-intensive and saves about $40 in bottom line unit cost, which means the sticker price of the Lattice1 will be significantly lower as we can pass these savings on to our community! The savings come not only from the chip, but from supporting components that are no longer necessary, such as an additional power supply and light bar. The new architecture has allowed us to dramatically simplify both the software and hardware designs. This means QA and testing (and, likely, development) will go *much* faster. Although there is a new up-front delay, we believe the eventual efficiency gains will result in a more robust production release with fewer initial bugs in the networking interface (note that the signing and wallet firmware logic is unaffected by the redesign). We are still targeting Q2 for this release, which would incorporate a delay of ~6–8 weeks.

We are currently working with our suppliers to line-up delivery of production components for the end of Q1. This is a relatively large coordination effort to ensure that all required components are delivered on-time and in working order. We have more than a dozen suppliers and distributors that are providing components to mass produce the Lattice1.

Laser direct structured (LDS) security mesh for Lattice1

SafeCards and the Blockchain Standard

Development on SafeCards has been relatively slow given the gritty nature of handling JavaCard applets. Each SafeCard is physically unique, which, much like a snowflake, is the result of indeterminate variations in their manufacturing process. This physical entropy is arguably the most secure method of encrypting a secret (HD wallet entropy) that is commercially available.

Currently we have a working keycard applet, that can generate HD wallets on the SafeCard using the HMAC-SHA512 algorithm. Additionally, the Lattice1 is able to communicate with the SafeCard via end-to-end encrypted channels. We have recently passed a major development hurdle thanks to the much appreciated support from Status’ smart card team.

We are also working to make the SafeCard compliant with the GlobalPlatform standard. This would mean that future SafeCards versions would be compatible with any payment terminals that have been provisioned to work with our applet AID (Application Identifier).

Demo Units

We have completed the software and hardware stacks for three demo units (using the old chip and board design) that we plan to bring along to any conferences and hackathons we attend (most notably ETHDenver in February) before the production Lattice1 release. These units utilize the current version of the SDK (discussed below), allowing developers to build applications on top of the Lattice1 device before it is released in production. If you are interested in exploring an integration, don’t hesitate to reach out on Twitter or our Telegram channel. For ETHDenver and beyond, we plan to let hackers pair their devices with a Lattice1 that we will keep online, and interact with it through our SDK. This will be much more tangible than connecting to a virtual representation of a Lattice being hosted in the cloud. We will also bring Safe Cards with us for teams to utilize in their applications.

Final whitebox packaging for the GridPlus Lattice1, graphics are in the works

Mobile Wallet

The mobile wallet has been feature locked pending the Lattice1 release! Functionality includes:

Pairing with the Lattice1 Reading addresses and displaying balances (for BTC, ETH and ERC-20 tokens, including from card backup accounts) Sending and receiving ether, ERC20 tokens, and seg-wit bitcoin UTXOs (including from card backups) Requesting permissions for automated signatures (e.g. authorize the device to spend up to X ETH per week if the transaction requests originate from the mobile app)

We are most excited about the last feature, as it allows a user to utilize his Lattice1 whether or not he is physically next to it. As long as transaction amounts do not go above the limits set by the user upon creating the permission, the device will automatically sign any transactions requested from the app (which has a cryptographic identity and a secure communication channel with the device). If a transaction exceeds the limit or if no limit is set (or if a backup card is inserted), the user must pin into the device and authorize the transaction, much like a traditional hardware wallet.

SDK

The SDK has been also feature-locked and is functionally ready for production pending the release of the Lattice1 itself. Although some of the SDK’s connectivity logic will change slightly to accommodate the new architecture, its API will likely not change relative to its current state. If you are interested, you may read the docs here or view the source code here.

The user-facing functionality shipping on day one will match with the functionality described in the previous mobile wallet section, but it is important to note that we will be evaluating additional signature schemas for future releases. Examples may include ERC721 transfers, Lightning transactions, or Maker CDP interactions. If you are a developer utilizing a signature schema outside of ether, ERC20, and bitcoin transfers (and if you want to integrate with the Lattice1), please reach out to us and we may add the schema to a future firmware update. More information about schema will be released nearer to the release of the Lattice1.

Payments

Our team has begun due diligence on various designs by other teams for high throughput payments. We recently chatted with Connext and Raiden and have been exploring Lightning for bitcoin. While we do not need high throughput payments in the energy business at this time, it is something we’ll want to be prepared to handle as we scale up to many hundreds or thousands of customers in late 2019. Further, we’ve been designing the Lattice1 to be a user friendly point of sale (POS) terminal, and want to ensure that we have the ability to integrate with high scalability payment systems for this use case.

Review and Outlook

The past year has been rewarding to our team as we have grown from three founders with an idea to 14 full time team members working towards a more efficient electrical grid. It is nice to pause and celebrate our successes: such as building an approved, regulated energy retailer in Texas, creating functional prototypes of our envisioned hardware and growing a team of dedicated individuals excited about our mission.

While looking back at the start of this year is nice, we are most excited to focus on a future state wherein we help bring about more secure infrastructure to the crypto space while solving fundamental coordination issues in the electrical grid. We have a packed schedule the next few months, both on the development and community fronts. We are in the final pushes to get the Lattice1 into production-ready form and will be presenting to the public at both CES and ETHDenver. We are extremely appreciative of our supportive community members and encourage all of you to participate and share your ideas with us on how we can improve to better serve all of you. Happy new year.

Disclaimer

The forward-looking statements in this update are subject to numerous assumptions, risks and uncertainties which are subject to change over time. There are many risk factors, including those relating to blockchain and cryptographic technology generally, as well Grid+’s business, operations and results of operations, that could cause our actual results or developments anticipated by us not to be realized or, even if substantially realized, to fail to achieve any or all of the benefits that could be expected therefrom, We reserve the right to change the plans, expectations and intentions stated herein at any time and for any reason, in our sole and absolute discretion, and we undertake no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise. ACCORDINGLY, WE RECOMMEND THAT YOU DO NOT RELY ON, AND DO NOT MAKE ANY FINANCIAL DECISION OR INVESTMENT BASED ON, THE STATEMENTS CONTAINED IN THIS UPDATE — INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY SELLING OR TRADING OF GRID TOKENS, ETHER OR ANY OTHER CRYPTOGRAPHIC OR BLOCKCHAIN TOKEN, OR THE SECURITIES OF ANY COMPANY.