Beond was inspired by blockchain’s potential to decentralise power using the trustless nature of Ethereum’s smart contracts. The idea which excites us most is trustless organisations run by algorithms, economic incentives and engaged individual stakeholders.

For us energy market folk, this holds the promise of a trustless energy supply chain underpinned by trustless energy smart meters. These trustless household devices would be economical by providing a broad range of other decentralised services to the household, including participating in blockchain transaction validation activities.

Ahead of our Zero Carbon Market launch in UK during October, this article describes the high level software architecture currently being finalised in preparation for our launch.

Vision

Our vision is to decentralise energy supply chains, empower individuals through decentralisation, to advance democracy and to compete as a global digital currency backed by energy consumption globally. However, ambitious visions start with small steps.

Zero Carbon Markets

The ZeroCarbon token is the specific innovation which our Project is introducing to energy markets and crypto communities. The Zero Carbon Project is using the ZeroCarbon token to tackle climate change. We are launching a highly competitive and transparent Zero Carbon Market in October, where 32 UK energy suppliers will compete with zero carbon energy offers to win new consumer business. Consumers can switch from fossil fuel energy to zero carbon energy while reducing their costs. In addition, they can earn meaningful ZeroCarbon token rewards, which are much more compelling than loyalty points or rebates.

ZeroCarbon Token Economy

ZeroCarbon utility tokens and the supporting token economy have been well designed to tokenise the utility received by customers for using our Market service. This is achieved by requiring energy suppliers to pay their Market transaction fees using ZeroCarbon tokens. The fee is calculated using USD0.01/kWh but paid using tokens.

Up to 70% of these token rewards are then recycled by topping up the consumer reward token pool. This reward pool is initially staked with 60% of the total token supply. Consumers initially receive 1 token for 100 kWh consumed, and can be multiplied several-fold through our generous referrals programme. To increase attractiveness to utility token holder stakeholders, 25% of token profits are burned.

Software architecture

The software includes a centralised system for the Zero Carbon Market and a distributed ZeroCarbon token economy using smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. The following diagram illustrates the architecture overview.

Software architecture overview

Zero Carbon Market technical architecture

The off-blockchain Zero Carbon Markets including the online reverse auction for business and switching site for households have already been developed.

The off blockchain technology stack is:

Database: MariaDB and MySQL

Web Frameworks: Vaadin, Spring

Application Server: Wildfly

Language: Java Enterprise Edition 7 and Java SE 8

Operating System: Ubuntu Linux

ZeroCarbon economy smart contract architecture

We have designed a modular smart contract architecture to reduce security risks, to allow for incremental development of the infrastructure and to simplify upgrades.

The ZeroCarbon token smart contract is based on the Ethereum ERC20 standard specification. The token contract will manage the supply and movement of the economy’s 240 million ZeroCarbon tokens.

Smart contract architecture

The following smart contracts are being deployed in October:

· ZeroCarbon token contract

· Vesting contract where initial allocation of tokens are linked to growth in demand for utility tokens via the Distribute rewards smart contract.

· Token sale smart contracts including for private pre-sale, escrow for release of contributions and a multi-sig payments contract

· ZeroCarbon economy contracts:

a. Transaction fees

b. Reward pool

c. Distribute rewards

d. ZeroCarbon payments contract

These ZeroCarbon smart contracts can be reviewed here:

https://github.com/zerocarbonproject/ZeroCarbonToken

The audit for the token contract can be reviewed here: https://github.com/bokkypoobah/ZeroCarbonSaleContractAudit/blob/master/audit/code-review/ZeroCarbonToken.md

The audit for the token sale contracts can be reviewed here: https://github.com/bokkypoobah/ZeroCarbonSaleContractAudit/blob/master/audit/code-review/PrivatePreSale.md

The requirements specifications and algorithms for each of these smart contracts are documented in section 12 of the Whitepaper, which can be accessed www.zerocarbonproject.com/white-paper