D.Energy introduces proof of energy consensus backed by real power

0:00I'm Ashan Addison from the Crypto Coin Show and today on blockchain interviews we have Shaffi and Alli Rafi, founder and president of Deny. Gentlemen, welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time.

Thank you for having us.

You're very welcome. There's so much to learn about electricity and decentralized grids more importantly as energy gets ever more important to

0:24have green energy conscious networks and I think a lot more people at least in crypto are becoming more aware of the energy side because of the energy consumption around Bitcoin. But I feel like we need to revolutionize energy industry altogether which has been a little bit archaic for the last century and it's moving into the future here and I know you and your team

0:48are working on that. Shaffy I would love to start with sort of a high level overview of what you and the team have built at Deny and then we can dive into all the details.

Yeah great thank you thank you for having us. And absolutely you're right. I think electricity and the way emerging technologies, energy consumption and these are all you know

1:09important topics and we you can see them converging onto you know a point where they're going to have to really get involved with each other. So essentially that's what we've done with the energy. We've built a layer 1 blockchain that is powered by renewable energy. So the fuel of our network rather than being a native token like Ethereum or Salana does,

1:30you have to stake renewable real world assets, real world renewable energy to operate the network. So it makes us the first proof of energy blockchain and it also makes this you highly sustainable.

Definitely. You know, I would love to dive into a little bit more. I want to definitely touch on the proof of energy, but I feel like the renewable energy scene, you

1:56know, it's very niche compared to oil and gas, at least it's growing. And we're seeing a lot of renewable energy, but I feel like the percentage is very small. And maybe decentralized networks, blockchain can really help with that. Maybe can touch on the need for a blockchain and how that really will move renewable energy into the next level. So renewable energy obviously it's

2:21something that's been around a long time. I think solar energy and wind energy all of these kind of thermal but the requirement the use case of it now is more prelevant than ever because we're seeing electric cars AI technology you know all of these different blockchain bitcoin you know thirsty energy thirsty technologies coming that require the these kind of things. So

2:44blockchain being this distributed ledger that can track and you know keep a record of everything it can't be tampered you know it's all of these security protocols that allows for the accounting of you know whatever it may be like bitcoin but for energy specifically you know energy is something which it's very abstract for us you know we use energy daily but

3:06we don't understand it properly you know energy still works on a old paradigm of centralized energy production you know being sent across the country with high voltage lines you know these are very inefficient systems from I would say an industrial age where you know burning gas and fuel you know it made sense you know from a wasteful period

3:26but now that we're going into a more streamlined AI optimized world I feel like blockchain can definitely cap cat catapult and upgrade and update the energy industry to match the technology advances in other sectors

definitely I completely agree And I think it's about ensuring that the producers and the users of renewable energy have like an efficient market to

3:51make sure that you know there's not excess supply but and the demand and so how does that work with Deny in ensuring like the you know the buyers and the sellers and everything works really smoothly while utilizing blockchain. So I mean with it with the whole renewable energy landscape it's something which I don't know how well you're versed in this. So electricity

4:18when it's produced it's sold from the moment of inception. So whether it's produced from a clean source or a dirty source it doesn't have any unique properties to differentiate once it's fed into the grid. It's just electricity. Yeah.

So for accounting purposes, governments issue certificates, clean energy certificates to entities that produce energy from a clean source. And

4:38essentially that's used as a proof of rights to say that you have used that clean energy. So these assets have have been around for a long time. We've seen these assets go up in the US after the climate bill. It went up a few thousand%. You know, the kind of price action you see on tokens. But it happened on a real world asset and that's because the world is now starting

4:58to put a higher price on renewable energy because they understand the requirement and the need for clean energy. And I think moving forward with like I said Bitcoin and AI data centers and things like that, you're going to see more and more emphasis put on clean energy. So what we've essentially done, we built a protocol that pays you for making clean

5:16energy. rather than burning up loads of electricity to get a bitcoin that people willing to pay you for, we're paying you to add clean electricity capacity and you get a token for that. So, as we call it, we've labeled it the inverted mining process. And I feel like by inverting the mining process, what you essentially do, you turn what was previously an

5:36ecological worry into potentially a economic boom. You know, something that you could turn into an opportunity. And you know, our blockchain enables that. Mhm. That's really interesting. I love that. And Ally, you know, it sounds great to have being paid to produce clean energy and but of course there's always a transition from, you know, the

6:00energy producers from the last century. What do you think is the interest from traditional producers new, you know, small big enterprises in actually utilizing this method to produce clean energy and get rewarded for it? So I think if you look at the especially the electricity producers right or this whole sector as as as Shaffy said it's from the kind of

6:25industrial age and there hasn't been much innovation in that I mean there's been a lot of innovation in how to make miners more you know energy efficient how to make cars more batteries more en energy efficient but electricity is something that it's as it's generated it's consumed or it's wasted so what we are trying to do here at the energy is actually tackle the main

6:46problem, right? Rather than trying to make you know, whether it's Bitcoin miners or the electric car chargers more efficient, we're actually looking to make the whole system of the grid more efficient. And that is by enabling you know, whether it's a household with solar panels on their roof that are going to generate renewable energy and plug it into the

7:08grid. And by doing that, they will essentially become a minor and generate what coins. So we're incentivizing the individual household to do this as well as obviously as you climb up the ladder the corporates or the energy companies or the producers. So by doing this you're incentivizing the renewable energy producers to generate more power because the

7:28certificates that they're generating become more valuable. And at the same time it's no different to how blockchain works, right? you're kind of incentivizing all of these homes to start generating electricity and plugging into the grid making the whole system more efficient and the innovation that's required

for the amount of power that's going

7:48to be required to you know for AI or you know AI is going to be using a lot of power the electrification of you know the car industry and very soon the aviation industry

all of this is going to require a lot more power

definitely I completely agree And I'm pretty bullish on the electric car movement is just is growing and AI I think people don't even understand the

8:11demand that it's going to require. You know these companies are like losing money because there's everyone's using it every day.

Absolutely. If you look at the if you look at the United Kingdom

you know they were you know all talking about all cars to be you know electric by a certain date and what they actually realized very quickly is

8:32they don't have the infrastructure

and they cannot build the infrastructure fast enough so they have to take a complete U-turn right so that's just one little use case on where we're going to be going with AI

definitely and what do you think about the you know sort of decentralization of the network. Say if I'm just I have my own house or maybe, you know, I just

8:54I'm not a big energy player, but I want to contribute. Is it designed to work just as well for retail users as it is for someone that has a warehouse of graphics cards or, you know, traditional clean energy farm?

Absolutely. That's the whole point. The whole point is to allow anyone anywhere in the world to go live off-rid, put a few solar panels up, make the

9:18electricity, potentially sell that electricity through the blockchain and sell this the rights of that or keep or use it themselves and basically live off live off the you know without any government entity or any energy companies. So our protocol actually allows for that. Our protocol allows for you to live off grid earn your own money through mining your own

9:37electricity. M. Wow, that's really cool. And how do you how how much do you need to get that set up? Like do you guys actually have hardware for that or they can just use any solar panels and they tie into software on the computer?

How it works is we are tied into the international registration or certification standard. We're licensed operator for that standard and

10:03essentially they do the certification. So they do all the heavy lifting. It's they're assigned by the government. So once you install your panels and every country has what they call or pretty much every country has a feeding tariff. A feeding tariff means that whenever you go and you put a solar panel on your roof, the local council will come and say, "Right, we're going to buy all the

10:20excess electricity that you produce that you don't use. We'll buy it off you at this price for 15 years." And that's what they do. And once they do that, then when when you hit a one mega or whatever, you get a certificate as well. And then you're allowed to sell that certificate separately. So all all those systems stay the same. We can

10:38do the verification ourselves. If you want to get the verification done through the local authority, you can do it. But if you're on an island where they don't do that, we through the blockchain can verify that for you.

That's very cool. I feel like more entrepreneurs and small businesses should jump on this to be getting excess revenue, especially if they're in a

10:58place where, you know, they could easily get solar energy.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Makes sense. And can we dive a little bit more into the earnings from it? Because you know if you are an entrepreneur or business you're trying to look at cost benefit. Of course you know there's going to be some initial purchasing the hardware to actually get your renewable energy

11:18sources but then you mentioned at the beginning about this inverted mining and that you're also getting you know you could sell off the electricity you're also getting the watt tokens. So how does that work in actually earning from your contributions? So I mean you don't necessarily need to be an energy producer to engage if you want to operate a node. You can purchase

11:37the renewable electricity certificates RWAS natively within our ecosystem. You can stake them to power the node and then you'll earn a W coin. You'll earn the W coins by offsetting the network by having the renewable energy stake. So that's one way of engaging with it. Outside of that the W coins they serve a purpose of essentially being the fuel the monetary

11:59system. And what coins are only produced once the So when the network consumes 1 megawatt of electricity, we offset 1,000 megawatt, which essentially means that we are offsetting 999 times more than we used. So, it's a regenerative loop. It's a regenerative loop. So, we're adding extra surplus. And by doing this, we get a thousand times faster to net zero to reaching

12:24this target that they've set. And it means that what coins is the is being produced off off the back of you know an offset of 1,000 megawatts of energy. So this exit to the price of energy in a way today. So it's inflation adjusted for the future. And at the same time it's removing our it's it's putting a new lens of value and what the energy essentially

12:51does we've created what we have tagged the energybacked economy. M

our economy was once backed by gold. Gold was the most important commodity you could hold and because of that it was it allowed for so many industries and so many countries to develop and progress and then they you know I think it was Nixon or someone depegged it. You know the gold standard was gone

13:15and it became legal tender and you know fractional reserve banking and all this stuff. We're taking it back to being a setbacked economy, but rather than gold being that asset, it's renewable when it's clean electricity.

And clean electricity should be the fuel for the digital world. If we are living in a world with AI, robots, electric cars, electric planes, you know,

13:44everything running autonomously optimized, we are having, you know, highly efficient energy producing systems with it. And that investment doesn't come in without a protocol like the energy. Without the energy becoming available and allowing this kind of investment, there would be no innovation. without Instagram or Facebook media wouldn't

14:06have had the amount of innovation. We wouldn't be able to talk on a call like this and we wouldn't all of the tools and stuff we're using is a byproduct of the investment that we've seen in certain areas and sectors and electricity unfortunately has just been one that we've just you know used it and not really appreciated that how our relationship with electricity may change

14:25over the years. Definitely I think everyone takes it for granted until the electricity gets turned off then they realize you know how important it is and you know that's a great point about in energy as sort of like the dollar you know I feel like if pe people are looking at is there what can be used for trading and commodities and like bitcoin it's a good answer but without

14:49energy you wouldn't be able to produce bitcoin. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, that's the whole point. And you know, they say obviously humans wouldn't survive without water, but actually if the electricity cuts out, we wouldn't get the water pump the water out the ground. So, we've done probably die faster without the electricity. But, you know, so look, I think, you know,

15:08we're kind of it's a bit tongue and cheek, but essentially, I think the biggest resource that we use right now is electricity and renewable electricity obviously just makes much more sense for this kind of digital world that we're talking about, you know. you know, burning fossil fuels to power a robot doesn't doesn't add up, you know, or to power an AI system. It

15:27doesn't add up. And you know, I always I always make this joke about Bitcoin. You know, I was saying if AI was to have full control, AI may turn off Bitcoin, saying this is a very you know, old technology that's, you know, burning up so much more electricity. It's inefficient. You know, AI would want to optimize these systems. And so, so that could be one of the

15:46first things in optimize. And what would AI do? AI would probably build a similar system to what we've built as in the energy because it's natively allowing making electricity to be the currency. And if AI is going to take over 99.9% of all the jobs in the world, we'll be left with that one job to just power it. Our job will be just we got to keep the

16:06electricity to keep these, you know, intelligent machines making our lives so much easier. And I think that's the end economy. I think the end economy for humans is to be actually producing electric. We don't want to leave it to the robots and end up like the matrix and us being their battery. So it's better that we build a protocol where we can provide nice clean electricity and

16:25we can make it profitable for everyone in the process.

Definitely completely agree and you know with Deny striving towards a decentralized network. Is there any specific areas that you know this makes the most sense? you know like in the US there's a huge Bitcoin mining initiative going on in the US but also Europe and Middle East.

So the way we're doing it actually we're

16:50we're rolling it out first into the international markets. We are licensed to hold renewable energy certificates in the international market. So international meaning Asia, China like you know Australia, Africa, basically non-EU, non US, right? We're launching it in these territories. EU and US will follow suit. We're slow we're it's our should we say our

17:15deployment strategy. it's it's being done in phases and the reason for that is because these these international markets are less mature and it's easier to gain traction and to test our and they're less how do you say they're less saturated so it's easier for us to use as our testing grounds to prove our tech stack and to have a good

17:34use case and then to slowly continue that you know release plan to the other territories

definitely and if you're looking at the making a an impact. You know, the energy market is huge. Everyone in the world needs it. What's like a 3 to 5 year vision on like grabbing a percentage of the market or how big do you need to build Deny

17:59to actually make an impact? I muted myself. There's a little background noise. I mean the way I see it, I think this is inevitable. I think the energy is inevitable. I think an energy backed economy is inevitable the way you know it's just it's just literally following out thought processes and if you follow them to end and you do enough of these you'll

18:23realize this is essentially what's going to happen. So I think the energy is something where it could explode overnight and people could you could have massive adoption overnight. It could it could also be, you know, I often tend to compare it to forex, because, you know, nobody went to a bureau of the change in the '9s or the

18:462000s to go and take their euros that they or the dollars that they had and exchange it for pounds or yen and, you know, make some money on the side. No one did that. But then suddenly in the late 2000s, 20110, 2011 you had all these forex applications and everyone was a forex trader. everyone's oh you buying yen you selling this you do overnight right so I see potentially

19:08with renewable energy us being able to have a similar system because right now these energies that we're talking about you cannot easily buy it there's a lot of red tape there's a lot of different agencies or companies or entities you need to register with and then the whole process is very convoluted and protracted very archaic if you wanted to offset your

19:27energy it would take you almost two months to do this process you know by the time you set up the right accounts do the KYC's, find the brokers, source the energy, redeem it. So, we're making all of this a few click process. So, the answer to your question is, you know, it could take some time for the markets to catch up with what we're doing, but I feel like when it does, it

19:49will happen very quickly.

Yeah, I know that makes I think if I could just jump if I could just jump in here. I think once once the actual ecosystem of what the energy does is understood. Now yes, we're a layer one blockchain but at the same time we have had to create this ecosystem that enables the energy to actually achieve its goals. Right?

So you know on one hand you have the

20:13incentive to generate renewable energy so that you can have these renewable certificates which the governments are issuing right. So then we are tokenizing those and we're making energy available on a sustainable blockchain

so that on our native marketplace that you can buy and sell energy. You can offset as an individual or as a company or you can just be a trader and

20:35buy and sell whether it's nuclear, whether it's you know solar, wind, hydro, whatever it is that you want to buy, you can trade right from different parts of the world as well. So when I say an ecosystem, you have the marketplace and then you have the actual blockchain as well as a layer 1 blockchain where some of my experiences in the in the past where I was

20:56working closely with Lamborghini and Ferrari on web3 strategies on you know at one point they were looking at you know putting the ownership of the car as an NFT when you know minting the car as an NFT when it's when it's first created because normally there's a year waiting list or a two-year waiting list and you spec your car and that car is

21:13minted at that spot and it's the ownership of the car, the log book, the history, everything of the car is kept on chain because it's the most secure way to keep it, right? And you can imagine the ownership of a car can just be, you know, give me your wallet address, I'll transfer it to you as a transaction. So, all of these ideas are there and there's a lot of

21:32mainstream companies now, whether it's supply chain, you know, from industry that they're looking to bring onto blockchain, but they always hit one red tape,

sustainability. they're blocked. I personally worked on a project with Ferrari and sometime their bank and at the you know at the last minute the bank sustainability department blocked the whole deal

21:53because they said it's on blockchain sorry it's sustain you know it's not sustainable. So with the energy you're not just hitting your your ESG targets there's no sustainability red lines. So I think what makes us unique is by this having this full ecosystem of enabling mainstream to move over to blockchain without hitting any sustainability issues. the chain is

22:12powered by renewable energy. We're incentivizing renewable energy producers to produce more certificates because because the more gen power they generate, you know, the more value they create from what coins. So, it's a full ecosystem rather than just the blockchain.

I think the point you made, Ellie, about the ESG, I think that's something to

22:30to factor in. So, a lot of companies now they're having to set up an ESG department. They're setting up environmental kind of, you know, their carbon tracking departments. That's a cost to them. They have to get a sustainability officer. They have to get, you know, they have to get someone that's going to come in. Maybe they deal with a consulting firm that comes and

22:51does the measurement of their their carbon footprint, their supply chain. They have to do all of these things. That's a massive cost for them. With the energy, if they register to be a node, we do that for them. We basically offset their energy. They are now ESG compliant. And so rather rather than this being a costbearing department, it can be a profit making

23:10department if you know what I mean. So, so this is this is the final kind of piece to the puzzle which which Ali just kind of rightly said is that the traction that we'll get with blue chip companies or major IPs is that not only do we remove the whole concern of blockchain negative kind of impact on the brand but we actually

23:33make sure that you hit all your ESG and you're hitting all your environmental targets and provable verifiable onchain.

That's amazing. A lot of great points there and you know I completely agree. I see it going in this direction. It only makes sense you know from Forex. you talked about forex trading and then you know I know traders that just trade oil

23:53and like but you know wouldn't it be better if they were trading renewable energies and especially on the blockchain where you know you have T0 instance settlement 24-hour markets which is you know the tokenization of the stock markets and the financial markets is coming and I agree with you guys about the international markets and the growth and just jumping

24:17hurdles a lot easier And then I would love to see that move into the mainstream markets as well. You know, to touch further on the blockchain side, you know, there's so many benefits to the blockchain. You mentioned about the inverted mining about having the Wattcoin and how you can contribute and you can earn through that. Is there anything else you want to

24:35touch on the blockchain crypto side and how that drives value? Yeah, I mean so I mean most blockchains I mean Bitcoin is I guess one of the only or the main proofof work ones that's still you know pushing you know the boundaries of what's possible or what's considered the even the kind of reasonable in pricing of assets like this. But outside of that you

25:03have Ethereum, you have Salana, you have all of these other blockchains and all their tokens and their tokconomics. There is no Bitcoin is capped. That's why you're seeing this price action, right? It's cap. There's only 21 million ever going to be and people know that and that scarcity is driving this crazy demand and you know, no one wants

25:20to get left behind and the FOMO behind it. But you know, Ethereum is not doing it as much because Ethereum can keep getting minted and the you know, the amount of Ethereums that get minted and you know, yeah. the whole equation of it works differently, right? And what we've got is something more similar to Bitcoin as in we have 1.2 billion token or roughly

25:40about that will if we hit the final energy epoch, which we will never do because ne we'll never ever end up using that much energy for the final energy epoch. You'll only ever get to 1.2. We're not completely capped the way Bitcoin is like a hard cap, but we are capped in the terms of that you'll never really ever get to the final epoch. So that does definitely give it that

26:03kind of price action that Bitcoin can see and it being you know the first token that's actually backed by something. I mean there are tokens that they say they're backed you know real estate tokens or this token or gold tokens and stuff like that but you know it's yeah I don't want to go into that. Oh, go on. You know, you

I'd like to I'd like to add something to

26:24that. I mean, majority of blockchains if you if you look at their their their history and when they started and what they achieved, majority of them launched a blockchain and scrambled for a use case

like what's the purpose of my blockchain? And that's the question that everyone keeps asking. What is the purpose of a blockchain right? I mean

26:46obviously we know the purpose of you know the blockchain and especially in a world of you know fake news and I think as more as more AI videos start to appear everywhere and as as as we lose track of what's real and what's not real I think blockchain is going to be the main or the only tool that we'll have available to differentiate between what's real and

27:06what's not real if it's onchain that we can be verified that it's real but that's kind of stepping away from what I wanted to say. So with the energy we have a strong use case from the word go. We've built an ecosystem an environment that first of all will channel the trillions of dollars that's being invested into the renewable sector. Everyone has their targets. Every

27:25country has a mandate to hit net zero by a certain date.

so the ecosystem incentivizes the producers to generate more renewable energy. Right? So we have instead of one centralized kind of grid, we have this decentralized supply of electricity which is popping up everywhere as people put more solar panels on their roofs and generates renewable energy. So for

27:50us we have a clear path and a clear strategy from the word go whereas if you look at a lot of other these blockchains I mean Salana recently became first it was Ethereum that was the meme or the NFT sorry the NFT blockchain and now Salana's become the meme blockchain right

so what is the purpose of these blockchains so I think that's kind of a unique selling point of what we're

28:11doing

definitely yeah it's good to have a blockchain that has some really strong value ads And obviously driving more renewable energy around the world is

I mean token token prices I mean h how how how do we know what a what a token is worth right speculation

or rarity as as Shappy said versus we're backing our token based on actually real infrastructure and

28:39actually real utility and solving a real problem.

Definitely.

Yeah. So if you want like for example if I wanted to start collecting revenues from renewable energy or I could stake with the RWA NFT and just get involved in the ecosystem that requires some watt as well. So where are we at with that and like how can I get involved and get started? So we are

29:08having our first public sale on the 31st of August, Sunday I believe day after tomorrow and it's the first time that the public will have access to an allocation of what coins. We are selling a limited supply in wave 1. This is the first opportunity for our community members really because obviously we have a growing community. So we wanted to give them

29:31something back before it hits the exchanges cuz once it goes into the exchanges obviously you know the price action is not in our control normal. So we wanted to do like a wave one for our community and that's taking place on the 31st. So obviously would invite you to join our telegram. I think there is definitely some interest there if you for your community. if they're

29:50interested they can come and check out our socials engage get involved in the public sale and then after that the next opportunity will be to engage with us on the launch of our token in the centralized exchanges and then we will be releasing the energy trading wallets so our energy trading we've just transition to mainet so the public sale comes next with our TGE and

30:12then we have the energy trading wallet so we're obviously waiting to launch the energy trading wallets post exchange listings because, you know, it's better to show the technology when everyone can have a have a say and get excited about it rather than, you know, doing everything before, you know, we're even available in the in the market. So, yeah, we have a lot of

30:30exciting things coming out and I would definitely say keep keep engaged, join our Telegram, join our Discord.

Yeah. No, it sounds really great, Shafi. I can leave a link to the Telegram, the other socials, the platform, and more information in the show notes below as well. I really do appreciate the insights into renewable energies and where we're at. As I said

30:50in the beginning, I think a lot of people are underestimating the energy that's going to be needed, not just for electric cars and living, but for AI, it's going to be crazy. And if people can be the ones to contribute some of that energy so that the AI can eat it up and they can earn from it, then I feel like this is something that they should be getting in early.

31:12

Makes perfect. I like the way you described that actually. It was very well put. I mean essentially that's what we're doing. We're we're giving the opportunity for people to generate electricity that can they can give it to, you know, compute like AI and stuff like that to eat up and get paid and get paid for it because that's what essentially is going to be the biggest

31:29demand moving forward. Yeah and the other thing I would like to just say is the whole renewable energy landscape. You know, it's people people have a lot of opinions when it comes to energy. They're like, "Oh, nuclear or fusion has to be the future or has to be this or you know, everyone gets so and I feel like mainly people who really don't understand it are the

31:50ones that are so passionate about these things because generally people who do understand it do realize that there's never going to be one solution. It has to be an energy mix. You know, the future will work off an energy mix. So, and it's to do with the geography of the location of everything. So that's just the way the nature of it until we

32:07figure out you know some technology comes out that can you know you know a micronuclear reactor or something like that or you know until they figure it out these are going to be energy mixers and energy mixers is fine because it allows you to experiment and develop technologies. I think the biggest problem that we've had is there's been a lack of investment into this side

32:26because people have been so bought into the paradigm of drilling, pulling oil out the ground, getting it refined, sending in a ship across the world to get it refined, to then send it across the world to another place, then to set it in trucks to, you know, petrol stations. I mean this whole paradigm we're so stuck in this and there's so much money to be made still that people

32:46don't want you know the technology technological advances in energy production through whether it be solar I mean solar's seen massive improvements I mean you're now able to get solar from ambient light you know like you've got you've got wearable devices that from the light in your you know in your living room can charge themselves you know so you know we're seeing a lot of

33:07technology emerging when it comes to energy creation and I feel like our protocol will definitely fast track that.

It's very cool, gentlemen. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this grows out. Best of luck on the watt sale and the initial launch and I'm looking forward to checking out the wallets as well as they launch. I would

33:26love to have you guys back on as the platform continues to grow and see this movement happen.

Looking forward to it. I would love that.