PONTON BLOG
Enerchain
Decentralised Trading of Decentralised Energy
Enerchain 1.0 is live!
Today, on May 20, 2019, Enerchain 1.0 finally has been released for live trading. Enerchain is the first blockchain-based distributed trading infrastructure that enables OTC energy trading in power and gas products such as standardised spot and forward contracts. In addition, many other energy product types that can be defined by the market participants themselves.
The Enerchain proof-of-concept started in May 2017 together with 44 leading European energy trading companies. Since then, PONTON has performed several tests to improve the trading process and secured the blockchain infrastructure against potential cyber-attacks.
Enerchain’s underlying blockchain framework (WRMHL) is one of the fastest blockchain environments: Achieving a block time of maximum one second and an average end-to-end transaction latency of less than a second, the system is particularly well suited for trading processes that require fast data synchronisation across participants.
It is expected that energy market participants will begin using Enerchain in the coming months in order to take advantage of Enerchain’s low fees and to trade bespoke products such as load curves, certificates, flexibility etc. Those products are inefficient to trade elsewhere. With a flat fee of 500 Euro per month, also bilateral trading of high-volume forward products is highly attractive.
When the trend continues that European energy markets become more decentralised, over time Enerchain could become the leading trading infrastructure for emerging markets. Enerchain has already proven today that it supports the trading of energy products at different scales: Local trading within energy communities, trading of flexibility within distribution grids, and wholesale trading with delivery at the level of balancing zones.
Enerchain’s mission is to reduce entrance barriers for new participants, level the playing field in terms of transaction speed, and give participants direct access to market data generated by themselves.
Michael Merz, Managing Director of PONTON says: “There are only few viable blockchain business cases, but those where a third-party role is replaced by a distributed infrastructure are more than promising. Enerchain is only the beginning of decentralised trading in many industries and we are proud to be its creator.”
