Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have come up with a cryptocurrency concept that could enable electricity to be distributed between users without the need for an electrical grid system.
The concept, called E-Stablecoin, seeks to address digital asset stability concerns by not relying on a centralized authority or payment mechanism to function, the national lab said Monday.
The researchers used information theory and statistical mechanics to come up with a stablecoin token that is fully decentralized and backed by a physical asset with stable value.
“Any anonymous party can mint an E-Stablecoin token with the input of roughly one kilowatt-hour of electricity. They can then transact with the digital token like any other cryptocurrency, or even turn it back into usable electricity — all without the need for electrical power companies, electrical transmission lines, permissions or authorities,” said Maxwell Murialdo, a Lawrence Livermore researcher and co-author of the paper published in the journal Cryptoeconomic Systems.
“It is a trustless system from top to bottom,” added Murialdo.
Researchers developed the blockchain concept through the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program.
