Programmable Energy - Token Taxonomy

The previous post ended with the question why energy tokens.

Trust in smart contracts

We are in need for an elegant way of specifying the smart contracts, without the need to master the specific programming language that is used to implement the smart contract. In such a way that businesspeople, legal experts and auditors can understand what is going on and be able to judge it from their expertise on risk and impact.

Skilled auditors that master the language and understand the functional requirements of the smart contract can validate the work of a programmer only after the business has approved and agreed on the functional specification.

One way of solving this issue is to limit the degree of freedom of the programmer, by prescribing what she/he is expected to build in a language neutral way.

Token Taxonomy Framework

Initiated by the Interworking Alliance (IWA) a Token Taxonomy Framework is now available. This framework allows to specify a token in non-technical terms. The framework has three parts: the base token, the properties, and the behaviours. The base token gives the token is fundamental characteristics, there are a hand full, and the Non-Fungible Token is the most popular on. I can encourage you to have read and deeply understand what a NFT really is.

The properties part allows a token designer to add data attributes a token, this can be very simple a reference to a piece of art, or a very complex dataset.

The token behaviours are the actions that are allowed with the token, implemented as smart contracts, like transferable, burn-able, etc.

Energy Tokens

For the energy sector the following tokens are identified:

• Power (kW)
• Energy (kWh)
• (Fractional) Asset Ownership
• Renewable Energy Certificate / Guarantee of Origin

I have create a series of short videos explaining the energy tokens as a module in the business innovation section of a MOOC from Tech University TU-Delft:

1 Introduction of tokens

2a. Tokens in the energy sector

In the next post we will have a look on how tokens use cases.