Power Ledger (POWR) is an Australian blockchain-based cryptocurrency and energy trading platform that allows for decentralized selling and buying of renewable energy. The platform provides consumers with access to a variety of energy markets around the globe and is meant to be scalable to various energy infrastructures and regulations. The market is based on a dual-token ecosystem operating on two blockchain layers, POWR and Sparkz. POWR tokens allow consumers and hosts providing energy to interface with the ecosystem and are protected through Smart Bond technology. POWR tokens can be converted into Sparkz tokens, which can be used for frictionless transactions in the energy exchange market. The initial coin offering for POWR tokens became the largest crowd funding project in Australia and the 14th highest in the world. Power Ledger’s team has immense expertise in both blockchain and electricity markets. They’re comprised of six Board of Directors in addition to over ten full time-team members. Power Leger’s five co-founders make up five of the six Board of Director seats of the company. The sixth board seat belongs to venture capitalist Bill Tai. Receiving his MBA from Harvard, Yai is a world-renowned venture capitalist. Tai’s experience is quite extensive; he is currently the Chairman of Treasure Data and also a Board Member of Bitfury and Boxer. Power Ledger’s POWR Presale sold out in just three days and raised over thirteen million dollars (AUD) in exchange for 190,000,000 tokens. After the presale, Power Ledger held an ICO to sell the remaining 160,000,000 POWR tokens allocated to Token Generation Event. After both rounds, funds raised totaled thirty-four million dollars (AUD). In addition to money raised from its presale and ICO, the Australian Government also awarded Power ledger a grant for 8 million dollars (AUD) to develop its technology and concept further. (Australia has one of the highest costs of electricity in the world and thus has a large stake in the overall success the company). Power Ledger provides a blockchain-based marketplace that can truly change the world. Taking power away from large energy companies, Power Ledger gives local communities the ability to sell their excess solar power to neighbors. Power Ledger has created an energy distribution and tracking platform that allows consumers buy carbonless, sustainable energy at lower prices than what’s offered by traditional electric companies. Power Ledger has plans to expand its operations to three continents worldwide and has amassed an army of powerful strategic partners to help achieve its goals. With the planned release of multiple applications for its platform in the immediate future, the project has positioned itself to disrupt multiple energy markets throughout the world creating a bright future for all participants involved in this green revolution.
The Stellar network is an open source, distributed, and community owned network used to facilitate cross-asset transfers of value. Stellar aims to help facilitate cross-asset transfer of value at a fraction of a penny while aiming to be an open financial system that gives people of all income levels access to low-cost financial services. Stellar can handle exchanges between fiat-based currencies and between cryptocurrencies. Stellar.org, the organization that supports Stellar, is centralized like XRP and meant to handle cross platform transactions and micro transactions like XRP. However, unlike Ripple, Stellar.org is non-profit and their platform itself is open source and decentralized. Stellar was founded by Jed McCaleb in 2014. Jed McCaleb is also the founder of Mt. Gox and co-founder of Ripple, launched the network system Stellar with former lawyer Joyce Kim. Stellar is also a payment technology that aims to connect financial institutions and drastically reduce the cost and time required for cross-border transfers. In fact, both payment networks used the same protocol initially. Distributed Exchange Through the use of its intermediary currency Lumens (XLM), a user can send any currency that they own to anyone else in a different currency. For instance, if Joe wanted to send USD to Mary using her EUR, an offer is submitted to the distributed exchange selling USD for EUR. This submitted offer forms is known as an order book. The network will use the order book to find the best exchange rate for the transaction in-order to minimize the fee paid by a user. This multi-currency transaction is possible because of 'Anchors'. Anchors are trusted entities that hold people’s deposits and can issue credit. In essence, Anchors serves as the bridge between different currencies and the Stellar network. Lumens (XLM) Lumens are the native asset (digital currency) that exist on the Stellar network that helps to facilitate multi-currency transactions and prevent spams. For multi-currency transactions, XLM is the digital intermediary that allows for such a transaction to occur at a low cost. In-order to prevent DoS attacks (aka spams) that would inevitably occur on the Stellar network, a small fee of 0.00001 XLM is associated with every transaction that occurs on the network. This fee is small enough so it does not significantly affect the cost of transaction, but large enough so it dissuades bad actors from spamming the network. The collected fee is then redistributed and added to an inflation pool. This inflation pool releases Lumens at a rate of 1% each year.