Can Ethereum Give Citizens a Better Deal on Their Energy Data?

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Speaker: Silvio Meneguzzo

Type: CLS - Lightning (Academic track)

Expertise: Some familiarity with the topic

Event: Devcon

Date: Nov 2026

Smart meters, solar panels and appliances generate data in every home. That data sits with a utility or platform operator, which decides who may use it, sets the price and can change the rules later. The household that produced it sees little of the value. This project takes the opposite view: citizens and energy communities own the data their homes create and earn from it when a grid operator, municipality or developer uses it. Tokenisation alone does not deliver this. In a Horizon Europe project I worked on, licences were tokens on a permissioned chain, yet the operator kept control over upgrades, token minting, custody and fees, so producers who had invested in metering and onboarding still faced hold-up. The fellowship compares three regimes: a centralised platform, a blockchain market with operator discretion, and credibly committed rules on Ethereum, using transaction-cost economics and incomplete-contract theory to show when commitment benefits producers, and at what cost.