Thanks for the quick reply. I will definitely wait for further comments on the link I posted.
In the meantime, thanks for clarifying some things for me. On #2 however, this seems to me like an inconvenience for the customer - if not real, at least psychological. Why would anyone install a hard cap on their energy consumption? (A mouse with batteries is fine until the batteries run out, then it becomes a hassle because it always happens in completely the wrong moments. But maybe the way users will purchase additional rights when their caps are met will be integrated more seamlessly, and not turn the whole process into a drag.)
I’m all up for saving on my energy bill (I’m quite mindful of this already, never leaving appliances needlessly turned on, etc.), but I personally don’t like the idea of having an energy consumption cap. I want to be given the possibility of saving energy, without being confined by it.
On Tokenization:
The user will not interact with any caps, they are basically an accounting system. You will never be cut off because you do not have enough cap but you may be cut off because you are not willing pay extra for caps in peak periods. Please don’t jump to conclusions here, it is better to voluntarily turn off and make a profit, rather than for the entire grid go into a blackout. Some users who overconsume, they will have to start paying more it is true. Since we are first targeting developing countries I’d like to use one as an example to explain how this will likely work in the real world.
Zambia is currently experiencing blackouts for about 8hrs a day. This is because their energy supply cannot meet demand. If there is an absolute maximum demand possible, determined by the amount of cap distributed, there would not be blackouts anymore. What will happen instead is that these cap will start to fetch a high price on the market. Instead of having a blackout, users can voluntarily turn off their devices to earn money from selling their caps to other users who cannot do without. Bitcoin traders for example 
Users may get a notice on their phone. “By turning off your lights from 6-8pm today, you can earn a or b” or some equivalent behavioral psychology enabled statement.
On Energy Savings & meters:
The TED talks that you shared is interesting, but that sort of incentivization mechanism is just one part of our system and yes it is very effective. They are anticipating being able to generate 2TWh in energy savings next year. Our system is aiming to go many orders of magnitude higher than that in our first implementation in just one country. We will use behavioral incentives such as described in the video but also much more. One aspect of which involves the smart meter.
The smart meter serves two main psychological functions (as well as the mechanical functions which I wont go into here). First, it is a Prepaid meter. This single fact has a very powerful effect on consumption. Second, it provides detailed feedback to the consumers about where exactly their energy is being consumed, ie Fridge, air conditioning, water heater or lights. This also informs the manager part of the app enabling it to give personalized advice to the user.
(I think it is interesting to note here that the users in Zambia who were put onto the Prepaid meters reported very high levels of satisfaction from it, even though it may seem like a hassle before it’s implemented. I think we will have the same experience with our cap and trade system).
One study that informed our product design was (Petersen, J. E., Shunturov, V., Janda, K., Platt, G., & Weinberger, K. (2007). Dormitory residents reduce electricity consumption when exposed to real‐time visual feedback and incentives.)
Extract from the abstract:
Blockquote
– Overall, the introduction of feedback, education and incentives resulted in a 32 percent
reduction in electricity use (amounting to savings of 68,300 kWh, $5,107 and 148,000 lbs of CO2 2) but only a 3 percent reduction in water use. Dormitories that received high resolution feedback were more effective at conservation, reducing their electricity consumption by 55 percent compared to 31 percent for low resolution dormitories. In a post-competition survey, students reported that they would continue conservation practices developed during the competition and that they would view web-based real-time data even in the absence of competition.`> Blockquote
This is just one study, and we have a few more, but they all lack a long enough testing period or a high enough test population to be taken as scientific evidence. Still, the results are very informative. Having detailed and real time feedback on consumption has a very strong effect on consumption. This is what the meters are for.
As you seem interested in energy conservation, I strongly recommend you to check out this study. From following these guidelines I reduced my already low energy consumption by almost 50% overnight. These are the kind of things that we can recommend to consumers in our app. The miner will allow us to track specifically the savings, quantify them, compare them to other users, show consumers what they can use the savings for and even level them up or give other benefits, as always depending on regional tastes.
Does this clear up why we have the meter and how the tokenization is intended to work? If you want to see more of our research I’m happy to share my paper with you in private, we haven’t finished with the editing and formatting yet so I don’t want to post it in public. Hope you can understand. Thanks for sharing the video. We will be reaching out to that company for advice and cooperation when the time is right.
hi,
there is a new guideline for NCF, application needs to be submitted online. Can you please review the guidelines in this link?
https://nem.io/community-fund/
NCF application will have to be submitted in the given link.
Thanks
Thanks for taking the time to explain the project better to me. It does make a lot more sense to me now, and I’m convinced enough to give my support. I wish you the best of luck!
Also thanks for the study you provided, I will check that soon and maybe it can help me save even more.
As for your last line, if anything comes out of it, it will make me very happy to know that I could help even in a small way. Good luck in finding a good collaboration.
Your idea is good. But I don’t think this will become reality.
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It requires enormous amount of funds and strong management team to do something like this. I have worked with many energy companies including Tesla and they are for profit companies who will never allow such system.
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I seriously doubt if you have any background in fundraising or finance. How will you achieve $4.8M annual revenue in four years? Can you explain? I see that you don’t want to go for an ICO but you haven’t mentioned any fundraising plans to support the revenue. You have also mentioned that you will be working with renewable energy in first pahse. If yes, the you need to go back and correct your economics.
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You are offering sweet dreams to NEM holders but in reality you’re forgetting your revenue model. How will you make money? How will you convince the energy companies? Especially if they are public private corporation.
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I don’t see any team. Anyone with startup experience? Anyone with fundraising experience? How will you achieve something like this without a proper team with strong management experience?
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You will sell the hardware to energy companies. What is the cost of manufacturing? Did you develop the technology? Do you have patents?
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Hardware is super difficult. Where will you manufacture these units? The “go to market” in your case is high. Go to the point 2 and read again.
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Your point No.3 “Increased demand frim point 2 should increase the value of token” REMOVE THIS IMMEDIATELY.
NEM community is extra cautious of everything that might suggest NEM should be categorized as a security in the USA and elsewhere.
“Expectation of profits” is one quality of being classified as a security. You just did that.
I think it’s not about tech but it’s all about people management. The most difficult thing to do in your project will be convincing companies, government to work with you and go for a cryptocurrency based system.
Good luck
I always find projects that mix the physical world with the digital world fascinating.
Just wanted to learn a bit more about the device. How do you connect it? Does it require an electrician to install? Does it go inside the switchboard?
Will be watching this project! Good luck!
I beg to differ. It’s hard for me to respond point-by-point since many of your points actually consist of multiple points so let me change the format a bit and I think I can touch on all of your, quite valid, concerns.
At the most fundamental level there are two main issues, the product and the market. The product you have not raised any concerns about whether it will work or not so I will skip that.
The market:
For any region where a grid is being run at or near maximum capacity there are three options: a) Invest hundreds of millions or even billions expanding capacity. b) Reduce consumption and c) Blackouts. For regions that are not running at capacity there is no incentive to implement a system such as ours. We focus on areas that do. These are generally developing countries, but also some developed. One clear indication that a region is aiming to reduce consumption is that they have installed prepaid meters in users’ homes. Prepaid meters reduce costs of paper billing and also tend to reduce consumption. That is why they are installed in many countries in Africa, parts of China and other areas around the world. If we were trying to reduce consumption in an area not operating at near max capacity the project would be a flop. 100%. We’re looking at areas where their quality of life is being affected by lack of electricity and that is where we will be given the chance to prove our product.
Costs of implementation: $5-10 million
Each miner will cost between $25 and $35 per unit. So you can do the math, depending on our funding we can install that many meters minus operating costs. It’s in the infographic above. Such large amounts of capital must come from VC funds. And yes, we do have advisors (friends) working in VC here in Shanghai. I myself even worked at VC for short time (GuotaiJun An Securities, it’s one of the biggest investment banks in China) before being hired to Skycoin. To get VC funds to invest, we need to give them something that they can explain to their shareholders. VC funds do not invest in early stage usually and so to get access to these funds we must first tick some boxes.
Box 1: Team has a proven track record
Box 2: There is a product and it works
Box 3: Partnerships allowing it to be implemented quickly
Box 4: Portfolio fit
Box 5: Ability to generate profits soon after investment
We cannot tick these boxes well enough for them with a proof of concept. This is why you have angel and seed rounds. Currently, almost any chain that you chose to develop on will give you seed capital. Our goal from the seed capital is to get those boxes ticked so we can get the next round of funding. We do need a lot of money, but that doesn’t meant that it can’t work. Far from it. We have the connections and they’ve already told us what they need to see from us.
On this note, yes TEAM is the most important thing. We have built our startup team, and it is strong but for personal reasons we would prefer to reveal it only to the NEM committee at this point and will do so in our application. For running this project properly though, after the Series A round of funding, when we have 100’s of thousands of users, data pouring in that needs to be analysed and product adjusted accordingly, hardware to manage, relationships, legal issues etc. we need very very experienced managers. Again, just like the VC funds, these kinds of people do not work for early stage startups so again, our focus is on getting to the stage that they will be willing to work for us.
Minor points:
- We don’t sell the hardware, we give it for free. We make our profit out of the users energy savings. When they sell caps (it’s done automatically), we take a cut of their profits. We also take a service charge on the marketplace and charge there for advertising.
- We will make them in China, we are based here.
- The miner was redesigned from open source so we didn’t patent it. We will need to hire a professional to figure out what we can and should patent. I don’t see any return from that investment at this stage so I haven’t looked into it. First thing is get it working, in the real world, when we’re preparing to approach VC’s we will look into patents and copyright of the code.
- Series A funding from VC’s is also just one more step on the road to IPO. If we want to make this product that can change the world we need 100’s of millions in investment. Each step is just a step. If we have a profitable company with the right portfolio fit and want to expand, there’s no shortage of capital. One thing that is interesting about our project is that, from an investment perspective, it should not be highly correlated with other assets since we’re dealing with a basic necessity. Getting a wee bit advanced here talking about IPO’s and uncorrelated assets, but that’s where we’re heading if we can execute each step successfully.
- I’m not offering NEM sweet dreams, this is what a good token model looks like. I’m using XEM because I disagree fundamentally in creating tokens that aren’t needed. Fundraising is a use case too, but we won’t need that if we can go the route I have planned. It’s difficult to use XEM for savings as planned because the price will be necessarily volatile but we are willing to take this on and spend effort to work around it so that we can return value to the community that supports us.
I hope this has generally convinced you as I think that you’re main misunderstanding was that we are trying to cause energy companies to lose profits. Actually many energy companies want to improve home efficiency around the world. We’re “selling” this to them for free where they currently have to pay tens of millions.
When we do an AMA I would appreciate it if you attended. We need more critical thinkers in this community asking tough questions of projects and you’re the most scathing yet!.
Hey, yes. The utility’s electrician will need to install it. It will go in at the main, the main line where the electric comes in and is passed off into the different cables that feed the house. There is an issue with that though that, depending on the setup, they could be easily stolen. This is one of the issues we will begin to address in our 3rd and 4th iterations. We want to put it out on the main because it will give us many benefits of a smart meter, without needing any smart devices since from there it will be able to read the consumption of the major devices. It could be that we will have a measurement and communication module outside at the main, and the expensive parts of the hardware doing the processing inside the home.
I do understand your solution. I worked with Solar city and I was involved in Tesla when it they accquired it. I wanted to do something else that make sense and that’s why I started to collect XEM.
Your answers revolve around same senario where you are again dreaming of an IPO. If you have worked with a VC company, you will understand better than anyone that IPO is at least 10 years of work with 100M+ unless you want to scam people and raise funds via bogus IPO.
I don’t see a strong business plan. You are selling hardware for free, you will have a cost to manufacture for sure, there are testing involved because energy management companies only take certified meters. The legal involved in such certifications are high. Companies are spending tens of millions of dollars because they are worried about a Chinese made open source meter can be tampered and that will cause them billions of dollars in revenue.
Here in USA, most if the companies use GE and their subsidiary companies. I don’t know how you’re going to overcome their business plan.
You don’t have to create a token for your own but in your case the only reason I see people switching is only by providing high incentives. I also don’t see any hardware plans or cost related in your proposal. Looks like somebody said something about NCF and you decided to switch to NEM and the first thing that you did was create an NCF profile.
I didn’t wanted to sugar coat my reply but this is an area where I have strong expertise. I’m only trying to help you out by providing enough info.
I appreciate your input and really, you make very accurate points, but you are assuming that we are on the wrong side of these things when we are not. On top of this you are misrepresenting my words and I think it is very important to keep this accurate and civil.
- I have not stated that we will need to go to IPO to be successful.
- I have not stated that I intend to enter the US or European markets at this early stage. I am well aware of the barriers to entry there.
While I’m sure you may have some experience in the industry, our team includes an engineer who has worked for years inside one of the national energy companies we are targeting and there are already channels of communication open between us, the company and national government there.
Our business plan will be made public once we get the green light from NEM.
NEM is not the only chain with a fund. In fact, most do. If we were only after the money, there are easier options. You clearly don’t understand the crypto space. Four of our team members come from very well known cryptocurrencies, all of which have incubator funds. We chose NEM for the reasons I have stated, the money alone we could get from any chain.
You are not taking efforts to speak accurately and with respect but instead your comments are riddled with incorrect assumptions and thinly veiled ad hominem attacks. This project is extremely important, as you said yourself, the tech makes sense. If we figure out the market, which we have, it has potential to have huge impact. I am investing my own family savings into this and you will see when we present the business plan and milestones that I am not using it to enrich myself. Myself and much of my team will be taking a 50%+ pay cut to work on this and a massive loss of security for our families. Even our cashing out at the A round will be limited much more than our investors’. Our milestones are carefully thought out to reduce the risk to the NEM fund if we are not successful. For example, the second milestone includes getting agreements with energy companies to implement our test cases. If we can’t get these, the funding will cease before we start spending serious money, as it should be.
Please afford me the same respect as you would if we were talking face to face. Ad hominem attacks have no place in intelligent discourse. Worse, they can be extremely effective at swaying public opinion even in the absence of sound logic.
I don’t want you to take this personally. It’s very important that you take my points seriously rather than mixing it with human emotions. I’m not and never said that you are trying to scam people.
As of now, I’m not very convinced by the business plan and whatever the claim is. The only reason is because we have seen many projects that doesn’t make any sense getting funded. (Not just via ncf) even by other chains.
I do believe that your solution will work and I’m looking forward to see the entire proposal after you get the green light. I’ll also participate in the ama. Keep us updated here.
Good luck
I do. You have raised some good points and you’re right on many of the things you have said. Just some things do not exactly apply to us or we have already checked them out and found solutions. You mentioned about the safety tests etc., actually this is something that is a bit off in our budget because we had hoped to redesign from the prototype and get certified after getting the A round. You are right though, we will likely not even be able to get the test groups without first having the safety certifications. I am listening and that was good input for us.
I don’t fault you for being sceptical. You can see my other posts on the forum. I feel the same way about the fund. Just please be careful, you haven’t seen everything we have yet and it could be really easy to turn the community off us before we’re even had a chance. I posted about margin a bit early because:
a) I am excited to share this. It’s the product of many years of trying to find a solution, and many months of revising and redesigning the system and strategy and building a strong and passionate team and
b) I wanted the kind of feedback that you have given as early as possible, but I have to say I got a little more than I bargained for there haha.
I appreciate the interest though. I know it takes time and effort to do what you are doing.
Hi all,
Some updates on MarginX from the past couple weeks
-Development has begun on the golang SDK for catapult, coming along nicely.
-continuing relationships with regional governments in Africa and East Asia
-Onboarded a machine learning specialist and manufacturing partner and we are currently getting them up to speed on MarginX
-Currently upgrading our hardware and are manufacturing a custom arduino board as well as a custom built machine learning enabled shield.
-Creating Brand/marketing strategy to promote our project and while delivering a coherent message on MarginX’s mission.
Things are shaping up quite well and we look forward to sharing more with you all in the near future! Feel free to ask any questions you have here and we will answer to the best of our ability. Have a great day!
-MarginX
Awesome Ed, thanks. We’re also working on the business website, hopefully we can launch the full website, along with our hardware POC within the month.
Our dev team is currently working with @slackware who wrote the entire go SDK for NEM and just published it last week. Congrats to him btw, it was a lot and a huge contribution to the NEM ecosystem. We’re helping him to tie up some loose ends there and then MarginX and himself will move on as a team onto the catapult SDK.
Will update soon guys. Super busy with development. We have plenty of news, just no time to write the PR. We set up our website a while ago, www.marginx.io but even that is getting out of date. Will update soon!
Not a great time for our first press release with all the election drama. Looking forward to whatever direction the new leadership will take NEM in. Here’s a brief update on what MarginX has been up to in Africa the past few weeks.
Tech update coming soon.
I don’t get why all these projects have to be punctuated with an “X”.
“X” pretty much represents a null value “a blank”, maybe I am old skool but having X this and X that…
How about “Margin-D”?
Anyway the whole “X” thing will be short lived, Iphone is currently on the “X” thing, short lived name.
Represents the eXchange. The margin you reduce your consumption by is exchanged for profit. it also would have meant we could have had a MAX token which would have been nice. Now we plan to use XEM for global payments instead so not relevant anymore. We will probably rebrand at some point, the X doesn’t do us any favors talking to officials and utilities. It’s not really a showstopper either though so no rush.
After a pretty long vetting process and many conversations with the Nem Ventures team, we have undergone a bit of a pivot, a rebrand and have been funded! We’re stoked to be building on Nem and to have the backing of Nem Ventures. The backing is about more than just the money. Many of the guys on the team have experience in areas that are specific to our company and have given us great advice and connections so far.
We’ve found a more solid landing ground in targeting energy savings in universities. Since university campuses are often microcosms of society at large, they are a great place to test and sell our system, without running the regulatory risk of our larger goals at such an early stage.
You can see the press release of the investment in the forum here here.
I will keep the community updated about our progress once every couple of months or so.