The multidisciplinary team was granted €5K for its project “Gamification for Reduced Energy Consumption”.
On 29 and 30 October, Infrachain organized its third Infrachain Challenge, focused on the Public Sector Blockchain developed by the Ministry for Digitalization and on “Accelerating Public Energy Efficiency”.
Six teams were competing: EY Luxembourg, Filedgr, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), SnT_FINATRAX, ZeroKnowledge and Reveals S.A.
Teams were given 30 hours to develop an innovative project and code a working demo. They had 10 minutes to pitch their project in front of a jury. A total of €10.5K in cash prizes were at stake.
The ZeroKnowledge team won the first prize for its project “Gamification for Reduced Energy Consumption”, a secure infrastructure for privacy, which preserves the use of energy consumption data.
Its blockchain solution allows individuals and organisations to compete for the lowest electricity consumption and to earn rewards for winning in an open ecosystem.
ZeroKnowledge’s team included experts from the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust – SnT (University of Luxembourg) and the University of Bayreuth, as well as the Project Group Business and Information Systems Engineering of the Fraunhofer FIT.
Filedgr won second place with N-Lux, which aims to “introduce the Luxembourg Public Energy Saving Certificate and to implement a game-changing financial participation and accreditation model driven by public authorities and the public delivering Luxembourg’s campaign Zesumme Spueren – Zesummenhalen.”
EY Luxembourg finished third with reSET (Smart Energy Transition), a project to “enable all public administrations to meet in a marketplace and execute Public2Public secured/real-time/audit trailed energy (kwh, euros, Co2 free credits).”
ZeroKnowledge was awarded €5K in prize money, whereas the second and third-ranked received €3.5K and €2K. EY Luxembourg promised to donate its prize to Caritas Luxembourg.
Johannes Sedlmeir, a team member of ZeroKnowledge said: “We enjoyed the opportunity to try out new technologies in the context of blockchain. We also enjoyed the others’ work and presentations. We are really happy that the jury chose us in the end as winners.”
Patrick Weber (Attaché at the Ministry for Digitalisation) who presided over the jury of the 2022 edition, added: “We see that teams are always engaged and it’s great to see so many new ideas and projects that people can develop in 24 hours. It goes to show that there is so much more we can do in Luxembourg in digitalization and blockchain.”
“Blockchain is a technology that, when used well, can be useful in many areas of industry and economics,” said Tom Kettels, Project Lead at Infrachain. “The teams worked very hard and showed a lot of enthusiasm. We were surprised by all the solutions proposed as it is a complex subject. I think every project deserved to win.”
Laurent Kratz (CEO of Neofacto and founder of Scorechain) continued by saying that the jury was surprised by the creativity of the projects. “Some models of calls for fundraising, such as through gamification or tokenization for example, went well beyond the purely technical aspects and the simple use of the blockchain,” he said. “This is what I appreciate in such hackathons: this ability to think outside the box while respecting the given conditions”.
Launched in May 2017 by several industry players under the impulse and with the support of Digital Luxembourg, Infrachain is a Luxembourg-based non-profit organization with a European scope.
The asbl aims to push the adoption curve of blockchain by sharing expertise, participating in blockchain projects, disseminating information on operational blockchain use cases and creating an international ecosystem.
