Author: Jae, PANews
As global tech giants fiercely compete for every kilowatt of power on the computing battlefield, electricity has become a harder currency than data. AI energy consumption is devouring grid resources like a black hole, while traditional energy infrastructure is mired in inefficiency.
An experiment in energy tokenization is attempting to walk a tightrope between regulation and valuation, creating an asset channel that connects blockchain and the power grid. In this fracture between energy and computing power, Daylight has quietly made its move, with its decentralized energy capital market protocol DayFi announcing a $50 million pre-deposit event set to open on December 16.
DayFi carries the ambition of "reconstructing the power grid with DeFi," aiming to slice future electricity revenue into tradable crypto assets. Behind the protocol stand top-tier capital firms like a16z Crypto and Framework Ventures, investing not just in a project, but seemingly planting a seed in the AI energy dilemma.
Turning Energy into Revenue-Generating Assets, Securing Millions from a16z and Others
Daylight is an established DePIN project founded in 2022, focused on building a distributed energy network for generating, storing, and sharing clean power. Project founder Jason Badeaux has stated: "Electricity demand is significantly increasing, but traditional installation methods are too slow and cumbersome. Distributed energy will provide the fastest and most economical way to expand energy production and storage on the grid."
However, distributed energy systems also face their own challenges, including long sales cycles, extensive market education, and high costs. Typically, about 60% of the costs of a typical residential solar installation come from customer acquisition and other inefficient processes.
DayFi is the capitalized pipeline that Daylight has built to tackle this issue, with the protocol based on Ethereum providing funding support for the development of distributed energy projects through DeFi protocols.
Investors can deposit stablecoins like USDT and USDS to mint the stablecoin GRID through the DayFi protocol, directly injecting liquidity into distributed energy projects. GRID is a stablecoin built on the M0 technology stack, fully backed by U.S. Treasury bonds and cash, and does not generate income itself.
After staking GRID, investors will receive the yield token sGRID as proof, granting them the right to share in the electricity revenue generated by the underlying energy assets. It can be understood that sGRID is a comprehensive yield bond combining Treasury interest and solar power generation income. Once users deposit these funds, they are typically locked in Upshift's treasury for two months, with K3 deciding to lend to borrowers using energy project revenues as collateral.
In other words, DayFi allows users to deposit stablecoin assets, which can then be used for financing energy projects, with the earnings from these projects returned to them in token form.
The design of DayFi's model may create a positive flywheel effect: liquidity is introduced to DayFi → protocol funds are used to accelerate the construction of distributed energy → projects generate energy revenue after being put into operation → revenue is tokenized and returned to holders as earnings.
Before DayFi's official launch, Daylight secured additional capital support. In October of this year, Daylight announced the completion of a $15 million equity financing led by Framework Ventures, with follow-on investments from a16z Crypto, and a $60 million credit line led by Turtle Hill Capital. Prior to this, Daylight had raised a total of $9 million in seed funding from 2022 to 2024, with investors including Union Square Ventures, 1kx, Framework Ventures, 6MV, and OpenSea Ventures.
The entry of VCs like a16z has been anticipated, as they have emphasized: "Electricity accessibility is becoming a new moat in AI competition."
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration's forecast, by 2028, the share of electricity consumption by data centers will soar from 4.4% in 2023 to 12%. This means that in the future, whoever can secure cheap and stable electricity will have the confidence to train large models.
The current bottleneck in the power grid lies in monopoly and inefficiency. Data from Berkeley Lab shows that the backlog of new energy projects in the U.S. grid interconnection queue has reached 2,600 GW, with approval cycles often taking years. Large enterprises can lock in resources through long-term power purchase agreements, while small and medium players must endure high electricity prices and long waiting periods. The emergence of DayFi may meet market needs.
Currently, Daylight is operating in Illinois and Massachusetts, with plans to expand to more U.S. regional markets, including California.
Facing Dual Regulatory Pressures, Asset Valuation in Doubt
The ideal is grand, but reality is fraught with regulatory thorns. DayFi's primary challenge comes from the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) and FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission).
sGRID represents the right to future electricity revenue and is highly likely to be classified as a security by the SEC under the Howey Test. This means DayFi must fulfill disclosure obligations equivalent to traditional financial products: regularly reporting on asset quality, cash flow status, risk management, and establishing investor protection mechanisms.
More complex regulatory conflicts arise from FERC. Information about energy projects is often classified as CEII (Critical Energy Infrastructure Information), subject to strict confidentiality requirements. Once details such as power plant locations, design specifics, and operational data are made public, they could threaten the physical security of the grid.
This is in direct contradiction to the transparency inherent in DeFi. Blockchain requires income data to be verifiable on-chain; otherwise, it cannot self-validate the authenticity of earnings. If compliance leads to excessive obfuscation of information, it may fall into "black box" territory, undermining the foundation of decentralization.
Essentially, DayFi is walking a tightrope. It must design a system that is "verifiable yet not exposed," perhaps using technologies like Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) to disclose earnings results only to verifiers without revealing sensitive information such as the geographical coordinates of power plants.
Even if it navigates regulatory scrutiny, DayFi still faces another existential question: how much are the assets behind sGRID really worth?
Unlike GRID, which is fully backed by cash equivalents, sGRID is tied to the "net asset value" of distributed energy projects. These assets—solar panels, energy storage batteries, inverters—may experience significant value fluctuations due to technological iterations and depreciation.
Crypto KOL @luyaoyuan has sharply questioned this: "The most dubious part of the net value is the book value of deployed new energy assets, which, when valued at 2025 depreciation, could easily include a pile of old solar panels and batteries from retired electric vehicles, leaving too much room for manipulation."
In fact, DayFi has repeatedly emphasized in its white paper that sGRID is not redeemable at any time, and its value "fluctuates with the net asset value of the underlying assets." This effectively positions it as a type of RWA (Real World Asset) net value index, but it also opens the door to valuation manipulation.
The problem is that there is a lack of a consensus mechanism for on-chain valuation of electricity assets. While electricity revenue can be verified, the residual value assessment of power plants may still rely on traditional audits, which fundamentally conflicts with the trustless principle of blockchain.
The end of AI is electricity, and energy is becoming the next main battlefield in AI competition. Even Musk has recently emphasized that energy is the true currency, unattainable through legislation. With surging energy demand and the rising popularity of the RWA concept, DayFi transforms energy from a static resource into a dynamic DeFi asset, allowing electricity traders, grid operators, and investors to efficiently utilize it on-chain. However, whether it is a green-cloaked new energy DeFi protocol or a pioneer that will falter in regulatory fog or valuation bubbles remains to be seen. Its journey on-chain may provide the answer.
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