On 29th and 30th October, EY Luxembourg, Filedgr, the Luxembourg Institute for Science and Technology (LIST), Reveals SA, SnT_FINATRAX and ZeroKnowledge, participated in the third edition of the Infrachain Challenge, the blockchain hackathon.

Their task was to develop an innovative new application for the Public Sector Blockchain developed by the Ministry for Digitalisation on “Accelerating Public Sector Energy”. The Ministry for Digitalisation was also the sponsor of the event.

After 30 hours of brainstorming, planning, coding and designing, the six teams had 10 minutes each to convince the jury of their project. All teams presented excellent projects. Following intense deliberations, the jury presided by Patrick Weber, Attaché at the Ministry for Digitalisation, declared Zeroknowledge with their project “Gamification for Reduced Energy Consumption” as the winner of the 2022 edition.

The ZeroKnowledge 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. Some members of the team took part in the Infrachain Challenge 2021 as the Let’sFixID team, who won the second edition of the blockchain hackathon.

“We enjoyed the hackathon a lot. It was a great facility again; we were already here last year. 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,” commented Johannes Sedlmeir, team member of ZeroKnowledge.

“Gamification for Reduced Energy Consumption” is a secure infrastructure for the privacy, preserving use of energy consumption data. It allows individuals and organisations to compete for the lowest electricity consumption and to earn rewards for winning in an open ecosystem.

1st and 2nd runner-up were Filedgr who also won the second place at the first Infrachain Challenge in 2020 and EY Luxembourg. The former presented N-Lux, which aims to "Introduce the Luxembourg Public Energy Saving Certificate, implement a game changing financial participation and accreditation model driven by public authorities and the public delivering Luxembourg’s campaign Zesumme Spueren – Zesummenhalen." The latter’s project called reSET (Smart Energy Transition) allows to "Enable all public administrations to meet in a marketplace, and execute Public2Public “secured / real-time / audit trailed” energy (kwh, euros, Co2 free credits)."

The winning team was awarded EUR 5.000 in prize money, whereas the 2nd and 3rd ranked received EUR 3.500 and EUR 2.000. EY Luxembourg announced that the prize will be donated to Caritas Luxembourg.

Weber concluded the Infrachain Challenge 2022 by stating that, “It’s the third edition we are doing now, and 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.”