As global tech giants fiercely compete for every kilowatt-hour on the computing power battlefield, electricity has become a harder currency than data. AI energy consumption is devouring grid resources like a black hole, while traditional energy infrastructure remains mired in inefficiency.
An energy tokenization experiment is attempting to walk a tightrope between regulation and valuation, carving out an asset channel connecting blockchain and the power grid. In this gap between energy and computing power, Daylight has made its move, with its decentralized energy capital market protocol DayFi announcing a $50 million pre-deposit event opening on December 16th.
DayFi carries the ambition of "restructuring the power grid with DeFi," aiming to slice future electricity revenue into tradable crypto assets. Backing the protocol are top-tier capital firms like a16z Crypto and Framework Ventures. Their investment is not just in a single project but更像是在AI能源困局中埋下一枚伏笔 (like planting a seed in the AI energy dilemma).
Transforming Energy into Yield-Generating Assets, Securing Tens of 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 once stated: "Electricity demand is now increasing significantly, but the traditional way of adding capacity is too slow and too cumbersome. Distributed energy will provide the fastest and most economical way to scale energy production and storage on the grid."
However, distributed energy systems also face their own challenges, including lengthy sales cycles, extensive market education, and high costs. Typically, about 60% of the cost of a residential solar installation comes from customer acquisition and other inefficient aspects.
DayFi is the capitalization pipeline Daylight built to tackle this problem. The protocol, based on Ethereum, will use DeFi to provide funding for the development of distributed energy projects.
Investors can deposit stablecoins like USDT, USDS, use DayFi to mint the protocol's stablecoin GRID, and directly inject liquidity into distributed energy projects. GRID is a stablecoin built on the M0 tech stack, fully collateralized by U.S. Treasuries and cash, and does not inherently generate yield.
After staking GRID, investors receive the yield token sGRID as a certificate, entitling them to a share of the electricity revenue generated by the underlying energy assets. Essentially, sGRID is a composite yield coupon combining Treasury interest and solar power generation income. Users typically lock this capital for two months through Upshift's vaults, and K3 decides to lend it to borrowers using energy project revenue as collateral.
In other words, DayFi allows users to deposit stablecoin assets, use these funds for energy project financing, and return the profits earned by these projects to them in tokenized form.
DayFi's model design could create a positive flywheel effect: Liquidity is introduced into DayFi → Protocol funds are used to accelerate the construction of distributed energy → Projects become operational and generate energy revenue → Revenue is tokenized and returned to holders as yield.
Before DayFi's official launch, Daylight secured further capital support. In October this year, Daylight announced the completion of a $15 million equity financing led by Framework Ventures with participation from a16z Crypto and others, plus a $60 million credit facility led by Turtle Hill Capital. Prior to this, Daylight had raised a cumulative $9 million in seed funding between 2022 and 2024 from Union Square Ventures, 1kx, Framework Ventures, 6MV, and OpenSea Ventures, among others.
The entry of VCs like a16z was predictable; they have emphasized that "access to electricity is becoming the new moat in AI competition."
According to U.S. Energy Information Administration predictions, data center electricity consumption will surge from 4.4% in 2023 to 12% by 2028. This means that whoever can lock in cheap, stable power in the future holds the confidence to train large models.
The current grid's bottleneck lies precisely 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 companies can secure resources through long-term power purchase agreements, while smaller players are left to endure high electricity prices and long waiting periods. DayFi's emergence may meet market needs.
Currently, Daylight is operating in Illinois and Massachusetts, with plans to expand to California and other U.S. regional markets.
Facing Dual Regulatory Pressures, Asset Valuation Questions Remain
The ideal is丰满 (ambitious), but reality is布满监管荆棘 (littered with regulatory thorns). DayFi's foremost challenges come from the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) and FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission).
sGRID represents the right to future electricity revenue, making it highly likely that the SEC will classify it as a security under the Howey Test. This means DayFi must fulfill the same disclosure obligations as traditional financial products: regularly reporting asset quality, cash flow status, risk management, and establishing investor protection mechanisms.
More complex regulatory conflicts come from FERC. Energy project information is often classified as CEII (Critical Electric Infrastructure Information), subject to strict confidentiality requirements. Disclosing details like power plant locations, design specifics, and operational data could threaten the physical security of the grid.
This directly contradicts the transparency ethos of DeFi. Blockchain requires revenue data to be verifiable on-chain; otherwise, it cannot prove the authenticity of the yield. If information is overly obscured for compliance, it risks becoming a "black box," undermining its decentralized foundation.
DayFi is essentially walking a tightrope. It must design a system that is "verifiable but not exposed," perhaps using technologies like Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) to disclose only the yield results to verifiers without leaking sensitive information like geographic coordinates of power plants.
Even if it navigates regulatory inquiries, DayFi faces another fundamental question: how much are the assets backing sGRID actually worth?
Unlike GRID, which is fully collateralized by cash equivalents, sGRID is pegged to the "net asset value" of distributed energy projects. And these assets—solar panels, storage batteries, inverters—can fluctuate wildly in value due to technological iteration and depreciation.
Crypto KOL @luyaoyuan also sharply questioned this: "The most虚 (inflated) part of the net value is the book value of deployed new energy assets, depreciated according to 2025 standards. It could easily include a bunch of废旧太阳能板 (scrap solar panels), batteries淘汰的 (discarded from) new energy vehicles, etc. The room for manipulation is too large."
Indeed, DayFi's whitepaper also repeatedly emphasizes that sGRID is not redeemable at any time and its value "fluctuates with the net value of the underlying assets." This effectively positions it as a kind of RWA (Real World Asset) net value index, but also opens up the possibility of valuation manipulation.
The problem is that power assets lack a consensus mechanism for on-chain valuation. Electricity revenue can be verified, but the residual value assessment of the power stations themselves may still rely on traditional audits, which fundamentally conflicts with the trustless principle of blockchain.
The endgame of AI is electricity. Energy is becoming the next main battlefield in AI competition. Even Musk recently emphasized that energy is the true currency and cannot be obtained through legislation. Amid surging energy demand and the 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 utilize it efficiently on-chain. But is it a新能源DeFi协议 (new energy DeFi protocol) wrapped in green, or a pioneer destined to founder in regulatory fog or valuation bubbles? Its journey on-chain may provide the answer.
