Intro

The React Mission

React is building the next generation of energy cooperative – a network that is programmed to build a stable, sustainable, and abundant energy future. React seeks to accelerate the decarbonization of our energy system by providing an open protocol for an intelligent grid edge. React’s decentralized network eliminates the prohibitive costs associated with the traditional corporate aggregation model by offering an open, permissionless, and extensible system for resource owners to monetize the value of their assets. As a single source of data and device connectivity, React will offer power market participants access to granular, flexible energy in the specific location and quantity necessary.

At scale, React's ultimate vision is to create the very fabric underpinning the transition to a renewable energy system- a global, community-owned network of energy devices providing intelligent flexibility to power grids.

React's Role in the Energy Stack

React functionally serves as a networking layer between resource contributors’ assets and participants in the power markets. React's roles can be defined as:

1. Incentivize energy monitor and DER deployments;

2. Collect and standardize grid-edge data;

3. Connect to all available DER resources;

4. Orchestrate connected devices for market participants via the EMS

Data and energy flexibility are key to building the intelligent grid edge. React’s token model acts as an engine for incentivizing the deployment of data collection devices and distributed energy resources, and orchestrating them for participating in the power markets.

Building From the Bottom-Up

Community network projects such as Helium and others have proven the effectiveness of a well-designed token economy and an engaged community in developing distributed physical infrastructure. The Nova Labs team realized the necessity of a low-cost wireless network to enable the Internet of Things to proliferate, but also the capital barrier to deploy a network on a global scale. Several companies have attempted to build such a network through a traditional corporate approach, but all have failed. Instead, Helium leveraged token incentives to encourage an unaffiliated, or decentralized, set of individuals to deploy hotspots while transmitting ownership of the network to the community. In the three years since Helium’s adoption of a crypto-economic token incentive model, the Helium network has grown to nearly 1 million hotspots deployed in 182 countries, a truly ubiquitous wireless IoT network.

Bottom-up construction provides a more equitable and efficient operating model for distributed networks. Bottom-up networks are built to deliver value where it is created, rather than to a middleman entity. Tokens provide the economic mechanism to build networks from the bottom up by better aligning value accrual with contributors. Tokens transmit ownership of the network to the participating community, rather than shareholders. With a true ownership stake, contributors are incentivized to contribute to and grow the network because networks become more valuable as they scale. Tokens help strengthen network effects for platform businesses that would traditionally have low switching costs and moats.

React is leveraging this community model to accelerate the deployment and networking of distributed energy resources to unlock global decarbonized power grids. Decentralized ownership ensures the React Network remains a credibly neutral and verifiable venue for distributed energy data and connectivity, while reinforcing network effects. Additionally, React tokens provide an additional economic incentive for its community to invest in these critical assets.

While React will initially launch in the United States, React plans to scale the network globally. All power grids face the same challenges with the increasing penetration of renewable generation, and React seeks to provide a solution to our global energy system.