A community center in a Singapore public housing estate, I met Ms. Lin who runs a coffee shop. She pointed to the solar panels on the roof and complained, "The electricity generated during the day is never fully used up, and at night we still have to buy electricity from the grid. When you do the math, it’s really a loss."

She’s not alone; hundreds of residents and businesses in the community are worried about this issue.

How is the traditional solution? Set up a centralized energy trading platform. But what does that entail? At least five months of development, huge costs, and a complex trust system. At that time, we proposed trying Plasma XPL. Many in the project team shook their heads and said, "Blockchain? Isn’t that even more complicated?"

Actions speak louder than words. Using XPL’s visualized sidechain creation tools, I set up a "Community Energy Trading Chain" right in the community center’s meeting room. The whole process was astonishingly fast—done in five minutes. Choose a template, fill in parameters, deploy the contract, and on the screen, it shows "Deployment Successful." Ms. Lin’s eyes widened, and she exclaimed, "That’s it?"

But the most interesting part was still to come. We connected each household’s smart meter to this sidechain, recording generation and consumption data in real-time. With smart contracts acting as intermediaries, excess electricity automatically converts into tradable digital certificates. Want to buy electricity? Just scan a QR code on your phone, and the transaction is completed in seconds, with the money instantly transferred. The coolest part? The entire process is completely transparent. No one dares to tamper with the meter readings, and issues like unpaid bills simply can’t happen.

Three months later, I revisited. Ms. Lin happily showed me her app’s bill: "Just from selling electricity last month, I earned 80 SGD!" Even more gratifying, this project, which would normally take five months to complete, was already up and running.