Overall guess: 6.1% Energy guess: 6.8%

Great question, Synota aims to provide software to help with the settlement of payments between the parties. We don't plan to broker contracts, but rather help with existing (or soon to be agreed-to) contracts.

Yes, we deploy a non-custodial, cloud-based lightning node for all parties involved. Using these nodes, payments flow directly from one entity in the contract to another atomically through lightning.

Using lightning, we can move the funds atomically and get instant finality - a HUGE gain over the existing system.

Great point! Yes, we are factoring in processing fees, cost of capital, socialized bad debt, and general overhead costs into that 10%. And we believe that 10% may be conservative when factoring in the opportunity cost of the legacy systems. We're confident Synota's solution is going to bring down the cost of energy a lot

Frankly, it went so well that you'd forget that we're technically in a "bear" market and that the cost of capital is quite high rn. We've had fantastic advisors that have helped out a ton, and great investors to help us closing the deal and give us guidance. The biggest concerns that were raised were around adoption/timing.

That's a great point! Many energy suppliers are against holding bitcoin on their balance sheet (or even for relatively short periods), and we plan to have this part of the solution that we provide using external third-party BTC-to-USD conversion services

That's a fantastic question! Issues like these are pervasive throughout the energy industry - definitely not specific to bitcoin mining. We'll focus on other un/deregulated energy transactions. For example, behind-the-meter solar.

For sure, thanks @k00b!

High level, the solution provides LN nodes to the counterparties in an energy contract. All parties independently verify and agree to payments - based on that contract - using an agreed upon data source (a smart meter), and make instant payments through lightning.

In terms of how real time, payments can be made as quickly as the meter can be read, but some parties will choose to settle on a less frequent basis based on their business case. Usually, it gets determined in the contract between the parties.

For software, we're using a similar model as Voltage (and in fact are using Voltage): non-custodial, cloud-based software. For hardware, we're using existing smart meters.