Energy Web X Upgrade FAQ
Frequently asked questions regarding the transition to Energy Web X and the Proof of Stake Upgrade
This upgrade transitions Energy Web from a permissioned Proof-of-Authority (PoA) system to a permissionless Proof-of-Stake (PoS) architecture. It will introduce a revamped tokenomics model, multi-chain interoperability and a new economic layer for decentralised energy solutions.
Key pillars include:
Unlocking features that serve builders across multiple ecosystems (Polkadot, Ethereum, and others);
Enabling solution creators to utilise any token of choice in their economic layer (Bring Your Own Token & Economy);
Expanding the reach and depth of liquidity for $EWT by transitioning it to an ERC-20 token on Ethereum Mainnet;
Transforming the Community Fund into an on-chain treasury governed by token holders;
Increase total value locked (TVL) and activate permissionless staking options including Liquid EWT (stEWT) to enhance network security and capital efficiency.
This shift includes a fork of EWC (Zurich Fork), the migration of token governance and staking to EWX, integration with Ethereum, and a revamped economic model, liquid staking, and multi-token support.
In summary, the shift to PoS and the EWX technical upgrades orchestrate a scalable network of decentralized compute, capable of powering any solution and sustained by a robust on-chain economic engine with decentralised governance.
The upgrade from legacy Energy Web Chain (EWC) to Energy Web X (EWX) is a strategic evolution driven by the need for enhanced scalability, security, governance, economic stability and interoperability, critical for running enterprise grade applications on-chain.
The original Proof of Authority (PoA) model laid a strong foundation for Energy Web’s early growth, however it has reached its limitations. The legacy PoA architecture offers low decentralisation, limited scalability, interoperability and heavy reliance on the Energy Web Foundation team for maintenance. These constraints pose growth risks as Energy Web expands to support more critical applications and stakeholder diversity.
By transitioning to a permissionless Proof of Stake (PoS) system built on Polkadot’s substrate framework, EWX significantly improves decentralisation, resilience, and transparency. The upgrade enables validator participation to expand beyond the original consortium, allowing broader community engagement while supporting the current PoA validators to transition and become validators on EWX.
Energy Web Chain (EWC), built as a standalone EVM-compatible chain, faces ecosystem isolation, supporting only EVM builders and offering limited interoperability to the wider ethereum ecosystem and beyond. EWX is able to seamlessly communicate with other parachains in the Polkadot ecosystem, while also supporting the bridging of assets to and from external ecosystems such as Ethereum. Furthermore, the implementation of an integrated EVM-environment allows for all Ethereum developer tools and contracts to be fully supported.
The upgrade introduces a revamped token model designed to align incentives across the network stakeholders and participants: validators, delegators, solution registrars and worker node operators. The PoS model simultaneously strengthens network security, incentivises worker node performance and efficiently deploys capital to drive the development and growth of decentralised solutions. Total Value Locked (TVL) now becomes a more meaningful metric of network security and participation.
Energy Web Foundation tabled the upgrade via Proposal 12: Energy Web Architecture Upgrade Proposal. Energy Web members formally voted on it in March 2025 and it passed with a vast majority. The Energy Web Architecture Upgrade Proposal can be viewed here.
The proposal was developed and refined through extensive consultation with several Energy Web members and affiliates. It was finalised by the core team and submitted for the governance vote, receiving a clear majority to proceed.
The required infrastructure upgrades are being implemented by Energy Web’s core development team and affiliated partners. While the Zurich Hard Fork and validator migrations will be a collective effort carried out by active validators and members.
The upgrades are funded via a combination of the Community Fund and EW Operational Fund.
All changes and developments to both Energy Web Chain and Energy Web X are being audited by several of the industry’s leading auditors and the reports will be published and available for all members.
The first of several audits, for the System Contract has already been completed.
Zurich Fork
The first step in the upgrade and transition process will be the Zurich Fork. The fork will be tested in development environments before being executed on Volta to ensure the process runs smoothly. Upon the successful fork of Volta, the hard fork will be performed on the Energy Web Chain.
The fork will require all EWC Validators and node operators to reconfigure their node by updating their client version and Chainspec. An installation script will be provided by Energy Web for doing this. Please see detailed instructions for doing so here for the Nethermind and OpenEthereum clients.
ERC-20 Token Migration and bidirectional bridge activation
A new $EWT ERC-20 token contract will be deployed on Ethereum mainnet.
This deployment will not impact circulating token supply but will allow existing $EWT to be bridged from EWX to Ethereum (see Section 12 for details on token migration).
The migration of $EWT to an ERC-20 token unlocks access to the broader Ethereum ecosystem and liquidity.
The EWX <-> Ethereum bridge will be bidirectional, supporting both “lowering” (EWX -> Ethereum) and lifting (Ethereum -> EWX) of $EWT tokens.
Important: When the bidirectional Ethereum Bridge is enabled:
Lowering from EWX -> EWC will be disabled.
Users can only lift $EWT from EWC -> EWX
Note: EWTb (legacy bridged $EWT on Ethereum mainnet) will first need to be bridged back to EWC, and then lifted to EWX. Direct bridging of EWTb → EWX will not be supported.
See Section 12 below for further details.
Staking Activation and Rewards
At this point, staking will be enabled on EWX and a minimum self-stake ($EWT bond required for validator onboarding) and minimum total stake (self-stake plus delegated stake from EWF or other token holders) will be introduced to become an active validator.
Active EWX validators (called collators on Polkadot parachains) will receive staking rewards along with their share of transaction fee revenue. See Section 10 below for details on reward distribution.
Staking rewards are derived from token supply growth and distributed to validators. A validator’s performance and $EWT stake determine its share of rewards.
This will be accompanied by the roll out of a revamped Membership Programme.
Validator Migration
Active Energy Web Chain validators will have the option to migrate to Energy Web X, operating EWX parachain validators, participating in network security, governance and rewards (See Section 17).
Delegated Stake and Liquid Staking
$EWT token holders will be able to delegate their stake to EWX validators and participate in securing the network and sharing in the staking rewards.
In addition, holders can delegate their stake via a liquid staking protocol (to be enabled shortly after standard staking), which provides all the benefits of standard delegation while issuing liquid staking tokens (stEWT) in return.
These liquid staking tokens can be used to register as Worker Node Operators, providing further utility across the Energy Web X ecosystem.
As a result, token holders can compound their yield, a single $EWT token can concurrently earn staking rewards and generate returns through worker node operations.
In the future, stEWT will be usable in external DeFi applications, enabling greater capital efficiency and liquidity.
Validators on EWC:
Upgrade client version on the node with updated chainspecs by following the provided instructions.
$EWT rewards from EWC are no longer available post-Zurich Fork.
EWC Validators can enroll to become validators on the Energy Web X chain and continue to receive rewards (see Section 17 for details).
Exchanges and other RPC Node Operators:
Would need to upgrade their client version running on their node with updated chainspecs, please refer to the instructions on upgrading RPC nodes.
Stakeholders in existing projects deployed on EWC:
There is no immediate impact on stakeholders relying on Volta or EWC for their applications.
However, as we are rolling out EVM support on EWX, we encourage new solutions to be deployed on EWX.
Projects can choose between deploying solutions via Energy Web Launchpad to leverage the Worker Node network or deploy EVM smart contracts and integrate with applications. Please see Section 12 for more details.
The issuance of the remaining tokens, up to the 100 million supply cap, will be managed through on-chain governance, expected to go live by the end of the year.
Initially, token supply growth on EWX will be fixed at 2.5 million $EWT per year, with 80% allocated to staking rewards and 20% to the community fund.
As EWX on-chain revenue grows, the supply model can evolve toward a more dynamic approach, where issuance rates adapt to network demand and economic conditions, supporting a sustainable token economy and incentivizing ongoing network participation.
As outlined in Section 9 above, 80% of the annual token supply growth, 2 million $EWT, will be distributed as staking rewards at regular intervals, referred to as growth periods. These growth periods will occur approximately every 28 days.
During each growth period, validators earn points for authoring blocks and validating the network. These points determine each validator’s share of the total staking rewards for that period, calculated proportionally based on their points relative to the total points accumulated by all active validators.
Once a validator’s reward share is determined, it is then split between the validator and its delegators in proportion to their respective stakes. This distribution methodology is utilised by Polkadot, Moonbeam and other prominent PoS networks.
Migrating $EWT to an ERC-20 token involves deploying a token contract on Ethereum Mainnet and locking a fixed supply (the total circulating supply of $EWT at the time of the Zurich Fork) of tokens on the Ethereum side of the bidirectional Ethereum Bridge.
These tokens can only be unlocked by a ‘lowering’ event from EWX to Ethereum, which would lock an amount of $EWT tokens on EWX and unlock the corresponding amount on Ethereum.
If that user wishes to ‘lift’ those tokens back to EWX, the bridge would lock the tokens back up on the Ethereum side, and mint the corresponding amount of $EWT on EWX.
No new tokens are issued during the migration, merely tokens are locked and unlocked during the bridging process between EWX and Ethereum mainnet.
See Section 12 below on how to migrate $EWT balance from EWC to EWX and Ethereum.
Migrating $EWT from EWC to EWX
$EWT can be lifted (bridged) from EWC to EWX through the Energy Bridge.
To lift $EWT:
Follow the step-by-step guide in the Learn section.
Connect the wallet that holds your $EWT on EWC.
Perform the Lift operation in the Marketplace App.
Connect your substrate-based EWX wallet (i.e. Nova Wallet, SubWallet) to receive the lifted $EWT.
Important: Lowering $EWT back to EWC will be disabled once the bidirectional Ethereum Bridge is deployed and enabled. All users are encouraged to lift to EWX and then lower to Ethereum Mainnet if they wish to participate in ERC20-based applications.
Migrating $EWT from EWX to Ethereum Mainnet
To migrate $EWT from EWX to Ethereum you must lower the $EWT using the Ethereum Bridge on EWX:
Connect your substrate wallet holding the $EWT.
Perform the Lower operation to bridge $EWT to Ethereum Mainnet as an ERC20 token.
Connect your Ethereum Mainnet wallet to receive the lowered $EWT as an ERC20 token.
Migrating legacy EWTb to EWX
If you previously bridged $EWT from EWC to Ethereum Mainnet via the legacy PoA bridge, you may still hold EWTb on Ethereum.
EWTb must first be bridged back to EWC via the legacy bridge before it can be lifted to EWX
EWTb is not compatible with the new $EWT ERC20 token contract and cannot be lifted directly via the new Ethereum Bridge.
For instructions, see: How to bridge EWTb back to EWC.
Energy Web Chain (EWC) will remain operational during the upgrades. However, projects with a longer operating horizon ( > 12 months) are encouraged to launch or migrate to EWX to benefit from the enhanced architecture.
As part of the upgrade, EWX is integrated with the EVM execution environment, which would enable complete EVM compatibility:
Native utilisation of $EWT
Ethereum compatible RPC endpoints
Write, deploy and execute solidity smart-contracts
Utilises familiar development tools and libraries (e.g. Metamask, hardhat, ethers.js)
In short, EWX provides a developer experience equivalent to EWC, while offering improved scalability, permissionless validator participation, and future-proofed infrastructure for long-term use.
Energy Web X is designed to support fully on-chain governance, meaning network configurations, economic parameters and upgrades can be decided and enforced through governance votes, without requiring hard forks.
Currently, governance is performed by the Energy Web Council using Multisig control. This is to ensure stability and security during the initial phase of the Energy Web X transition.
The Community Fund will be migrated to Energy Web X for the purpose of future development and ecosystem growth. It will receive a share of the new token supply and scale with the organic growth of the network.
Existing EWC validators are encouraged to transition to running validators on Energy Web X. Energy Web will reserve validator seats for all active EWC validators who are affiliate members and wish to continue participating on EWX. These validators will be eligible to enroll through the new membership program.
Energy Web X has been live since 2023 with 8 validators operated by 3 independent entities, and is soon expanding to 10 validators across 5 operators. While EWX is designed to become a fully permissionless network, validator onboarding is currently managed by Energy Web during this transitional upgrade phase.
As outlined in the roadmap, permissionless onboarding is planned for late 2025, but validator seats will remain limited. All prospective operators must meet the minimum self-stake threshold.
Energy Web will reserve validator seats for all active EWC validators who are affiliate members and wish to continue participating on EWX. To help ensure participation, Energy Web Foundation will nominate and delegate $EWT to existing members to help them meet the minimum total stake threshold required for active validator status.
Proof of Stake is an energy-efficient way to secure and operate blockchain networks. Instead of relying on a permissioned group of validators (PoA), PoS uses a system of economic incentives (rewards and penalisation) to validate transactions.
Validators are required to lock up EWT (a “stake”) to add collateral to secure the network. Validators earn rewards based on performance (points for authoring blocks) and stake. Delegators can nominate their stake to trusted Validators and share in rewards. The staking rewards will be distributed between Validator and Delegators based on relative stake.
There will be rules in place for Minimum Self-Stake (Validator), Minimum Total Stake (total combined stake - Validator + Delegators) and Minimum Delegator Stake.
A dynamic Minimum Total Stake also applies, since only the top ranking validators by total stake are selected into the active set each era to author blocks and earn points.
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