HydroChain

Empowering a Sustainable Future with Blockchain-Powered Green Hydrogen Credits

Inspiration

HydroChain was created to solve the trust problem in emerging green-hydrogen markets. By combining blockchain immutability, IoT evidence, and decentralized identity, the project aims to prevent greenwashing, stop double-counting of credits, and give producers, consumers, and regulators a single trusted source of truth for hydrogen credits.

What it does

Issues verifiable hydrogen credits for renewable plants based on IoT production data.
Enables secure buying, transferring, and retirement of credits with on-chain audit trails.
Provides auditors/regulators with tools to verify, approve, or reject requests and monitor compliance.
Prevents fraud with unique credit IDs, immutable transaction logs, Verifiable Credentials (VCs), and role-based access control.
Exposes APIs and a user interface (plant dashboard, marketplace, governance UI) for operational workflows.

How we built it

Smart contracts (Solidity): HydrogenCredit contract that manages the full lifecycle — issue → transfer → retire — and emits audit events.
Backend: Bun + Elysia.js REST API with Prisma + PostgreSQL for request tracking, sessions, and audit records.
Frontend: React + Vite using Tailwind CSS and ShadCN UI for dashboards, marketplace, and governance pages.
Web3 integration: Ethers.js + MetaMask for wallet flows and on-chain transactions.
Identity & verification: DID for decentralized identity and Verifiable Credentials attached to IoT proofs.
IoT layer: Sensor ingestion and auto-verification pipeline that attaches cryptographic evidence to issuance/transfer/retire requests.

Challenges we ran into

Ensuring IoT data integrity and secure device attestation so sensor feeds are tamper-evident.
Mapping real-world governance (auditors/regulators) into on-chain permissions while protecting sensitive data.
Designing atomic flows and unique IDs to eliminate double-counting and duplicate issuance.
Balancing strong private-key security with a simple UX for non-crypto plant and industry users.
Building realistic end-to-end tests that include simulated IoT feeds, backend workflows, and contract behavior across networks.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A working end-to-end prototype: IoT verification → VC issuance → auditor approval → on-chain issuance/transfer/retirement.
A Solidity smart contract that enforces ownership and retirement rules and provides complete event logs for audits.
A robust REST API + database tracking lifecycle requests, auditor actions, and lifetime metrics (generated/transferred/retired).
Role-based governance hooks that enable real auditor involvement and regulatory oversight.
Modular architecture prepared for field IoT rollout and security hardening.

What we learned

Blockchain alone isn’t enough — real-world verification needs multiple layers: sensor integrity, cryptographic proofs (VCs), and human audit.
UX is critical: non-crypto stakeholders require abstractions (automated signing, clear wallet setup) to adopt Web3 workflows.
Designing for compliance early (audit trails, access control, VCs) reduces rework when integrating regulators.
Hybrid systems require orchestrated testbeds and realistic simulated sensor feeds for meaningful testing.

What's next for HydroChain

Real-time IoT rollout with device attestation and automated issuance triggers.
Strengthen the DID & VC stack for self-sovereign identity and enhanced cryptographic proof chains.
Add multi-chain / Layer-2 support to reduce costs and scale marketplace activity.
Commission external security audits, improve private-key handling, and enhance anomaly detection.
Build regulatory tooling (exportable compliance reports, dashboards, standardized audit APIs).
Open the protocol for collaboration so auditors, standards bodies, and other projects can adopt or extend HydroChain.