The Web3 ecosystem is rapidly shifting from speculative finance to real-world infrastructure. For the W3Node Hackathon, I decided to tackle one of the most critical real-world problems: Energy Access in Africa.

Africa needs over 46,000 new mini-grids by 2030 to power rural communities. The hardware is ready, but the financial rails to manage, verify, and pay for this distributed infrastructure don't exist.

To solve this, I built the SHS DePIN Network (Solar Home System Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network).

Here is a deep dive into how it was built, the architecture, and how it works.

🏗️ The Architecture

The protocol consists of two main smart contracts deployed on the Base Sepolia Testnet:

MockUSDC: A standard ERC-20 stablecoin used for payments.

EnergyMarket: The core engine that handles device registration, consumer payments, machine-to-machine (M2M) reward distribution, and operator withdrawals.

For the frontend, I used Next.js, Wagmi, and Viem to build a sleek, dark-mode dashboard that…