Company
Portfolio Data
Back to Company SearchWETX, INC.
UEI: MAT3ZBSNRMC3
Number of Employees: 10
HUBZone Owned: No
Woman Owned: No
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: No
SBIR/STTR Involvement
Year of first award: 2022
1
Phase I Awards
1
Phase II Awards
100%
Conversion Rate
$256,000
Phase I Dollars
$999,946
Phase II Dollars
$1,255,946
Total Awarded
Awards
SBIR Phase II: R&D for Water Efficiency, Management and Markets Utilizing Distributed Ledger Technology
Amount: $999,946 Topic: DL
The broader/commercial impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6: Clean Water and Sanitation, particularly in addressing water scarcity exacerbated by climate change. By establishing a transparent and accountable platform for water rights trading, the outcomes of this Phase II project will enable efficient water allocation and management, fostering fairness, encouraging market participation, and empowering businesses to optimize water usage. Moreover, it elevates the competitiveness of water-dependent industries such as agriculture, energy, and manufacturing. The potential deployment of digital water markets across the USA could result in estimated daily savings of up to 64 billion gallons of water. The culmination of Phase II's efforts will facilitate the fast deployment of digital water banks and markets, delivering significant benefits to all stakeholders involved. This transformative project serves as a model for leveraging technology to create efficient and equitable water markets, offering a scalable solution that positively impacts water resources, public health, industry competitiveness, and sustainable development. This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project builds technology to manage digital water management and transactions. Leveraging a pioneering SaaS-based solution, Distributed Ledger Technology, and Decentralized Distributed File System (DDFS), this initiative integrates Internet of Things (IoT) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) sensors to provide comprehensive insights into water rights and usage patterns. This Phase II project aims to refine the Phase I-developed solution by automating processes and seamlessly incorporating external devices like IoT and SCADA. Rigorous testing in real-world scenarios will facilitate an iterative process of improvement until the proposed Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are achieved. Successful completion of Phase II will yield a transformative solution, reshaping water banking and markets, acting as a potent policy instrument for enhanced water management, allocation, productivity, and availability. Targeted outcomes include a potential 20% increase in water use efficiency, up to a 60% reduction in water transaction costs, increased transparency, and deeper insights into water usage compared to traditional water banks. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
Tagged as:
SBIR
Phase II
2024
NSF
SBIR Phase I:R and D for Water Efficiency, Management and Markets Utilizing Distributed Ledger Technology
Amount: $256,000 Topic: DL
The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project will provide a significant improvement in economic incentives for water rights holders to conserve and efficiently deploy their water. One of the greatest struggles facing the Western States is the disincentive for water rights holders to efficiently manage their water. If holders don’t use the entirety of their water each year, they risk losing the unused portion back to the State. Commercially, despite a billion-dollar demand for seasonal leasing of water—which would satisfy annual use requirements—water holders have no place and little ability to market and lease their unused water. This approach using the proposed distributed ledger technology (DLT), allows holders to track and log their water rights information on its platform. In turn, water users will finally have access to information that traditionally informs other property transactions—title history, water usage, comparable transactions, and localized pricing. With that information, our customers populate a marketplace where short-term and long-term transactions can be quickly and easily transacted. In sum, by creating the tools and interfaces to digitize water rights and enable simple-to-execute water transactions, DLT will power water markets and drive efficient water use throughout the West.This SBIR Phase I project proposes to research and develop a unique combination of distributed ledger (DL) tokenization and a decentralized distributed file system (DDFS) to produce a robust digital twin of both physical water rights and usage, as well as the associated legal materials and data. DL tokens represent the legal quantity of water that has been granted to the user by the government. DDFS allows the storage of key information pertaining to the water rights—including title and use history—in a public, immutable manner, anchored in the DL transactions. This approach provides a level of trust, transparency and provenance for water that is currently absent in the United States. The current state of the market—makes it impossible for the average water owner and manager to have any insight into the value of their water assets. Water-specific marketplaces backed by DL and DDFS allow both buyers and sellers the ability to view, vet, and transact water assets efficiently and with minimal cost. This first phase of research and development will establish the requisite infrastructure to populate those marketplaces.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
Tagged as:
SBIR
Phase I
2022
NSF