This paper introduces the EU-DREAM initiative, which combines Blockchain/Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and Digital Twin (DT) to achieve secure, transparent, and consumer-centric energy services. We discuss the high-level system architecture, emphasising how DLT ensures data integrity and how DT enable real-time scenario and historical analysis with DLT integrity-certified data for users. We describe the core platform layers, detail the blockchain–digital twin integration, and present application scenarios focusing on community-scale energy trading, demand flexibility, and microgrids. We conclude with a discussion of future development steps and the challenges of ensuring privacy, scalability, and compliance with EU data regulations.

Decentralised energy ecosystems suffer from data-governance, scalability and adoption barriers. Although blockchain-based marketplaces can offer transparency and security in Local Energy Communities (LECs), most existing solutions struggle with rigid token models, limited performance, and steep usability barriers. Building on a previous framework, this study presents an enhanced marketplace that integrates a modular blockchain layer, custodial identity management, and a dual-token model for flexible licensing and pricing. Testing on a per-missioned Quorum network with asynchronous queueing demonstrated notable improvements in transaction throughput and user responsiveness under load, while the custodial onboarding flow simplified access for non-technical participants. A refined policy enforcement mechanism further aligns the system with emerging federation standards, mitigating earlier shortcomings related to performance, data sovereignty, and scalability. Benchmarking on a five-node Quorum Proof of Authority (PoA) deployment (one RPC node and four validator nodes) showed that all key operations, including license issuance and asset usage, consistently completed in under 8 seconds, confirming the system’s suitability for possible energy data applications. Planned extensions include cross-domain interoperability, self-service governance tools, and zero-knowledge proofs, underscoring this architecture’s potential as a robust, future-ready platform for federated energy data ecosystems.

In an era of digital proliferation, especially in energy and AI sectors, this study introduces a blockchain-based framework to enhance data exchange and utilization. This infrastructure, grounded in a decentralized Data Marketplace on a blockchain network, ensures secure and transparent interactions among stakeholders while managing real-world data with a federated architecture compliant with regulations. By integrating connector technology for uniform platform interaction and utilizing smart contracts for autonomous transactions, this solution advances data integrity and intellectual property management through NFTs and datatokens. Here, energy data within the blockchain represents intellectual property managed by multiple parties, symbolized as NFTs and licensed through datatokens (ERC-20 tokens). This approach enhances security, efficiency, and scalability in energy and AI data sharing, showing potential to foster collaboration and innovation.

Intellectual property rights (IPR) management needs to evolve in a digital world where not only companies but also many independent content creators contribute to our culture with their art, music, and videos. In this respect, blockchain has recently emerged as a promising infrastructure providing a trustworthy and immutable environment that, thanks to smart contracts, may enable more agile management of digital rights and streamline royalty payments. However, no widespread consensus has been reached on the ability of this technology to adequately manage and transfer IPR. This paper presents an innovative approach to digital rights management developed within the scope of an international research endeavour co-financed by the European Commission named MediaVerse. The approach proposes the combined usage of smart legal contracts and blockchain smart contracts to take care of the legally-binding contractual aspects of IPR and, at the same time, the need for notarization, rights transfer, and royalty payments. The work conducted represents a contribution to advancing the current literature on IPR management that may lead to an improved and fairer monetization process for content creators as a means of individual empowerment.