Is 3D Printing Coming To Bitshares?

@stan is behaving very strange. Okay, he is acting stranger than usual.

Last week he was at FreedomFest which is a gathering of people from many different industries, a lot of them centered around blockchain and cryptocurrency. Throughout the event, he gave interviews with many different people on @bluerocktalk. This is not uncommon since @stan is a regular guest of CryptoConnie.

For those who are unaware, @stan is the older version of @dan Larimer. He not only goes back to the beginning of @dan's blockchain ventures, he was there on @dan's first day. As we know, Bitshares was the first blockchain @dan designed and @stan, his father, is now known as the "Godfather of Bitshares".

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@stan promotes Bitshares extensively to the public through shows like @bluerocktalk and to companies in an effort to get them to utilize the Bitshares network.

In one of his last interviews with CryptoConnie, @stan mentioned some other things in development that he would be announcing soon.

Now, perhaps I am allowing my mind to run away from me, but yesterday @stan posted about 3D printing and the blockchain. This struck me as odd since it is not a post that fits into his general pattern.

https://steemit.com/bitshares/@stan/3d-printing-the-missing-link-in-the-blockchain-revolution

This comes a couple weeks after it was announced that GE filed a patent for an "additive manufacturing blockchain".

So I pulled out my tinfoil hat and started thinking.

Could this all be coincidence or is there something brewing here?

To start, if you are not aware, 3D printing comes under the term of "additive manufacturing". For general discussion purposes, they are the same thing. Under this process, material is added to create the output desired. Contrast this with the present system where materials are cut, molded, shaved, and sheared until a finish product is created.

I wrote about 3D printing a number of times. In my forecast, the point in time we are at now with blockchain will be hit in about two years for 3D printing. I look for it to start taking off at the end of 2019 so that by mid-2020, we will be seeing massive explosion in that field.

So why does 3D printing and blockchain go together?

We will let GE sum it up:

“An additive manufacturing device configured to implement a distributed ledger system, the additive manufacturing device comprising: manufacturing hardware configured to generate an object via an additive manufacturing process; and a controller configured to: receive a build file comprising instructions for controlling the manufacturing hardware to generate the object; receive a material identifier indicating a particular lot of manufacturing media; validate the build file and the material identifier via a distributed ledger to verify at least one of an author of the build file or an origin of the particular lot of manufacturing media; control the manufacturing hardware using the build file to generate the object using the particular lot of manufacturing media; and in response to completion of the generation of the object, generate an object manufactured transaction to the distributed ledger indicating a result of the validation of the origin of the at least one of the build file or the material identifier.”

https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/new-ge-patent-for-additive-manufacturing-blockchain-points-towards-industrialisation-of-3d-printing-135650/

Got it? Don't you just love when engineers write stuff?

Image via Xometry

Essentially, this is a lot of words telling us how the Additive Manufacturing Blockchain solves the double-spending problem.

GE is in a unique position since it both is a manufacturer of parts for, say, the aeronautical industry, plus a 3D printer manufacturer. Hence why this is a bit different where they have a complete system. Nevertheless, it will show the process.

What the above is saying is there is a digital file called a "build file" that is created by GE. Since their parts are designed by them, it stands to reason the materials are a specific alloy combination. This leads me to believe they are going to provide the build file and the materials to the end user (say Delta for the jet engines). To ensure someone is not using their plans without getting paid, they have a particular identifier that will be generated on the blockchain. The ledger will have either confirmation of either the build file or the lot of materials, either which anyone reading the blockchain what went into that part.

Being a major corporation, GE is seeking to build a "private blockchain" so that it can maintain control of the system.

So where does Bitshares potentially fit into all of this?

One of the biggest fears with 3d printing is the opportunity for counterfeiting. With the introduction of 3D scanners, there is nothing stopping someone from taking a "scan" of a physical item and then printing it out in quantity. At that point, there is no need for the build file from the company since the scanner will create one. This could put corporations in a bind.

Think about how easy it is to copy a picture from the Internet. The same principle will apply to physical objects once this technology becomes a bit more mainstream.

Blockchain will prevent this. It will be a verification system giving companies control over their files that are used to create these products. This will become more important as 3D printer centers start opening up in an effort to serve legitimate, localized manufacturing.

There will come a point in time where something ordered from a website will be manufactured locally. The online store will take the order, process it, and find a local 3D printer near the recipient that meets the requirements. Of course, money is involved which is where a chain like Bitshares enters the picture. Either the BTS token could be used to settle all transactions or a token specifically for this purpose could be created. Perhaps we see the PRNT token on the Bitshares blockchain. Or, as was noted in @stan's posts, the Quints could be used for all monetary transactions relating to this.

Of course, we have this teaser too:

Could this be what had Michael Taggart so excited at our recent meeting in Boise last week?

Leaving aside the question of whether that is a 3D printer version of @michaelx or not, we can see where this is heading. 3D printing and blockchain are going to be complimentary technologies. Actually, this is true for a number of new innovations such as IOT, autonomous cars, and renewable energy. Blockchain is going to be a part of them all.

This is how we are going to see crypto-economics starting to unfold. As more automated technologies take over, the use of cryptocurrency is only going to grow. The reason is because decentralized ledgers are going to be needed to establish trust between many different parties. When an online retailer is seeking 3D printers that it has no relationship with yet needs something printed out in 24 hours, trust has to be established. Blockchain is the ideal way to do that with cryptocurrency handling the transactions. A system like this would simply be too inefficient if the present 3rd party verification system was used.

Tinfoil hat now removed.

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