Qtum and SpaceChain’s satellites, OS bring nodes to space and decentralization to nanosats

This is an abbreviated version of the full, original post available originally published at Cryptic Writings – the official Orbs blog.

Of all the imaginative projects I saw at Consensus 2018, none matched my enthusiasm as much as SpaceChain. “Blockchain in Space” might sound kind of cliché, but it’s accurate. And after interviewing the company’s founder, I’m confident they are on the brink of something monumental.

The founding team includes CEO Zheng Zuo and CTO Jeff Garzik, a key Bitcoin core developer. SpaceX and Tesla investor Tim Draper is also an investor and core business advisor. They’re well-funded, but neglect to make public the amount of money they have raised.

“We claim we’re a blockchain space company,” Zheng told me, but they are a little more nuanced than that. “We want to build a decentralized space agency, a crowdfunding model to support space missions.”

The concept sounds simpler than it would be to implement. Zheng, who spoke with me at Consensus in the Bloq meet-up room. The plan is gloriously complex, both pursuing infrastructure provision for blockchain projects AND support for decentralized collaboration of space-bound startups (primarily those using nanosatellites, which are the primary driver of these space ventures).

Their first major gambit was the February launch of a cube satellite hosting a node on Qtum blockchain, the first such node operating in space according to Zheng. The SpaceChain coin (SPC) is a Qtum standard token (what Zheng affectionately calls a “QRC20") with about 515 million in circulating supply.

“We chose Qtum because it’s a PoS model (Proof-of-Stake) consuming less energy,” as opposed to the energy-intensive PoW model (Proof-of-Work), a calculation similarly at the heart of Orbs’ thinking. As a result, Qtum is a close partner and the Qtum Foundation one of SpaceChain’s investors. Their technical advisor is Qtum Founder and CEO Patrick Dai; strategy advisor is Bloq Co-Founder Matthew Roszak; and space advisor Nanoracks CEO Jeffrey Manber.

The next phase of the project is where things get really interesting.

To read the rest of this post, see the original at Cryptic Writings – the official Orbs blog.