Spearheading the Drone Revolution with Blockchain.
“Automation is not our enemy. Automation can be the ally of our prosperity if we will just look ahead, if we will understand what is to come,” Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1964.
Jump to 2018. Society is now undergoing an “uberisation” — transitioning to an economic system where agents exchange under-utilized capacity of assets or human resources, (typically through a website or software platform) while reducing costs.
Behemoths including Tesla, Rolls Royce, Boeing, Uber and Google have been developing unmanned (or autonomous) vehicles, drones, ships for quite some time and many smaller players — recognizing that now is the time to jump on the autonomous bandwagon- are now also entering the market.
And this technological revolution is fast-evolving.
More than 33 million autonomous vehicles will be sold every year worldwide by 2040 — a huge surge in market interest in a relatively short period of time, as only around 51,000 units a year are predicted to be sold in 2021, according to a 2018 IHS Markit report.
As for airborne drones alone, by 2020, Goldman Sachs expects 7.8 million consumer drone shipments and $3.3 billion in revenue, according to a report. Between now and 2020, they also forecast a $100 billion market opportunity for drones — helped by growing demand from the commercial and civil government sectors- with the agriculture and construction sectors leading the way.
We are super excited that at SKYFchain, we are taking this technological revolution a step further. We are proud to say that we are the first blockchain-based operating platform applicable globally in all sectors of a developing cargo robotics industry, from cargo logistics to agribusiness purposes.
Our unmanned aerial carriers, SKYFdrones, are already technological feats, as they are the first industrial grade heavy cargo drones. They can have a useful load up to 400 kg/882 lbs, their flight range is up to 350 km/220 miles and they have a flight duration to up to 8 hours.
However, we soon realized that to be truly different and to address business challenges, automation alone was not sufficient. The operating platform, the way in which robots communicate with each other, was also crucial.
Enter blockchain — the missing piece, we realized, to address a slew of challenges.
And that’s why in 2017 we came to create our spinoff, SKYFchain, using blockchain, (Etehereum-based and with ERC20-compliant cryptographic tokens.) From a business standpoint, it made complete sense: blockchain platforms help record transactions in a decentralized manner, provide more transparency and improve time efficiency, while lowering human error and costs. Now, for example, we won’t have to worry anymore about signatures, responsibilities between clients and suppliers, insurances. Everything will be transparent, efficient and more seamless.
By combining drones and blockchain, not even the sky is the limit! With SKYFchain, one can follow all stages of the drone lifecycle: when it is produced, its maintenance, the application opportunities, routes, operations. This opportunity to run complicated missions by unmanned vehicles right on your computer is just amazing and mind-blowing.
Blockchain is really a great technology. While we know it is still in its infancy stages, we are absolutely sure it will develop further. Everything we do for our product is in line with a long-term vision. We don’t rely on hype; we look for sustainable technologies. We believe blockchain is one of them. No doubt we’ll be a Google in our industry in the next 10 years!
