ConsenSys and Planetary Resources: First reactions
Earlier this week we reported that crypto developer ConsenSys is announcing the acquisition of space company Planetary Resources. Here’s a roundup of interesting first reactions.
SpaceNews notes that “Lubin didn’t disclose how specifically Planetary Resources fit into his company other than that he would be ‘sharing our plans and how to join us on this journey in the months ahead’,” and emphasizes that the ConsenSys acquisition could allow for alternative “tokenized” investment into Planetary Resources using Ethereum (actually they misspell “Etherium”).
GeekWire wonders “Why in the universe is a blockchain company buying the assets of a formerly high-flying asteroid miner?” No answers are proposed besides the subtle opening “After months of financial uncertainty, the Planetary Resources asteroid-mining venture says its assets have been purchased by the Brooklyn-based ConsenSys blockchain venture.”
In fact, the deal is characterized as “an asset-purchase transaction” in the Planetary Resources press release. Perhaps Consensys just wants to sell Planetary Resources’ assets to the highest bidder?
The main crypto magazines, including CoinDesk, CCN and CoinTelegraph, report the news but don’t offer speculations about what the deal could mean.
In a private Facebook discussion, a poster said that perhaps ConsenSys didn’t understand that, by “mining,” Planetary Resources doesn’t mean cryptocurrency mining:
“They must have been thinking that Planetary Resources makes Bitcoin mining hardware.”
I am imagining ConsenSys execs visiting the Planetary Resources warehouse, and crying in despair at the realization that it contains only futuristic space hardware and no cryptocurrency mining rigs.
But enough negativity.
Ethereum in space: Smart autonomous hardware
Bloomberg outlines how Ethereum smart contracts could make asteroid mining more efficient.
“If your asteroid-mining robot buys some space shovels from my asteroid-general-store-manager robot on layaway, and then your robot stops paying, my robot can’t call in the asteroid sheriff’s department to go to your asteroid mine and repossess the space shovels. If the space shovels are tied to a layaway smart contract and automatically stop working upon nonpayment, then sophisticated contracting is possible in space even without most of the institutions of human law.”
Cryptocurrency expert David Orban, Founder and Managing Partner of Network Society Ventures, is definitely enthusiastic. “Today Consensys announced the acquisition of Planetary Resources,” he says in conversation with me and other space/crypto enthusiasts. “And with this one of my favorite examples, even a prophecy if you wish, became true.”
David, an early adopter of blockchain technologies and an active Bitcoin investor since 2010, continues:
When I speak at conferences and people express their skepticism about the long-term value of blockchain, I always tell them ‘You’re right! We have banknotes, and we have credit cards, and we have checkbooks. These are perfect payment mechanisms, aren’t they?’
But then I tell them ‘I have friends who are working on developing the mineral resources of the Asteroid Belt! And think about it: if in the next 20 or 30 years we will have swarms of intelligent robots extracting that incredible new wealth to add to an open-ended economy. Those swarms will need some consensus mechanism to allocate the resources of communication, energy, transportation, and financial resources too. Are they going to use banknotes, or credit cards, or checkbooks? Well, to me at least it’s very, very evident that they are going to be using something like what today we call blockchain for establishing this decentralized consensus.’
David, who was the first to own Ether during the Ethereum launch in 2014, concludes:
So for Consensys, the commercial arm of the Ethereum ecosystem, to have acquired Planetary Resources, it’s a step exactly in that direction. In a direction of a decentralized future, where human civilization, and a human-machine hybrid civilization, saturates the Solar System with incredible projects, and enthusiasm of realizing our dreams.”
It’s worth noting that NASA is considering similar ideas.
Ethereum in space: Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing
At the time of The DAO, David was one of the first to suggest that crypto crowdfunding (ICOs, token sales and all that) could permits raising funds for a new global phase of the space program.
Crypto crowdfunding could permit anyone, anywhere on this planet, to make small anonymous investments in new space ventures, with rights guaranteed by smart contracts. This is, I think, a VERY good idea, but at this moment the regulators (or, more precisely, the regulators in some nations) don’t seem willing to let it go forward. We’ll see.
However, besides the forbidden Invest# word (we don’t want to open good space investment opportunities to the unwashed masses, now do we?), Ethereum smart contracts can streamline collaborative projects here on Earth and permit everyone to be part of a decentralized autonomous space agency.
Image from NASA.
