If you only look at a couple of crypto headlines today, here’s one you should check out. NASA is promoting a new development that will mean something for blockchain fans: the U.S. space agency has just published a proposal for an air traffic management system with a blockchain smart contract foundation.
Today, Adrian Zmudzinski at Cointelegraph reports on yesterday’s publication of this broadside on NASA’s website that describes the proposed system as “an open-source permissioned blockchain to enable secure, private and anonymous communication.”
Aircraft would be able to talk with air traffic services through a smart contract design with high-bandwidth functionality and excellent security.
The vehicle for this air traffic communication system would be Hyperledger, a collaborative project launched by the Linux Foundation and backed by big corporate players like IBM.
Hyperledger was developed in 2015 to make blockchain more feasible and easier to roll out in various commercial and government applications.
“Not since the Web itself has a technology promised broader and more fundamental revolution than blockchain technology,” reads a front page on the foundation’s web site, explaining the real potential of using Hyperledger to facilitate blockchain setups.
“A blockchain is a peer-to-peer distributed ledger forged by consensus, combined with a system for ‘smart contracts’ and other assistive technologies … can be used to build a new generation of transactional applications that establishes trust, accountability and transparency at their core, while streamlining business processes and legal constraints. Think of it as an operating system for marketplaces, data-sharing networks, micro-currencies, and decentralized digital communities. It has the potential to vastly reduce the cost and complexity of getting things done in the real world.”
If Hyperledger was a publicly traded entity, you’d probably see its stock price soaring. You don’t see that with some of the top crypto coins like Bitcoin or Ethereum today, but buy and holders would say that’s because the effects of new agreements like NASA’s Hyperledger proposal haven’t yet impacted markets.
That’s quite a way down the pike – but according to these new reports, it’s coming. Reading the rationale for Hyperledger, you can imagine in how experts are thinking about blockchain application as a comprehensive, fundamental sea change toward a new technology arena – as web goes from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, fintech goes from conventional banking to cryptocurrency transactions!
Coins have their detractors, but it seems clearer every day that despite any inherent issues with blockchain-based transaction systems, more businesses and government agencies are climbing on board that bus into the unknown.