Lockheed Martin, the largest aerospace and defense contractor in the world, announced this week that it will be pairing with the Filecoin Foundation to develop a decentralized storage system… in space. That’s right, crypto is finally making its way beyond the nest of our little blue planet.
With the help of Lockheed Martin and NASA, Protocol Labs (the creator of the Filecoin cryptocurrency) will be developing a special type of decentralized storage system for the space giant. Creating a unique type of storage system that does not require servers on Earth to confirm or relay information, which is currently the problem with Google and Amazon data farms.
The space program, rightly dubbed, the “Interplanetary File System” will use content-based identification. This is in contrast to the location-based identification currently being used by tech giants. This is where when a user needs a file, the program locates the file on a server and then retrieves it. In contrast, Filecoin’s space program will function in a slightly different manner—instead of pulling files from multiple users at once and pulling from the closest node to you.
This will is a crucial aspect of surviving and working in space, where location-based technology will simply be too far. And that type of reliance on Earth-related activities is not ideal for space.
Vice President of Lockheed Martin, Joe Landon went on to say, “As we explore further into space, we need to develop in-space infrastructure to ensure that the space economy can grow and thrive without having to rely entirely on Earth, we need to develop the technology to support a long-term presence in space.”
How Is Crypto Going To Work In Space?
Lockheed Martin and the Filecoin Foundation have impressive pans when it comes to what they are going to achieve in space. Creating the world’s very first space crypto exchange will be challenging but they know what they have in mind and they have a robust plan to go alongside it.
First thing is first, the duo will need to research and decide on a ship to carry the equipment to space. Or in other words, which spacecraft can house the nodes, and be close enough in range to the International Space Station for the technology to be used.
From there, the research team will need to not only prove the utility of the foundation’s creation but also explore other uses for the crypto exchange outside of simple storage. In a blog post by the Filecoin Foundation, the team reassured investors that they would indeed be looking into other possible uses for the IPFS technology.
Stating, “opportunities for demonstration missions that harness IPFS’ utility in space.”
What Are The Benefits of Crypto-Space?
For the crypto space movement to be successful, crypto projects will need to prove why their technology will improve the legacy tech from tech giants like Amazon and Google. Who already proven storage use to NASA and other space organizations across the world.
Proponents of Filecoin’s IPFS technology however believe that blockchain technology is more secure. Simply put, because IPFS technology is hosted and backed up by thousands of users across the globe, it is less prone to accidental failures. Like the fire last year, that wiped out one of France’s largest data centers.
President of the Filecoin Foundation argued this about the legacy technology already in play by space organizations,
“Today’s centralized Internet model doesn’t work in space,” said Marta Belcher, Filecoin Foundation president. “Using IPFS, data does not need to go back and forth from Earth with every click; instead, when you put in an IPFS ‘content ID,’ that content is retrieved from wherever is closest, rather than being retrieved from a particular server in a particular place.
A Crypto-Space Future
Crypto space projects are going to continue to pop out of the woodwork, and that can only be a plus for all of us ants living here on Earth. At the end of the day, how the technology is used isn’t so important in the early stages, it is more important that it is used.
And funding into these types of space projects continues to pour in, not only from whales but from smaller retail investors that believe in the application of blockchain technology in space.
