An Australian teenager has created a decentralised platform to control drones delivering food to people living a hermit lifestyle. Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin called it “the pinnacle of the 21st century.”

The membership in the decentralised system will be paid with ethers, Ethereum ecosystem tokens. After the payment is made, the system will create a smart contract that sends a drone working on solar energy from its docking station to the customer.

“We now have the technology to allow people to live completely alone. Drones will airlift soylent packets and water to the members of the hermit colony,” the Hermicity website reads.

The Ethereum-based autonomous platform Hermicity was developed by an 18-year-old Australian programmer John Dummett, who works remotely as a web developer and designer for the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. In an interview with Fusion news portal, Dummett said that it took him a week to create the initial version of the protocol.

Popularity came to a modest programmer after he advertised Hermicity on specialised recourses. It was noticed by Vitalik Buterin, who wrote on his twitter that Hermicity is “the pinnacle of the 21st century, built on Ethereum.” By the end of the day one, Dummett received dozens of letters from cypherpunk/silicon valley/libertarian vagrants showing their interest in this project.

Dummett's personality seems to be no less outstanding than his invention. Telling his life story on one of his websites, Dummett recounts that he grew up isolated from the high-tech world:

“I wasn't allowed to use the internet at home so I got a library card. <...> I liked technology so I taught myself how to code. But I still didn't have internet so I did it offline on paper. Eventually I had a web app that I coded on the school computers during breaks.”

Later he became interested in fintech technologies and participated in helped developing several startups, advising on cryptocurrency-related issues and writing reports on new technologies and digital currencies.

He notes that he does not like any social networks, and explains his disapproval by conservative upbringing.

“I only got twitter when I was 17 and it was the first social media account I ever had. It was fun, but I cant stand distractions.”

One of the Dummett’s websites declares it plainly:

“I don’t Twitter. I don’t Facebook. I don’t Linkedin. I don’t Snapchat.”

But despite all these claims, Dummett does have several accounts on social networks and specialised portals for the purpose of promoting his Hermicity project and professional profile.

Perhaps drones will help not only Australian hermits in the future but also, for example, Siberian ones. At least, such developments are under way in Russia. Thus, at the Blockchain and Bitcoin Conference held last month in Moscow, a smart contract developer Sergey Lonshakov displayed his project called “wage drones” based on the Ethereum platform.

Elena Platonova