IoA IV brought together leading thinkers in the space industry and the blockchain industry to meet, discuss ideas, and co-present a variety of proposals for cooperation between the up and coming providers of technical infrastructure and risk capital to support innovation, on what many of us believe to be the most important human endeavour there is.

Themes

Space Migration

Space migration is the only way humans can expand beyond the sustainability limits of Earth. A manned mission to Mars is the next logical stage in becoming that space faring species. Quoting Elon Musk “It’s important to get a self-sustaining base on Mars because it’s far enough away from earth that [in the event of a war] it’s more likely to survive than a moon base”. Getting to Mars is a long haul, maybe 20 years away, and a lot of people are working on the problem - some will be at IoA 4. Designing, building, launching and controlling a manned mission is very capital intensive. To succeed we will need to pool global money - to crowdfund on an unimaginable scale - and the cryptocurrency ICO model could just be the way to do this.

Investing in Space

Space business is worth £170bn annually and is predicted to grow to £400bn by 2030. The rise of cheap nano satellites, reusable launchers, and likes of the British Space Industry Act are ushering in a new era. There are a plethora of interesting commercial projects, from remote monitoring to telecoms to blockchain. Some promise immediate benefit for users & investors, while some are highly speculative but potentially revolutionary. Rapidly falling costs has opened space to a new class of entrepreneur, and they need a new class of investor. There is a lot of private money about, particularly in the tech and cryptocurrency sectors - space is a high-risk venture and most of this money was earned through high-risk ventures. It is time to start normalising investment in space and to explore new routes through crowdfunding and ICO.

Blockchains for Space

Blockchain is already being put to use within the space sector: from nascent ICO funding and token-based usage, to supply chain and document management, to debris tracking and spacecraft navigation, to satellite-based blockchain processors and bitcoin broadcasting. These projects range from small startups to large enterprises like NASA, ESA, and Airbus. Mostly this is at the evaluation or pilot stage and is not widely known about within either the space industry or the blockchain community. However Accenture predicts rapid growth over next 2 years initially lead by the aviation industry (which is allied to the space industry). IofA4 aims to educate and cross fertilise the space & blockchain sectors for maximum early benefit.

Speakers

Vinay Gupta, Mattereum

Vinay is a leading figure in the blockchain industry. He is Director of Corporate Strategy at Mattereum, a collaboration between lawyers and technologists connecting digital assets on the blockchain with goods and services in the material world. He co-created the Internet of Agreements conferences, was strategic architect for ConsenSys Systems and architect of the National Blockchain Strategy for Dubai. He will be speaking about the blockchain, it's relevance to business in space, and the importance of a manned mission to Mars.

Anushka Sharma, Naaut

Nush is active in the tech ecosystems of UK, Europe and USA having worked across politics, the Olympics and innovation strategy. She curated the Disruption Summit Europe, delivered the CogX 18 AI festival, set up TechHub Shoreditch, produced the UK’s first audio-led VR experience with SubPac, and is an Ambassador for Google’s Campus London to champion Diversity in Technology. Her space startup Naaut focuses on innovation and frontier technology for our multi-planetary future. She will speak about Blockchain for space supply chain.

James Bruegger, Seraphim Capital

James has been Managing Partner and Investment Director for Seraphim Capital since Oct 2016, and is a co-founder of Space Camp Accelerator. Seraphim are the world’s first venture fund dedicated to financing the Space ecosystem, investing in over 180 early and growth stage businesses. He will be speaking about the fund and what they look for when investing.

Pavlo Tanasyuk, Spacebit

Pavlo is a co-founder of Spacebit, a ground-breaking way to fund international space projects making space exploration available to everyone. He is also CEO of BlockVerify and was the co-founding CEO of Monexy payment system. He holds MPhil in Technology Policy from the University of Cambridge, and was Editor-In-Chief of Information Systems Journal at the London School of Economics. He will speak about democratising space exploration with Blockchain technology.

Christopher Newman, Professor of Space Law at Northumbria University

Chris has been active in the teaching and research of Space Law for a number of years and has recently worked on a publication examining the ethical underpinnings of Space Governance. He will be speaking about law, policy and the Space Industries Act for entrepreneurs and investors.

Michael Ricks, CBN Foundation

Michael is the CEO of CBN Foundation, and advisor to the Debitum Network and Lancea LLP, amongst others. CBN is a new blockchain initiative created out of Cloudeo's existing geodata marketplace business. Michael will speak about the creation of a blockchain tokenised marketplace for geodata and geoservices that has been piloted with the European Space Agency.

Benoit Chamot, Innovative Solutions In Space

Benoit is AOCS engineer & Business development at ISIS, one of the leading companies in the small satellite market providing turn-key cubesat & nanosat solutions including launch services. He has been an Technology Engineer at the Swiss Space Centre, and did his Masters Thesis at MIT on active removal of orbital debris. He will be giving an engineers perspective on small satellites at their uses

Dean Masley & Ahsan Fazal, Moonshot Express

Dean is co-founder of NestEgg Infrastructure together with pension provider APG, and was Director of the Blockchain Education Network. Ahsan is studying aerospace engineering at Delft University of Technology. They will speak about their project to put Bitcoin on the moon as a 21st Century ‘X Prize’.

Tobias Disse (CEO), Haischel Dabian (CTO), Dan Acristinii (Head R&D), Kryha

Kryha won the machine to machine economy track at the Blockchaingers Hackathon in 2018 with the Grex project. They created a decentralized hive mind by launching a blockchain powered swarm of drones. The project has evolved since then into a low earth orbit satellite communication solution which is the subject of their talk.

Jerry Stone, Spaceflight UK

Jerry is a fellow of the British Interplanetary Society where he founded The Sir Arthur Clarke Awards, President of The Mars Society UK, and has lectured on space exploration for over forty years. He will speak on the hows and whys of getting humans on to Mars.

Anja Blaj, Blockchain Think Tank Slovenia

Anja is community manager for Blockchain Think Tank Slovenia. She has a master degree in global law, focused her studies on space law at the University of Ljubljana and CUPL in Beijing. She has numerous experiences with blockchain legal framework and counselling. She will be speaking about legal jurisdiction & property rights in space