Bitcoin is the first money for robots on the planet. Today, cryptocurrency is the only value that robots can store in their personal wallets, use to accept payments and pay bills on their own. Such a kind of reflections about Bitcoin and the reading of Nick Szabo’s article “The Idea of ​​Smart Contracts” in 2014, where the author considers the use of smart contracts on the example of vending machine control mechanism, prompted me and the Airalab team to work on the Robonomics project for the past 4 years.

Most recently, we published the Robonomics LTS version 1.0, which can be considered the starting point for a crypto community that is interested in building the economy of robots together with us. And the first thing we can offer the community is to turn your cryptocurrency/token into money for robots.

In order to let robots of your organization use cryptocurrencies, the Robonomics platform contains 3 necessary elements:

The Aira image will allow a robot to interact with users through the market mechanism and fulfill contract liabilities arising from the transaction.

Robonomics.js will allow you to write the client part in the form of a dapp for ordering robot services, monitoring the execution process and saving the results on the user’s side.

Robonomics tools will provide you an opportunity to become the Robonomics provider — create your own digital market of robot services or join servicing the existing one.

The general scheme of using a robot as a service for cryptocurrency is as follows:

A user signs a message in dapp about the desire to use the robot as a service. The robot sees the user’s demand on the network and sends its offer in response to it. If the user’s demand and the robot’s offer are matched by cost and other criteria, then the Robonomics provider creates a smart contract in the Ethereum network. Having seen the created contract of liability, the robot starts the process of execution of the contractual liability. After the service is executed, the robot reports by sending a message to the network containing a log of the operations performed. The Robonomics provider finalizes the contractual liability of the robot as a service, after which the robot receives payment from the smart contract that can allow it, as a buyer of energy and consumables, to enter the same digital economy market. Thus, we get an autonomous economic agent — a robot that provides services to humans using such adopted in society mechanisms as market relations and contractual liabilities.

What about commissions and the need to pay gas in the Ethereum computer?

The user pays for the service of the robot in the payment token, he does not need to have Ether or the Robonomics token to receive the service.

The robot pays the commission to the Robonomics providers in XRT (Robonomics token).

The provider bears the costs of using the Ethereum computer, receiving remuneration in the form of the commission in XRT from the robot and the XRT emission from the Robonomics network.

In conclusion

Cryptocurrencies open for the robots of the future the most important form of communication with humans — economically significant communication. Being at the beginning of a new wave of the industrial revolution, which humanity calls the advent of cyber-physical systems, it is impossible not to assume that the main place of communication for complex integrated automated systems will be the market and the basis of this communication — money.

Every robot that we teach to use cryptocurrencies will become the forerunner of humanity’s awareness of its economy and what holds it in the 21st century.

Want to talk to an engineer about the practice of this process? Write to engineering@aira.life