It is now three months since the Redmond Wash headquartered asteroid mining venture Planetary Resources was bought by ConsenSys. Although the new venture, which is now known as the ConsenSys Space, has not taken off its business plan, a second space-centric Blockchain venture coming into the picture might provide some clues as to why the initiative hasn’t kicked off.

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SpaceChain Ran Successful Tests of Space-to-ground Blockchain-based Transactions

The new Blockchain venture that was mentioned above is Singapore-based startup SpaceChain. The company has been moving forward with its bid to facilitate Blockchain to transactions space-centric. This is highlighted by the recent launch of two Blockchain-based nanosatellite nodes into orbit aboard two Chinese Long March rockets back in February and October last year. In December of 2018, SpaceChain said it was successful after running a series of space-to-ground Blockchain-based transactions tests. Leading to the successful completion of a signature verification process that could, in theory, be used for contracts.

Lunar Library Project Installment on the Moon

SpaceChain and the Arch Mission Foundation today revealed that one digital payload stored aboard the satellite the collaboration launched in October was the Arch’s Orbital Library, which contained a full copy of Wikipedia. In the words of Nova Spivack, who serves as the co-founder of the Arch Mission Foundation:

“The Orbital Library on the SpaceChain satellite is the start of a ring of data backup orbiting the Earth which constitutes the first ever extraterrestrial archive in a series of steps toward establishing more Arch libraries in a bid to preserve human culture and knowledge. By means of massive replication around our solar system, we will have the capability to guarantee that Arch Libraries will never get lost millions of years into the future.”

The foundation is also looking into sending installments of its custom Lunar Library Project for archiving data on the moon’s surface. The first installment of this will be placed on the SpaceIL’s lunar lander. The second installment will get to the moon on the Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander by next year. According to Zheng:

“We fully support the goal of the Arch Mission Foundation of preserving knowledge for our future generations, and we are excited to play our part in achieving that objective through our satellite technology,”

Crypto Still the Best Known Blockchain Application

Notwithstanding, the best-known applications for Blockchain technology have to do with crypto. Although, the technology can also be used for non-currency applications including verifying the supply chain of any given product, or making sure a document or database has not been tampered with surreptitiously.

In a number of answers provided to several emailed questions, the CEO of SpaceChain, Zee Zheng gave reasons why space-based operations can benefit the Blockchain. For what it’s worth, ConsenSys and SpaceChain are not actually the only companies to have started working on a Blockchain + Space application.

One report published by the Asia Times today highlights the details on a few other Blockchain-related space ventures looking to follow the trend. Some of these ventures include Blockstream in Canada, Space Impulse in Estonia, Supreme Global Holdings in Sri Lanka and Malta, and XYO Network in San Diego.

Finally, when ConsenSys Space launches its Blockchain strategy, it will be taking a huge leap into what has already been described as a busy frontier.