Application Scenario

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General properties for a application scenario

  • Robots work remotely, without real-time supervision (e.g., deep sea, planetary exploration, or underground); they can only communicate in a peer-to-peer manner; there is no central trusted source of information
  • The swarm should come to consensus; no robot should be able to do something without getting automatically punished or rewarded; robots (and, therefore, their owner) should have a guarantee that a certain action leads to certain consequences
  • Robots should be fully autonomous (no single point of failure, no one can just press a button and stop them, no person decides if a member is included in the swarm or not)
  • The swarm should be able to add new members at any time (there is no need of password authentification, any robot can join)
  • Robots possibly belong to different organizations (e.g., robot project collaboration between different countries, no country wants to face the risk that another country just stops the project)
  • The swarm members are untrusted (you don't have to know which organization or person a robot belongs to; you don't have to know if a robot sends right or wrong information)
  • Each robot is a (light) node in the network; they could verify and distribute transactions
  • After a mission was performed, it might be imporant to see, which robot performed what action; thanks to the immutability of the blockchain, this can be done long time after the actual actions were performed
  • These settings can be used in: exploration, mapping, oil spill removal, humanitarian demining

FAQ

  • Q: Robots are computationally limited devices. Therefore, they can only perform proof-of-work (PoW) with limited difficulty. What happens if a much more powerful attacker performs a 51% attack?
    • Bitcoin's classical PoW might not be the right choice. Instead, proof-of-stake (PoS) might be a better alternative. The stake might be built by using "Physical PoW", for example by removing oil spills or mines


  • Q: Why do you use physical robot and not just simulation?
    • Simulations can never capture all aspects of the real-world
    • The goal is to pave the way for real-world robot task; physical robots provide a proof-of-concept
    • It allows to directly study and the capability of the blockchain technology to handle such events


  • Q: Why don't you just use a classicial consensus algorithm?
    • Other existing consensus algorithms (apart from blockchain technology) are susceptible to Sybil attacks or only provide consensus to a small degree


  • Q: Why don't you use a authentification system to only include trusted members?
    • A classical authentification system can be easily compromised (e.g., once the password is revealed, the entire system breaks down)
    • The swarm is more flexible without a authentification system: everyone can join at any time


  • Q: Why do you want to start your own blockchain instead of using the main Ethereum blockchain?
    • Since the robots work at remote areas, they may be without Internet connection for a long time.
    • Currently, there are no available light (thin) clients for Ethereum and the main blockchain is too memory-intense for small robots.