SpaceChain Awarded Grant from European Space Agency

Published: Thu, 09/26/19

€60,000 grant from the European Space Agency (ESA)

Last week we were very proud to announce that SpaceChain was awarded a €60,000 grant from the European Space Agency (ESA) to develop and identify commercial use-cases for its satellite blockchain technology. The grant is provided under the ESA’s Kick-start Activity Program which is designed to make it easier for entrepreneurs and start-ups to explore thematic areas with promising business potential and to create new commercial services and applications relying on space assets and data.

"It is an honor to receive support from the European Space Agency. The fintech industry currently suffers from low levels of security in relation to the storage and transmission of digital currency, preventing it from achieving the same level of professionalism and trust as the traditional banking industry. We are thrilled to solve that by bringing our blockchain technology to new partners in the EU and UK,” said Zee Zheng, SpaceChain co-founder and chief executive officer.

SpaceChain’s satellite blockchain technology is designed to bring more security to the transmission of digital currencies and smart contracts by using a distributed satellite network and multi-signature transactions. Thus far, SpaceChain has developed an open-source operating system, and launched and flight-tested two blockchain nodes into space in the past 12 months.

“We look forward to a long-term partnership with Deimos, beginning with this ESA project. Deimos has identified the innovations being developed by SpaceChain as being enablers of a more robust EO data commercialisation platform. The fields of earth observation and remote sensing are ripe for distributed ledger technology innovation,” said Nick Trudgen, SpaceChain chief commercial officer and UK office director.

You can see a video update about the ESA grant from Jeff and Zee here.

Last week SpaceChain CEO, Zee Zheng also took part in a panel discussion at the Milken Institute Asia Summit 2019 about near-term innovations in the new space economy.

The session was called To Infinity and Beyond: The Business of Space and new technologies drive the development of the new space economy.

Zee was joined on stage by Motoyuki Arai, Founder and CEO, Synspective, Takafumi Horie, Founder, Interstellar Technologies, Inc., Jonathan Hung, President, Singapore Space and Technology Association, and Veena Nagaraja Rao, Director for Design and Engineering, Centum Electronics. The panel was moderated by Wee-Meng Thoo, Head of Investments, TMT Sector, Leonie Hill Capital. It was a great event and we are very happy to be involved in the Milken Institute ecosystem.

Stay updated!

https://twitter.com/SpaceChain