For a long time, the promoters of cryptocurrency have always said they want to go to the moon. Now it seems that blockchain technology will really reach space soon Lockheed Martin announced on Monday that it plans to host a decentralized storage network in space because it hopes to build an infrastructure that can sustain life in space
To achieve this goal, the aerospace and defense giant will use something called the interplanetary file system (IPFs) created in 2015. This is a kind of "decentralized" storage. Unlike the server clusters run by Amazon or Google, users around the world store files. The file is created by the "Protocol" node and is encrypted to those who know that it is created by the "Protocol" in the laboratory.
Conventional storage uses location-based identification -- that is, finding a file on the server and retrieving it -- while IPFs uses content-based identification. When you click the link of a file, the system will search all the places where it is hosted and retrieve it. Files can be retrieved from multiple users at one time. The key is that the system will automatically extract them from the node closest to the user.
This is the key point of Lockheed Martin. If IPFs nodes are hosted in space, this will mean that people can retrieve information from them, not from servers on earth.
"As we further explore space, we need to develop space infrastructure to ensure that the space economy can grow and flourish without relying entirely on the earth. We need to develop technology to support a long-term presence in space. The filecoin foundation and Lockheed Martin will jointly develop a mission to demonstrate IPFs in space," said Joe Landon, senior vice president of project development at Lockheed Martin
According to a blog post by filecoin, Lockheed Martin and the filecoin foundation will complete a survey by the end of August to study which spacecraft is the appropriate host for the equipment that makes IPFs possible and to find "demonstration mission opportunities to take advantage of the utility of IPFs in space".
Marta Belcher, President of the filecoin foundation, said: "Today's centralized Internet model doesn't work in space. By using IPFs, data doesn't need to run back and forth from the earth with every click; on the contrary, when you enter the 'content ID' of IPFs, the content will be retrieved from the nearest place, not from a specific server somewhere. This means that if someone else on the nearby moon has retrieved the data, the data only needs to be retrieved It takes a short distance to get to you quickly, instead of running back and forth from the earth every time you click. "