Social network for refrigerators, microwaves and toasters

Blockchain technology - new black. We are guys in the trend, and, moreover, stubborn: the interview with AWS did not work — it didn’t grow together (by the way, it’s never too late to re-read and change my mind), and we took one more — this time with our new residents of the business incubator — they were two young the ambitious guys are Sergey Ukustov and Konstantin Makarychev, who are developing a project called Machinomy and have combined in it not one, but two ultra-trend directions - blockchain and IoT. What came out of it, read under the cut.


Please tell us, for the people of the dark, what kind of a beast is this - blockchain technology?
Sergey: Blockchain appeared as a result of Satoshi Nakamoto's experiment. In 2008, he proposed a system for electronic cash, and this work mentions the phrase chain of work, chain of blocks, but there is not a single mention of the word "blockchain." Blockchain is rather a marketing term. But, in principle, it makes sense, because all blockchains, however internal they may be, have the property of irrevocability, immutability of early transactions.
In essence, this is a database that allows you to write data in such a way that no one else can change it. Such a system is used in financial technologies (for example, banks), registries such as EGRIP, real estate registries - these are all bases that cannot be changed without special permission, coordination, and here the blockchain is the best fit, because without special tools and special tricks it is impossible to change what is in this database.
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Konstantin: The most common and practically known example of the use of the blockchain technology is Bitcoin. How it works: a person has spent a certain amount of money, this is recorded in the blockchain, and if something is recorded in the blockchain, then all the other people involved in the process can be sure that this money was spent in a specific way and did not go somewhere . That is, it is just technology for trust.

What kind of project are you working on now, and how did the idea of ​​creating it come about?
Konstantin: First, we were much interested in the blockchain itself, its application. At the same time, the Internet of things is a very good thing, I want it to spread as quickly as possible. And we wanted to connect them somehow. And, secondly, the blockchain is now trying to implement wherever possible, we decided that no one has yet tried to introduce it into the “smart” device.

Sergey: This technology is very interesting, and we and the guys have been discussing it in various applications for a long time, approximately since 2013. And then, when the shaft of publications about the blockchain went and interest in it grew strongly, we began to think: what can we do from this? There are big players who are involved in the use of the blockchain for banks and insurance companies. And we are small, we can not afford this, it means you need to find such an application that allows you to slip between the giants. And this application is a bunch of blockchain and the Internet of things. This is what we do.

How and where can blockchain technologies be used in our life? Can you give real examples?
Sergey: The first application of blockchain technologies on the surface is to certify the immutability of the content.
The second application is less obvious - these are all kinds of registries: legal entities, entrepreneurs, property, etc., because here the most important thing is to add, but not change the history. Registries are a means of communication in conditions where there is no trust among participants. For example, there is a set of banks: Alfa-Bank, Promsvyazbank, Sberbank, etc., which, in principle, do not really trust each other, because they are competitors. And they need some general information about which borrowers are dishonest, from which accounts to which accounts the money was transferred, etc. Such a central base, which, however, does not belong to any of the participants, may be a blockchain technology, because in this case each of the participants is interested in “catching” the other if he makes some mistake.
The third application - not very "white" in our Russian reality - cryptocurrency, a kind of electronic money.
And now about what exactly we do. Machinomy is a cryptocurrency application for the Internet of Things, allowing robots to pay for different services on the Internet on their own. For example, your alarm clock itself knows the weather, but not from some free weather services, but pays for it; Your microwave specifically learns on the Internet the recipes of the pizza that you put in it, and the refrigerator buys food at a nearby store, according to your diet. If you like, you can call it a social network for refrigerators, microwaves and toasters.

Konstantin: And there are areas such as ownership. If you, for example, have a picture, you can “put” a record on the blockchain that this picture is yours. And this will mean that you have ownership rights to it. We are also carrying the idea of ​​identity. Today, most people have a set of documents: a passport, passport, birth certificate, driver's license, etc. And in principle, such things can also be laid in the blockchain.

Surely in this segment you have competitors, and what distinguishes exactly your product?
Konstantin: In general, we have no direct competitors yet. The fact is that some create projects that work on the blockchain, some work on the Internet of things, some even unite, as we do, the Internet of things and the blockchain, but we are doing exactly what we are trying to build economic relations between things that are “smart” things. And it makes us very different from everyone else.

Sergey: In the form in which we formulate it - micropayments for “smart” machines are our project in a single copy. So far we are alone, because we have software that does not require additional devices, which any person can put on his computer and start earning on the services provided, or pay for services, consuming them.

Do you already have potential customers? Have any companies already shown interest in your project?
Konstantin: In fact, we have just started, so nobody really knows about us yet. There is also a problem that here, in Kazan, there are no blockchain experts in principle, so they are trying to drag us in to add it somewhere, introduce it. But we are going our own way, so for now there are no customers as such.

Sergey: But we talked with Sberbank Insurance, and they liked the idea. They said that it can be applied in the field of insurance for logistics, i.e. instead of putting a sensor on the container, which must be closed, from which information can be taken only at the beginning or end of the path, put our product, which allows almost in real time, at each station, for example, to throw off telemetry. That is, if we make the container's path more transparent, we know what happens to it, all the risks become clearer. Thus, insurance companies can reduce costs due to the transparency of the logistics chain.
Also now we are working on the idea of ​​decentralized smart lock. This is a more common use: for example, you install a special program for your lock and then without any central server and service that monitors you, you can close, open the lock and watch its status from the phone.

How can an IT park business incubator help you grow your project? What are your expectations from cooperation?
Konstantin: Everything is simple here. Sergey and I are two technicians, respectively, we are not able to do anything else. We do not know how, to whom and for how much to sell, etc. We can write code and create something in this connection, but nothing but that. Everything else we hope to somehow find here in the incubator.

Sergey: During the time that we are here, everything is in line with the expectations that we had. First of all - this is the community. Here the community is as “stung” as we are. And secondly, it is the ongoing support of curators and the entire business incubator, above all, emotional. This is actually very important.

Tell me, are you afraid to enter such a new, still little studied area?
Sergey: In fact, scary, but I have a positive experience. For three years I worked in electric power industry, worked for a company that makes the system in the field of “smart power industry”. This is also a relatively little studied area. And from this year I made a system for controlling “smart” transformers and “smart” sockets on an industrial scale. And it was very funny and scary when you call up, for example, with the guys from Japan, who also make a device for this protocol for the first time in their life. No one else did this. Therefore, for me this is not the first time. I'm scared, but I understand that this is not the end of the world, that you can go through your fear.

Konstantin: And to me, on the contrary, it adds enthusiasm. If you go to any other areas, they are likely already occupied by someone like IBM. And two guys from the hinterland to fight with them is not necessary. And here - a plowed field. And we can somehow influence the established industry, this is also cool.

Tell us about your plans for the near future. How do you plan to develop?
Konstantin: The nearest plan for the future is a yacht, a woman, a car, power, money. We hope that our project will give us all this (laughs). In general, we are currently working on the implementation of Machinomy and are trying to find the first customers who can implement it.

Sergey: I don’t have a plan as such, although a plan is requested every two weeks. We have a large, global plan, but it is constantly being adjusted, for which he and the plan. And so, for the most part, we have improvisation. Opportunities open suddenly, every day. What you couldn’t even imagine yesterday, once - and becomes reality!