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    Blockchain technology is the new black. We are trendy guys, and moreover annoying: the interview with AWS didn’t work, it didn’t grow together (by the way, it’s never too late to re-read it and change your mind), and we took another one - 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 not one, but two ultra-trending directions - blockchain and IoT. What came of it, read under the cut.


    Please tell us, for us dark people, what kind of beast is this - blockchain technology?
    Sergey:Blockchain appeared as a result of the Satoshi Nakamoto experiment. In 2008, he proposed a system for electronic cash, and in this work the phrase “chain of work, chain of blocks” is mentioned, 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, no matter how they are arranged inside, have the property of irrevocability, immutability of early transactions.
    In fact, it is a database that allows you to record data so that no one else can change it. Such a system is used in financial technologies (for example, banks), registries, such as the Unified State Register of Enterprises, real estate registries - these are all databases that cannot be changed without special permission, approval, and here the blockchain is the best suited, because without special tools and special tricks it is impossible to change what is in this base.

    Konstantin:The most common and well-known example of the use of blockchain technology is Bitcoin. How it works: a person spent a certain amount of money, it is recorded on the blockchain, and if something is written on 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's just technology for trust.

    What kind of project are you working on now, and how did you get the idea to create it?
    Konstantin:Firstly, 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 somehow connect them. And, secondly, they are now trying to implement blockchain wherever possible, we decided that no one had yet tried to implement it in a “smart” device.

    Sergey:This technology is very interesting, and the guys and I have been discussing it in various applications for a long time, since about 2013. And then, when the shaft of publications about the blockchain went and interest in it grew significantly, we began to think: what can we do from this. There are big players who are engaged in the use of blockchain for banks, insurance companies. And we are small, we can’t afford this, we need to find such an application that will allow us to slip between the giants. And this application is a combination of blockchain and the Internet of things. This is what we do.

    How and where can blockchain technologies be used in our lives? Can you give real examples?
    Sergey: The first use of blockchain technologies on the surface is to confirm the immutability of content.
    The second application is less obvious - these are all kinds of registries: legal entities, entrepreneurs, property, etc., because the most important thing here is to add, but not change the history. Registries are a means of communication in conditions when 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, can be blockchain technology, because in this case each of the participants is interested in “catching” the other if he makes some kind of mistake.
    The third application - not very "white" in our Russian reality - cryptocurrencies, a kind of electronic money.
    And now about what exactly we are doing. Machinomy is an Internet of Things cryptocurrency application that allows robots to pay for different services on the Internet on their own. For example, your alarm clock itself will know the weather, but not from some free weather services, but pay for it; your microwave specifically recognizes on the Internet recipes for the pizza you put in it, and the refrigerator buys food in a nearby store, according to your diet. If you want, it can be called a social network for refrigerators, microwave ovens and toasters.

    Konstantin:And there are areas like ownership. If you, for example, have a picture, you can “put” on the blockchain a record that this picture is yours. And this will mean that you have ownership rights to it. Also, we are now nurturing the idea of ​​identity. Today, most people have a set of documents: 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, but what makes your product different?
    Konstantin:In general, we have no direct competitors. The fact is that some create projects that work on the blockchain, some work on the Internet of things, some even combine how we do it - the Internet of things and the blockchain, but we are doing exactly what we are trying to build economic relations between things, “smart” things. And this makes us very different from everyone else.

    Sergey: In the form in which we formulate it - micropayments for smart cars - our project is in a single copy. We are so alone so far, because we have software that does not require additional devices that anyone can install on their computer and start making money on the services provided, or pay for services by consuming them.

    Do you already have potential customers? Have any companies already shown interest in your project?
    Konstantin: Actually, we have just begun, so no one really knows about us. There is also a problem that here, in Kazan, there are no specialists in the blockchain in principle, so they are trying to drag us to themselves in order to add it and introduce it somewhere. But we are going our own way, so for now there are no customers as such.

    Sergey:But we talked to 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 some kind of sensor on the container, which must be closed, from which information can only be taken at the beginning or end of the journey, put our product, which allows you to telemetry, for example, in almost real time mode, at each station. That is, if we make the container path more transparent, we know what happens to it, all the risks become more clear. Thus, insurance companies can reduce costs due to the transparency of the supply chain.
    Also now we are working on the idea of ​​a decentralized smart lock. This is a more common application: for example, you install a special program for your lock and then without any central server and service that watches you, you can close, open the lock and watch its status from your phone.

    How can an IT park business incubator help you develop your project? What are your expectations from the collaboration?
    Konstantin: Everything is simple here. Sergey and I are two techies, respectively, we don’t know 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 regard, but nothing but this. We hope to somehow get the rest here in the incubator.

    Sergey:During the time that we are here, everything is developing in accordance with the expectations that we had. First of all, it is a community. Here the community is as “stung" as we are. And secondly - it is the constant support of the curators and the entire business incubator, primarily emotional. This is actually very important.

    Tell me, are you not afraid to enter such a new, still little studied area?
    Sergey:Actually, scary, but I have a positive experience. For three years I was engaged in the electric power industry, I worked for a company that makes a system in the field of “smart electric power”. This is also a relatively little studied area. And a year from this, 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 guys from Japan, who also make the device for this protocol for the first time in their lives. No one else did this. Therefore, this is not the first time for me. 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 some other area, then they are most likely already occupied by someone like IBM. And two guys from the outback do not have to compete with them. And here is an unplowed 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 closest 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, now we are 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 they demand a plan from us every two weeks. We have a large, global plan, but it is constantly being adjusted, and that's why it is a plan. And so, for the most part, we have improvisation. Opportunities open suddenly, every day. What you couldn’t even imagine yesterday was just becoming reality!

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