Cryptocurrencies have become a major focus in world economics lately.  If they were lucky, some people were able to create a fortune investing in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoins, Ethereum, or NEO.  Though the cryptocurrency market has been facing some troubles lately, it’s popularity has brought to light some other ideas.  One thing most cryptocurrencies have in common is that they work off of blockchains for security purposes.  It is this idea of using a blockchain system to create transactions that is spreading to other useful enterprises.

In the 2017 January-February issue of the Harvard Review an article by Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani titled “The Truth About Blockchain” described blockchain as such, “The technology at the heart of bitcoin and other virtual currencies, blockchain is an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way.”  A blockchain is a growing list of “blocks”, or records, of a transaction or data.  Each block in the chain is protected by cryptography making it virtually impossible to hack.  It’s estimated that the blockchain system is so secure that even a quantum computer would need a decade to crack the code.

This is why Walmart, the largest wholesale retail chain in the world, filed a patent in January to collaborate a blockchain system with drone technology.  As companies like Walmart, Google, and Amazon race to be the first to make drone based deliveries a reality there are two major obstacles in the way.  The first is finding a way to logistically create safe flight plans.  These flight plans need to take into consideration all the aspects of urban and rural environments.  this includes buildings, power lines, wildlife, people, traffic, and no fly zones like airports, aviation paths, government buildings, state parks, and many more mapping issues.  The good news is that the FAA and shipping companies are coming close to figuring out these logistical issues.

The next big concern is how to keep airborne drones safe from hacking to be sure that their predestined flight plan is followed to stay in accordance of FAA regulations, and protect the drone’s package from theft or temperament.  This is where Walmart’s new patent, Cloning Drones Using Blockchain, comes into play.  Using a blockchain system to coordinate and protect Walmart’s fleet of drones could solve this issue as the drones data and radio signal wouldn’t be able to be hacked.  Published on August 1st,the patent document states, “A blockchain ledger may store any kind of information that may be stored in any other format or medium, for example, a large list of instructions of different types, navigational information, and maps. In such a way, a same software profile may be deployed across the cloned drones.”

This patent comes at the same time that Walmart announced they also plan to introduce their own blockchain based cryptocurrency.  What is important to note is that right now this is just a patent application, which could take a very long time to be approved and turned into a usable model.  It does mean that we consumers could very likely be looking at the next step to bring home based deliveries of our goods by drones.