Monitoring the First Machine to Machine Transactions on Fabric

Something exciting can begin to emerge in the @FabricFND network. Not human transactions. Not paying users of services. Rather, the first indications of machines mingling with other machines economically. Robots have been living in closed systems over the decades. One company owns a warehouse robot. Within a single line of production, there is a factory robot at work. A delivery robot is a robot which is run as a part of one software stack. Although such machines do genuine physical labor, they are not involved in an open economy system. They follow orders, yet do not adjust the work with other mechanisms that are not in their environment, and they do not share value. Such a restriction is a practical bottleneck with the increase in automation. The various robots, constructed by different manufacturers, and owned by different organizations, do not share a common infrastructure in which they can check the work, coordinate their activities and pay-off. That is, the physical machines are physical, but the economic network among them is absent. Fabric is going to meet this challenge in a different way. It is not interested in the development of better robots, but rather on the development of the network layer that will enable machines to communicate in an economical manner. The concept is not complex but strong. Through an on-chain system, machines are able to register identities within the network, carry out tasks, authenticate the work, and get rewarded. Instead of being autonomous devices, robots are integrated into a decentralized network. With machines identified and possession, a different kind of activity can be done. Machines are able to initiate value transmission to other machines. A robot that makes deliveries will be able to automatically pay a charging station. The sensor data may be bought by a drone to another device. A warehouse robot may demand compute power to a nearby system and pay the payment as soon as the task is done. These communications are machine-to-machine communications. At this time, such deals are mere precursors. Most of them are experimental or taking place under controlled conditions. However, it is important to keep track of them since every one of them signifies a change in the manner in which automation networks are likely to operate. Machines can work and resolve the economic layer on their own instead of having human beings coordinate all interactions. This may seem small at first. When a robot gives another robot a small payment in exchange of a small service, it does not seem revolutionary. Nevertheless, in the past, new economic infrastructures never embarked on a loud note. The initial internet payments were minimal. Initially blockchain trades were near worthless. But these early experiences indicated that new systems were being created under the surface that were completely new. Machine-to-machine interactions on Fabric can be another such early stage. Every registered communicative contact is an indication that the robots are no longer carrying out orders. They begin to work within a network where work is measurable, verifiable and rewardable. To the extent that this model keeps evolving, the implications of the model in the long term might be enormous. Rather than robotics being confined by corporate platforms, the machines may have to work on an open network where tasks, coordination, and payments are automatically completed. Robots could be constructed by the developers. Machines could be deployed by the operators. Machines would be able to find jobs and do them and value would flow through the network in real time. Majority of such interactions would never have a human pressing a button. They would only be machines that would be coordinating work with other machines. Small signals may still be today the biggest machine-to-machine transactions on Fabric. But they may also be the oldest records of a far greater change. The onset of a network where machines do not simply work. They are involved in an economy that is constructed on them. $ROBO #ROBO