SpaceChain’s overarching aim is to deliver access to space for all. The cost, however, is a massive potential hurdle.
According to Mckinsey (Daehnick et al. 2020), a large, operational LEO constellation would likely cost anywhere between $5-10 billion to launch, with further costs of around $1-2 billion per year to service and replace existing satellites.

This places comprehensive satellite infrastructure beyond all but the largest industry players, further exacerbating data upflow.
To overcome this, SpaceChain has proposed encouraging shared tenancy and collaboration between multiple smaller actors in the space industry, enabling the effective pooling of resources.
How It Works

The creation of a Decentralized Satellite Infrastructure (DSI) to help facilitate communication between satellites is essential if this aim is to be achieved, but it is not without its technical hurdles. To enable efficient, smooth cooperation, a universal, but broad set of technical standards needs to be laid out.
This is not a simple task and the issues with competing standards have been well documented (Breeman et al. 2022), but it is a challenge that nevertheless needs to be overcome if universal connectivity and data equality are to be achieved.
SpaceChain has frequently positioned itself as a vertical integrator for satellites developing hardware and software components and enabling efficient communication between different devices in a network. It is blockchain technology that is best suited to aiding in this.

In focusing on open-source software that maximizes the number of satellites that might meet this minimum standard, SpaceChain has sought to maximize its effective reach and open up the shared tenancy to many. It is for this reason that blockchain has proved to be perfectly suited.
As blockchains typically work in the form of open-source software mediated between nodes by an immutable ledger, they can be uploaded via uplink to any satellite processor that has the hardware capacity. In this way, a new node can seamlessly join the peer-to-peer network.
As the number of nodes increases, these blockchain nodes on satellites, built through decentralized network infrastructure such as Ethereum Virtual Machine, will act as part of a worldwide network of data processing and storage that can facilitate access to: Transactions, smart contracts, satellite imagery, and data via decentralized apps (dApps) and many other tools that will prove beneficial to end users.
Much of SpaceChain’s innovation will be made open source and thus as the ecosystem grows, our infrastructure can be built on. This system is a cost-effective, trust-driven method to enable secure, collaboration-mediated data access and security.
Because of the simplicity of uploading and installing blockchain-based software via uplink, it will be possible to join the network even after launch.
We see that the main hurdle in establishing a truly decentralized satellite network is developing protocols that are so beneficial, that companies wish to implement them. This invitation is thus extended at any time, to all who meet the standards to join us.