A new software platform is giving farmers a way to integrate their smart contracts with a wider range of smart contracts, enabling them to sell and buy farm products with a fraction of the time required.
Dublin-based startup Etherium aims to create a software platform that will allow farmers to develop smart contracts that can be used by other farmers, and then run the smart contracts on Ethereum, a blockchain.
This means farmers can integrate smart contracts into their own farm-owned software to automate the process of selling and buying.
Etherium’s solution is already available to farmers in the UK.
It has been downloaded more than 12,000 times on Github and is available for developers to download, build, and deploy.
The company says it has received a number of positive feedback from farmers and has plans to expand its services.
The developer says it is not an Ethereum-based platform, but instead a suite of applications for a wide range of IoT devices, including the smart contract platform that it is building.
It is based on the Ethereum Blockchain, which is the most popular way to develop software.
“Etherum is built on Ethereum to allow farmers a simple, and efficient, way to run smart contracts in their own smart contracts,” said Simon Doolan, Etherium’s CEO and co-founder.
“This will help them to grow their business faster and lower the cost of their products, while still enabling them a range of services to connect to the Ethereum network.”
A smart contract in actionThe company plans to use the Ethereum blockchain to store and manage farm-own smart contracts for its platform.
Farmers will be able to access their own code to run their smart contract.
They will also be able add third-party software to the smart-contract stack, such as third-parties such as an insurance provider or a land management company.
Doolan said farmers would be able use Etherium to add new services, such in the form of smart-certification and data analytics, that can allow them to track the progress of their farm, as well as to analyse the performance of their smart-capabilities.
“Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for farmers to integrate smart-trading, insurance, and farm management systems,” he said.
“It will allow them not only to build a farm-managed software platform, which can be deployed on the blockchain, but also to enable farmers to run these systems from the comfort of their homes, without the need for a complex server farm.”
The platform is available as a free download from Etherium.
Its developer team includes a number people from the Ethereum ecosystem, including Ethereum core developers, and developers who have worked on the platform since its launch in December.
One of the developers, Jonathan Taylor, said that he and other developers had been working on the Etherium project since January and that they had been developing the platform in parallel to other projects.
He said the team had been trying to make Etherium “as easy to use as possible” while ensuring it was not “too complex”.
“We are hoping to make this platform as easy to understand as possible,” he added.
The startup says the Ethereum smart contract stack has over 1,000 open issues and has over 500 contributors.
“We aim to get to 100% of our issues in less than a week,” said Doolen.
The platform has been released to the public for developers and is now available for download.
“There are no limits on the number of developers that can contribute to this project,” Doolant added.
“This is a great platform for us to build upon, and to bring together the various IoT and smart-tech companies that are working together on Ethereum.”
