BREAKING: An Indonesian Airliner Announces Launch of Blockchain Powered In-Flight Magazine
eColours, the digital blockchain version of Garuda Indonesia's inflight magazine, launched on VersoView
Happy Tuesday!
About a week and a half ago, in Friday’s Substack article, I focused on how the aviation industry could adopt blockchain technologies to streamline operations and facilitate the exchange of information. I primarily cited the IATA white paper, and highlighted how blockchain technologies could be used in the areas of frequent flyer points and smart contracts across the travel value chain, amongst others.
The IATA White Paper touched on this further, noting that “Blockchain has the capability to significantly streamline the earning, spending, accounting and reconciliation of frequent flyer points by tokenizing these assets into becoming digital and pervasive,” as a method of countering challenges faced by rising passenger load factors.
To my pleasant surprise, Garuda Indonesia, Indonesia’s national flag airline carrier, announced steps toward this with the launch of eColours, a digital blockchain edition of their inflight magazine on VersoView in order to “publish, engage and reward digitally.”
How Garuda Indonesia is Revolutionizing the Aviation Industry
Garuda Indonesia is a Skytrax 5-star airline and global leader in commercial aviation. Like all airlines across the globe, the COVID-19 pandemic has posed serious challenges and threats to the way Garuda Indonesia can deliver various forms of consumer goods and services. As part of the launch, Garuda Indonesia noted on Instagram that they “… have removed reading materials from all of our [their] flights, as one of the precautions during this pandemic…” with the relaunch of eColours this month representing a huge development in entertainment standards that will allow the airliner to continue to meet its health and safety objectives while supplying passengers with a digital inflight experience.
As sanitation and health-safety are becoming top priorities, going digital eases concerns with the spread of germs by providing a contactless form of inflight entertainment, while still improving the customer experience.
Moving away from paper-print publications also comes with benefits elsewhere, such as aircraft weight reductions, lower carbon footprints, and higher profitability through increased shareholder value.
In terms of the rewards system, going digital with blockchain technologies poses a wide array of benefits. The tokenization of assets comes with the benefits of ease of accounting, reconciliation of rewards, and the prevention digital assets from the problems of double spending often associated with compensation vouchers. Frequent Flyer Loyalty Points, commonly used as compensation vouchers, remain on balance sheets as liabilities until they are redeemed by customers, streamlining the process even with high passenger volume.
VersoView’s Alpha Launch
VersoView is an engagement and rewards platform hosting branded DeFi economies. It is also the home of the future of what they’ve coined PER technology, referring to the system of Publishing, Engaging, and Rewarding.
Along with the debut of Garuda Indonesia’s digital inflight magazine, VersoView announced the alpha release of their above-mentioned PER platform, after two-years of application development.
“The release of the VersoView alpha platform represents a major evolution in how brands, businesses, educational institutions and publishers communicate their stories and engage their audiences through meaningful rewards.”
-VersoView Alpha Launch
The VersoView ecosystem offers a space where brands, businesses, educational partners, and publishers can reward their customers and communities with branded Social Tokens by engaging hosting them on a platform with their content.
VersoView mobilized their platform OpenView, a digital publishing platform, allowing Garuda Indonesia to “host and engage their community around eColours content.” This feature-limited alpha release allows Garuda Indonesia passengers to access eColours in the VersoView app and access inflight entertainment offers.
From the press release, the launch also highlighted several of VersoView’s blockchain partners:
The eColours inflight magazine will undergo “validation and certification in the UREEQA closed-beta launch this month,” and will be issued a unique NFT to represent the certified authenticity and ownership of Garuda Indonesia’s intellectual property on the blockchain.
WordProof: In partnership with WordProof, to establish point-of-creation ownership of OpenView features, eColours will be time-stamped on the blockchain. Readers can trust content by knowing who published and edited it, as well as the date on which it was created.
Morpheus.Network: In the feature edition of eColours, readers will see an ad for the blockchain powered global supply chain SaaS middleware platform, as Morpheus.Network expands their reach and seeks to engage new and emerging markets with innovative blockchain solutions.
Ferrum Network: As they continue to “climb the Iron Mountain,” Ferrum Network is based around a mission to “expand the global adoption of blockchain to new markets and deliver added utility and value for Ferrum investors,” showcased in an advertisement in the feature edition of eColours.
The alpha application is available in the Apple Store for iPhone and the Google Play Store for android devices.
Thinking Rationally
At the end of last Friday’s post, I mentioned that I was uncertain that blockchain adaptation in the aviation industry was likely to happen quickly, but that I was still hopeful — perhaps I should amend that to specify that I am uncertain that blockchain adaptation will happen quickly in the United States.
U.S. domestic carriers could learn a lot from their foreign counterparts. Garuda Indonesia, along with the help of VersoView and other partners, is taking the first steps toward what I see as the future of aviation. The integration of blockchain technologies is an enormous milestone for the aviation industry, and I hope that the future success and quick integration of Garuda Indonesia and eColours on VersoView will serve as a key example to other carriers across the world.
BREAKING: An Indonesian Airliner Announces Launch of Blockchain Powered In-Flight Magazine
How can i be early investor in those project?
Fantastic work