Chinese Air Quality Index tool explodes onto Bitcoin SV blockchain

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One of the great thing about Bitcoin SV (BSV) is that you don’t need to ask anyone’s permission to create an amazingly new useful application on it. Someone went and did just that, putting Chinese pollution data on the blockchain and overnight, becoming one of the biggest drivers of transaction data on BSV.

Twitter user Satchmo first noticed the transactions being recorded to the blockchain, noting that in just a few hours it had become the third biggest creator of transactions in the world of Bitcoin:

There's a new protocol that came online lat night. It's being used to record what looks like air quality and pollutant data for regions in China. It has generated more than 12,000 txs in the last 12 hours or so. 😲 pic.twitter.com/YqcdK9HSE5

— Luke Rohenaz (@wildsatchmo) October 22, 2019

Less than an hour later, Aaron Zhou, a respected and prolific member of the BSV world, came forward as the developer of the new tool:

https://twitter.com/dailyzhou/status/1186689277893074944

He later went on to explain that the data is taken from public services in China, and encoded in a utf-8 format to be written to the blockchain. He went on to post an explainer of the data found within, so that others could understand the information being relayed:

https://twitter.com/dailyzhou/status/1186695520330235904

We reached out to Mr. Zhou to ask him more about his new tool, starting with why he was inspired to create an Air Quality Index (AQI) uploader for the BSV blockchain. “AQI is public data, people care about it,” he responded. “Nowadays, several service providers and mobile apps can give present AQI, but without a history query. AQI history of one place is important data; we can do some analysis work on it if needed, or just give it to the users who are interested in it. The data should be open and anyone can access it.”

Zhou stressed that he doesn’t consider this a finished product, and he quickly came up with several ways the data can be made more useful to users, and he encourages the BSV community to continue working on what he’s started. “End-user need a UI surface to access the data at least,” he began. “Anyone can build apps or whatever they want, with the open data on chain. No limits, no restrictions. This is also the reason why I decided to put all the detailed data onto the chain. I could have stored it just for myself with a database or whatever, but that’s not open and I don’t want to act like this.”

Zhou’s AQI upload tool runs on donations, and running it for thousands of Chinese locations isn’t cheap, even with BSV microtransactions. He’s already thought of a few ways to keep the system running. “We can show AQI of the city to everyone for free, but you need to pay if you are interested in the details AQI of each station in the city,” he offered as one solution. “We could also act like WeatherSV and let users donate for a specific place, then we put their name in the pushdata. This can be implemented with Money Button.”

Satchmo suggested on Twitter that AQI might pair well with WeatherSV, and Zhou sees a possibility in that down the road. For now, he has a different potential partner in mind. “I’ve already talked to Asine, the builder of CityonChain; to cooperate with them would be cool.”

We asked Zhou how he’s feeling with the positive response that rushed his way with the launch of his AQI tool, but he’s not too concerned with it. The priority, he emphasized, is in making the tool even better. “The cost of upload data is huge,” he noted. “I want to find a good business model to run the service continually, reduce the upload fee, and optimizing the tool is also a priority.

The potential for immutable pollution data, uncorrupted by corporate or government intervention, is pretty clear to all. While Zhou admitted that the data is only as good as the public services that provide them, considering they are written in real time to BSV, there’s no chance for revisionist history.

Lise Li, China Manager of the Bitcoin Association, celebrated the new tool from Zhou:

Congrats AQI🎉🎉🎉Developed by @dailyzhou from China, uploading air quality data of thousands of Chinese cities every hour to #BitcoinSV chain. I sponsored Beijing AQI for 3 months. It's valuable data reminding me everyday that we should protect the environment. @BitcoinAssn pic.twitter.com/qxYlAH9O0a

— Lise L.慧子 (@Lise0508) October 23, 2019