12.1 Existing Robotics Marketplaces

The robotics and automation industry is rapidly evolving, but current solutions are fragmented. Marketplaces exist for hiring robots or accessing robotics services, and Web3 experiments touch parts of the problem. However, none provide a privacy-first, trustless, and proof-based framework that fully integrates robotics, AI, and decentralized payments.

• Traditional Marketplaces: Platforms like Fetch Robotics, InVia Robotics, and Locus Robotics offer warehouse robots and logistics automation but are centralized, vendor-specific, and closed ecosystems.

• Gig Platforms for Robots: Emerging startups experiment with “robots-as-a-service,” but they rely on central servers to manage jobs, payments, and monitoring, creating trust and privacy bottlenecks.

• Simulation Environments: ROS2, Gazebo, and Unity Robotics provide powerful simulation frameworks but lack monetization, privacy, or decentralized incentive models.

• Limitation: Existing marketplaces do not solve the trust gap (can a client trust the robot’s output without raw data?) and offer little incentive for individual robot owners to participate.