Blockchain-Backed Flight Insurance Launched for Travellers Worldwide

Etherisc, the open-source, decentralised insurance protocol and ecosystem, today launches its FlightDelay product, a blockchain-backed insurance application that autonomously issues policies and executes payouts for travellers who experience flight delays or cancellations. 

Available for passenger flights globally amongst the world’s top 80 airlines, insurance policies are purchasable on Etherisc’s dedicated FlightDelay Portal. Payments are processed through blockchain payments platform Gnosis Chain (formerly xDai Chain), with an initial payment option of USDC. Further FIAT and cryptocurrency options are in development. 

Christoph Mussenbrock, Co-Founder at Etherisc, said: “Contacting a traditional provider and applying for an insurance claim is a time-consuming and tedious process, which compounds the frustration of experiencing a flight delay. Blockchain has tremendous potential to simplify many aspects of modern life for the better; through the power of automated smart contracts and decentralized oracles, this arduous process is now made simple and hassle-free. People can easily sign up for a policy to secure their flight online, turn up at the airport, and receive a fair payment directly to their preferred wallet should their flight be delayed for longer than 45 minutes.” 

Combining the decentralized security of the Ethereum network with the decentralized oracle framework of Chainlink, FlightDelay provides policyholders with a transparent and secure end-to-end solution for flight insurance. Etherisc integrates with Chainlink oracles to access reliable data feeds that help ensure correct and verifiable flight information is used when determining the claims process. By leveraging multiple premium data providers and a decentralized network of Chainlink nodes, Etherisc avoids the risk of a single oracle failing or a single data provider reporting inaccurate information or failing to respond. 

As a fully decentralized solution, the insurance risk pool for the product will be generated by members of the Etherisc community that actively stake the ecosystem’s native DIP token. 

William Herkelrath, Managing Director at Chainlink Labs, said, “Parametric insurance built using hybrid smart contracts has a real opportunity to disrupt manual claims processing by reducing employee labor, server, software management, and other overhead costs via blockchain-based automation. We’re excited to enable Etherisc’s new parametric flight insurance solution by provisioning reliable data feeds on-chain that help its smart contracts determine if flights are delayed. We hope this can bring new levels of transparency and speed to claims processing and demonstrate the many possibilities for hybrid smart contracts in the insurance industry.”

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Christoph Mussenbrock, Co-Founder of Etherisc, is available for interview upon request.

About Etherisc 

Etherisc‘s goal is to make insurance fair and accessible through its open-source, decentralized insurance protocol to collectively build insurance products on the Ethereum blockchain. Its open-source common infrastructure, the Generic Insurance Framework (GIF), includes shared smart contracts, product templates, microservices and the native cryptographic token (DIP) to enable the seamless and efficient creation of decentralized insurance products, with increased transparency and fairness for all parties. 

Since its launch in 2016  by a team of legal, financial, and mathematical visionaries, the Etherisc protocol has been reimagining insurance solutions to democratize the process in the interest of the consumer. Projects currently hosted on Etherisc’s open-source Generic Insurance Framework include FlightDelay Insurance, Crop Insurance, and Hurricane Protection.

About Chainlink

Chainlink is the industry standard for building, accessing, and selling oracle services needed to power hybrid smart contracts on any blockchain. Chainlink oracle networks provide smart contracts with a way to reliably connect to any external API and leverage secure off-chain computations for enabling feature-rich applications. Chainlink currently secures tens of billions of dollars across DeFi, insurance, gaming, and other major industries, and offers global enterprises and leading data providers a universal gateway to all blockchains. 

Learn more about Chainlink by visiting chain.link or by reading the documentation at docs.chain.link. To discuss an integration, reach out to an expert.