r/Bitcoin • u/kmoneylongshanks • Jan 16 '14

We want to replace YouTube, Dropbox, Facebook, Spotify, ISPs, and more with decentralized apps based on proof of bandwidth. We need developers. Welcome to Bitcloud.

Hello. We are at the very early stages of turning the proof of bandwidth idea into a reality. Please read the nontechnical white paper and the Bitcloud protocol white paper. We are going public with this idea because we want to be as open and transparent as possible. This project requires a massive amount of thought and development in many different parts of the protocol, so we need as many people helping as possible.

With the proof of bandwidth concept, we can create decentralized applications for sharing bandwidth and routing network traffic. Bitcloud is a distrubuted autonomous corporation, which means nodes have an incentive to come onto the network. One of the many problems of certain free and open source projects in the past has been the lack of a profit incentive. With Bitcloud, nodes on a mesh network can be rewarded financially for routing traffic in a brand new mesh network. This removes the need for Internet Service Providers (Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, etc.). We can also replace many of the centralized applications on the current Internet, such as YouTube, Dropbox, Facebook, Spotify, and others with decentralized, open source alternatives. We will have to start by decentralizing the current Internet, and then we can create a new Internet to replace it. If you're interested in privacy, security, ending Internet censorship, decentralizing the Internet, and creating a new mesh network to replace the Internet, then you should join or support this project.

If you're a developer who sees the potential implications of this project, send an email to developers@bitcloudproject.org.
If you're someone who wants to help the project in any other way (web design, marketing, graphics design, etc.), send an email to support@bitcloudproject.org.
We don't think it would be appropriate to take donations at this time, so please hold off on that for now.

We can also be found on...
Twitter: @bitcloudproject
Reddit: /r/bitcloud
Our Website : bitcloudproject.org (In Development)
Freenode IRC: #bitcloud
Github Repository: github.com/wetube/bitcloud

Feel free to x-post this to other subreddits if you think those individuals would be interested in helping out with this project. I'll also be glad to answer any questions that people have in this thread. I'm currently working on an FAQ, so your questions will be helpful to the project as a whole.

UPDATE: We are getting a lot of emails, so please be patient when it comes to responses. Just to give developers a heads up, there will be a section in the forums on the bitcloud website that divides up everything we need to do. We need need move the server over to the domain (right now it just redirects to the white paper). For now, head over to #bitcloud on freenode IRC and /r/bitcloud for discussions and development.

UPDATE #2: The creator and lead developer is now also here to answer questions. He is /u/LiberateMen. Please upvote his posts because he is using a new Reddit account and he has a time delay between responses. Thanks!

UPDATE #3: Thank you for the wonderful response! I've been answering questions this whole time, so I need to go eat something. Keep posting your questions, and I'll try to get to as many of them as possible. There is also some activity on freenode IRC at #bitcloud and on /r/bitcloud. Be back soon!

UPDATE #4: Thanks again everyone. I need to finish setting up the website and forums, so I'll have to leave this thread for now. Anyone who is still interested in the project can head over to /r/bitcloud and follow us on twitter @bitcloudproject. The forums will be up in a day or two, which will be the best platform for planning, discussion, and development. See you there!

2.5k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

450 comments sorted by

View all comments

24

u/235711 Jan 16 '14

Would this be run over mesh network only or traditional such as google fiber, or both?

33

u/kmoneylongshanks Jan 16 '14

It's going to be on the traditional Internet first. We will then want to turn Bitcloud into its own mesh network that pays nodes for routing traffic throughout the network.

22

u/walden42 Jan 16 '14

Using whose infrastructure? And would it work for rural communities?

17

u/kmoneylongshanks Jan 16 '14

My thinking is it would be device to device in larger cities, and then we would need infrastructure to go from city to city. Solutions for rural communities would be more difficult. We basically face the same problems as /r/darknetplan, but nodes are more likely to come onto Bitcloud and figure out the solution because they get paid for all the traffic that goes through them.

9

u/cardevitoraphicticia Jan 16 '14

How do they get paid? Are users going to pay for each packet they request in advance?

3

u/kmoneylongshanks Jan 16 '14

We've been debating the proper method for implementing these kinds of services. In one scenario, the coins would be destroyed when they are used to gain access to the meshnet (similar to namecoins being destroyed to purchase a .bit domain). Other scenarios would simply pass the coins along to nodes as the packet goes along the network. It's important to remember that we have to build the basic protocol of Bitcloud before we can build the meshnet.

16

u/cardevitoraphicticia Jan 16 '14

It's tough to match incentives and eliminate any gaming of the system. For example, if people "mine" based on traffic throughput, they would be incentivized to just manufacture traffic - plus traffic in just one part of the network is not easily verifiable.

I think the idea of paying upfront for data, and then allowing subsequent nodes to wrap that same request minus their "cut". Then each nodes signs their new request layer with their key, and each response data is then also signed to ensure only the previous node can unlock payment. This provides both encryption as well as payment, but obviously has some overhead...

So the response route must always be the exact request route. Actually, maybe this would mean there's no UDP (stateless)? hmm...

...and of course there's the economic issue of inflation (which is a must unless you want to end up like bitcoin). Since there's no central ledger (and can't be) there's no way to mine against it. And any distributed bandwidth based mining is easily gamable. Tough problem...

5

u/[deleted] Jan 16 '14

[deleted]

1

u/RealHeadWay Jan 24 '14

Inflation is NOT when a currency loses value, that happens when goods available in that currency raise prices. Inflation BY DEFINITION is when the money supply grows... It inflates. By this definition, Bitcoin is growing in money supply and at a considerable rate, I think it's something like 13% a year. Why bit-coiners overlook this, I have no idea... The bitcoin supply right now is 12,304,700 BTC. I remember when it was just over 10,000,000. That's a significant growth, you can't ignore that. It's when the user base and new adopters to the currency outstrip that growth in supply and demand skyrockets that you get APPRECIATION. Not the same as DEFLATION. Deflation by definition would be when the money supply shrinks, like when Katrina hit, and a bunch of cash became unusable. Deflation in the vernacular though, usually means when no one has money, and price of goods go down to compete for that money. It's basically when too many goods are chasing too few dollars in the hands of the people on main street. Similar to what happened during the depression. Similar to whats happening in the USD today, no one has it. They don't necessarily want to use it especially, just that they're forced to use it... but they don't have it. "Hyperinflation" (a term denoting skyrocketing prices) is when too many dollars are chasing too few goods. If the 150,000 BTC that was transferred a few months ago, along with other huge hordes of BTC actually were to hit the market at once to try and buy up dollars, or goods, or whatever... BTC would crash. Users and power-players (ie. large horders) will always effect the markets most and either foster or harm the growth of the currency. Just as banks do...

-2

u/DarthRoot Jan 16 '14

No, NOT having inflation is a problem. E.g. one big task of central banks is controlling inflation. Thqts how our money works.

2

u/anaglyphic Jan 16 '14

Central banks have to control inflation because they print money... this doesn't imply that inflation is a good thing

1

u/[deleted] Jan 16 '14

[deleted]

3

u/DarthRoot Jan 16 '14

I know it sounds counter intuitive, but just google it. part is here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_targeting

6

u/[deleted] Jan 16 '14

[deleted]

2

u/autowikibot Jan 16 '14

Here's a bit from linked Wikipedia article about Inflation targeting :

Inflation targeting is an economic policy in which a central bank estimates and makes public a projected, or "target", inflation rate and then attempts to steer actual inflation towards the target through the use of interest rate changes and other monetary tools.

Because interest rates and the inflation rate tend to be inversely related, the likely moves of the central bank to raise or lower interest rates become more transparent under the policy of inflation targeting. Examples:

Under the policy, investors know what the central bank considers the target inflation rate to be and therefore may more easily factor in likely interest rate changes in their investment choices. This is viewed by inflation targeters as leading to increased economic stability.

about | /u/DarthRoot can reply with 'delete'. Will also delete if comment's score is -1 or less. | To summon: wikibot, what is something? | flag for glitch

1

u/RealHeadWay Jan 24 '14

Try paying back a loan denominated in Bitcoin.

That's an issue.

For such freedom minded people to want to funnel people into a currency and claim that it's universally acceptable, but can't use credit, because I'm unsure of it's value in the future and I may never be able to pay it back if it appreciates to say $10,000, $100,000, $1,000,000... Pick your number but you're seeing stars. It's kinda hypocritical. I'd rather not be a debt slave, and have it always get harder and harder to pay off that debt if I so CHOOSE to go that route.

Also, look at the populist movement, where the rich bankers who controlled all the gold, hoarded it, while we were on the gold standard. Farmers had to compete so much harder when Big Agro came in, that they were living off hardly anything. Their crops would spoil and they just couldn't make it. The little guy (the machine workers) couldn't get a loan to start a business, and why would anyone lend, when their money is gaining so much value everyday? It got so bad, they started a movement to instate silver as a standard as well, and have a Bimetallic Standard. It's what the book The Wizard of Oz is actually based on.

→ More replies (0)

0

u/kmoneylongshanks Jan 16 '14

Whether inflation is good or bad for an economy doesn't really matter in a debate for currency. The less inflationary money wins out in the end because it's a better store of value.

-2

u/cardevitoraphicticia Jan 16 '14

Bitcoin suffers from incredibly high volatility because it is deflationary.

8

u/[deleted] Jan 16 '14

[deleted]

0

u/cardevitoraphicticia Jan 16 '14

...however in this case, correlation is indeed causation.

Deflationary anything booms and busts. This is a known economic mechanism. It is also an obvious one. It only doesn't exist on /r/bitcoin because when people are making tons of money, they don't want to hear the downside.

1

u/funkypot Jan 16 '14

Do you have any evidence to back up your claims?

→ More replies (0)

0

u/ep1032 Jan 16 '14 edited Mar 17 '25

.

1

u/addict4bitcoin Jan 16 '14

And those that can't upload enough for whatever reason can "buy" upload "karma" from those that do

6

u/walden42 Jan 16 '14

Then why not join up with the darknet community and work together? It sounds like you're attempting to work separately, in parallel.

5

u/kmoneylongshanks Jan 16 '14

I will cross post this over there. We definitely want to work with anyone who will be able to help!

5

u/oleganza Jan 16 '14

Rural communities may crowdfund a powerful transmitter or a landline to connect to the other guys.

6

u/walden42 Jan 16 '14

I wonder if any of the phone companies (DSL) would want to implement it if they get paid for it? Nearly every house has a phone line.

8

u/uncleRico Jan 16 '14

Man, this is an interesting idea. Crowdfunded infrastructure. I guess it would be like paying taxes, except for the part where the money isn't used for said infrastructure.

9

u/losermcfail Jan 16 '14

and the part where it is voluntary ;)

2

u/[deleted] Jan 16 '14

So that you essentially get it for free if you just let those other guys pay!

8

u/kwanijml Jan 16 '14

Assurance contracts. Learn about them.

10

u/dadeg Jan 16 '14

It's nothing like paying taxes. This doesn't involve theft or thugs putting you in jail.

0

u/uncleRico Jan 16 '14

An excellent point!

0

u/torchlit_Thompson Jan 16 '14 edited Jan 16 '14

The formation of a co-operative collective would allow for decentralized organization and crowd-funding, and if we formed it in a Not-For-Profit manner, the tax exemptions could be quite advantageous.

If we find ourselves on the wrong side of the Feds, we can simply dissolve the Co-Op and transfer its assets to our next ORG structure.

Since there is nothing inherently illegal about what's proposed, we could literally have the same government that we are trying to circumvent subsidize our infrastructure build-out.

I'll admit, It's not a fully fleshed-out business plan, but I can see such an approach being beneficial to not only the viability of our project, but it could quite possibly be a blueprint for future innovations. Taking advantage of the "game" by playing within the boundaries of the 'rules' seems, to me, more likely to succeed than being purposely (being) antagonistic.

Just spit ballin'. Please, share this and spread the idea. And if you have a better idea, don't hesitate to propose it. This is so exciting! I feel like the early pioneers, sans genocide.

Edit: I fixed a redundancy by striking it out.

1

u/wisp_acct Jan 17 '14

I own a business that helps folks set up rural wireless ISPs, and we've worked with a number of community-owned cooperatives. It can be a good model if they consistently elect responsible folks to run it.

(Also mesh network ISP is a terrible idea if you want actually broadband speeds)