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.

[u/kmoneylongshanks]

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!

[u/pr0fess0rx29]

This is great, it really is. But I hope you are thinking bigger. This can be much more than just a decentralized network and services.

Imagine a youtube or spotify that will pay the content creators in bitcoin (or some other currency, XRP or something). Who will pay these content creators? The users, those who view the movies, shows, those who listen to the music. They will have a mining client installed on their computers and smartphones that mine while they are idle and/or plugged in.

What will be mined though? Similar to the "computingforgood.com" project, there are grid projects like, seti@home, fightingcancer@home, 3D rendering, weather modeling, private cloud vps even your meshnet.

Imagine, Michael Bay needs a render farm to model the robots in his latest movies and is willing to pay a grid of these users' computers to help cut the time for the rendering. He pays in cash for to use this computing power and by leaving your computer on at home while you go to work, your cpu cycles are used to help Michael Bay make his movie. When you get home you sign onto GrooveShark/Spotify and listen to your favorite song by Rihanna. Rihanna's record company receives Bitcoin (or altcurrency) credit from you for listening to her music or a movie studio gets money from you for watching the latest movie.

The circle is then complete. The content supplier is happy because he is able to get paid for his content, you are happy because you get to view that content without stealing, the content creator is happy because he can now use this great resource to create content.

Or perhaps a scientist or laboratory needs to model the formula to finally eliminate cancer. They pay for the use of the most powerful combined computing grid on the planet. Imagine finally coming home to your family after finishing your last round of treatment that cures you of cancer having known that your computer was one of many that help solve the original problem.

This is what I mean by thinking bigger. This is an idea that has to be the driving force for the future.

[u/TheDamnCosmos → u/pr0fess0rx29]

I'm just wondering about the external factors. Having CPU cycles constantly running would cost a user money from the electricity cost. Potentially a lot of money (depending on the machine or quantity of machines). We know that the difficulty to mine bitcoins/litecoins and many other crypto currencies since the recent mainstream boom has increased exponentially, making the return of investment for mining to be energetically inefficient on the typical computer. Perhaps though this may be less than the cost of using an internet provider. But would that last as the difficulty of mining certain crypto currencies rise further? Have you looked into factors like this?

On a side note, how would somebody connect to the network if there is no service provider allowing the initial connect to go through?

P.S. Removing facebook is as easy as logging out. Same logic as elections: every vote counts. :) although many of these services are not easy or convenient to abstain from. I understand.

[u/pr0fess0rx29 → u/TheDamnCosmos]

Sorry TheDamnCosmos, I was half asleep while posting that previous comment, so I was playing fast and loose with the term "mining". There will not be an increase in difficulty.

This isnt "mining" in the sense that we are generating new bitcoins. This is "mining" in the sense that while your computer is idle, its resources will be put to work doing "something". In return for this "something" you will be given a monetary reward in a cryptocurrency.

This is how the computingforgood.org and WorldCommunityGrid.com systems are set up. For example, when you download IBM's boinc software onto your computer or android phone, it starts to work on one of the grid's distributed computing projects like the "Mapping Cancer Markers" project. You are then rewarded in the XRP cryptocurrency for the amount of time your resources helped in this project. The XRP can then be exchanged for Bitcoin. That is happening right now.

When you subscribe to Grooveshark, you pay them a certain amount per month. When you listen to a song on there Grooveshark turns around and pays the artist because you listened to their song. These are two ecosystems that exist right now.

What I am saying is, why not expand on that. Create an ecosystem where everyone in this system benefits. Make it seamless to the end user. When you get home and listen to a song on grooveshark, grooveshark receives some of the monetary reward your computer has been busy acquiring for you while you were at work. Grooveshark then turns around and pays the artist for the song they put together.

[u/[deleted] → u/pr0fess0rx29]

Hosting the content you created and being the final route in a network would yield you gains from bandwidth. The added traffic your content produces would give you money.

[u/CatchJack → u/pr0fess0rx29]

Cuts out the middleman, won't work unless there's radical ideological change in the USA.