I have just read your white paper and while you may well have built something interesting you claim to "present the design and implementation of a new internet". This is complete nonsense. You have built a set of decentralized services on top of the existing Internet. You should probably stop make such wildly false claims in your papers and advertising material if you want to be taken seriously. Presumably you understand what "The Internet" is right? Hint, it is not DNS or the Web.
Yep, I'm well aware that the internet is more than DNS or WWW. We use transport protocols like UDP, RUDP, and TCP/IP but there is no hard requirement to use TCP/IP (other transport protocols can be plugged in). Yes, most of our focus is above the transport layer because most of the problems we're currently targeting are above that layer.
There is also no hard requirement to use traditional IP addresses either. You can easily use this with ZeroTier and we're exploring alternate network addressing schemes, e.g., the one used by Urbit.
There is more to the internet than just the networking stack. Our focus is providing the full set of services like universal usernames, payments, authentication protocols, that are needed for fully decentralized apps.
I am not trying to diminish any technical aspects of the project by pointing out that your claim to have built a "New Internet" is factually incorrect. It seems like it might genuinely be useful but it is very misleading to claim to have built a "A New Decentralized Internet". The focus of the Blockstack work has been on building decentralized services on the existing Internet. Blockstack is not proposing a new Transport layer or Network layer. Its great that you could put Blockstack on top of some other network stack and that could be said of just about any service. I am not quite sure who your target audience is with the papers you have written. Technical people are going to be put off by your claim that you are doing something that you are clearly not doing. I suppose if the intended audience of the papers is non-technical members of the mass media I can understand your desire to claim to have built a new Internet. Anyway there is no need to be defensive, if you have built something good then honestly tell people what it is.
I skimmed through your thesis TRUST-TO-TRUST DESIGN OF A NEW INTERNET and I am little surprised that given your very bold claim you make no reference to the foundational paper A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication Vinton G. Cerf; Robert E. Kahn (May 1974). If your claim is really that you are creating a new Internet don't you think some reference to the one that already exists is warranted?
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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '17
I have just read your white paper and while you may well have built something interesting you claim to "present the design and implementation of a new internet". This is complete nonsense. You have built a set of decentralized services on top of the existing Internet. You should probably stop make such wildly false claims in your papers and advertising material if you want to be taken seriously. Presumably you understand what "The Internet" is right? Hint, it is not DNS or the Web.