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Offline profitofthegods

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Hi, I'm trying to write an article about .p2p and I need your help to improve it - please don't hold back, particularly about any inaccuracies but also with any suggestions for improvements or anything I need to add. Be as critical as possible to I can improve it. The idea was for it to be a kind of basic introduction for non-techie people like myself  :)

Explain It Like I'm 5: What's .P2P and Why Do We Need It?

Dot P2P is a new way to create domain names for websites, which offers a range of improvements in privacy, security and cost compared to our current system; but it is also much more than that – it is a 'decentralized autonomous company' (DAC) owned and operated by its users and their chosen representatives, and utilizing state of the art peer to peer technology to completely remove the need for a corporate owner or central controlling authority.

Why the Internet Needs Fixing

Most people think of the internet as something which empowers the masses, opening up opportunities for ordinary people to make their voices heard, to start a business, or to organize themselves in grass roots movements to change the world. This is how we experience the internet in our ordinary lives too – as a multitude of voices, opinions, friends and associates, compared to the monolithic media of the past. This is how we use the internet, but in many cases it stands at odds with the way the internet was built.

The internet was not built as a technological utopia – it was built as a U.S. military experiment for use as a centralized command and control tool. This is reflected in the way that internet users today access their favourite websites. A domain name system is used to associate a convenient human-language address to the actual address of the server running a website, and to connect internet users to the correct web server when they type the address of the website they wish to visit. This system is highly centralized and controlled by a small number of companies, which has undesirable consequences for both website owners and regular website visitors. These include:

Censorship: Using our current system it is easy for governments to censor websites. This is because they can simply contact the central providers of these domain name system (DNS) services and order them to hand over control of that particular website address. This is obviously a huge problem for people living under oppressive dictatorships, but perhaps you think that it is not a problem for those of us lucky enough to live in modern democracies? Think again. The United Kingdom, for example, has embarked on a massive programme of internet censorship under the guise of protecting children from the dangers of pornography1

Privacy: When you register a domain name at the moment you are legally obliged to provide up to date personal and contact details for the website's owner. This in itself is a huge problem for whistleblowers who may want to document their experiences for the public to see and provide context to any documents they are sharing – rather than simply dump a large batch of documents to a site like Wikileaks, which is currently the only safe option. Given the widespread nature of NSA and other government spying it is also a problem for activists and organisers of controversial political campaigns who may feel uncomfortable about having their private lives pored over by government spies, and may be scared of being labelled an 'extremist' as anybody interested in online privacy tools has been2, for example. But even beyond this, current DNS providers generally require people to pay an extra fee if they don't want their details shared publicly with anyone who wants to look them up. So under our current system even partial privacy is considered to be a premium service.

Cyber Squatting: Another significant problem with the current DNS system involves people 'squatting' potentially useful and valuable domain names. These people do not create websites or add anything useful or productive to our internet experience, but are simply vultures seeking to profiteer from buying up thousands of domain names for a few dollars each and then forcing people who may actually be able to do something useful with them to pay a huge price tag to get hold of them. This means that many short, useful and convenient domain names have become unavailable to anyone but rich corporations and often go unused.

Security: Secure certificates – the thing that makes your address bar turn green and tells you that you are definitely using the real website and not a spoof – must also be purchased from a central DNS provider. Security should be standard, but once again under our current system it is considered a premium service – and the not insignificant costs price some people out of the market altogether.

How Does .P2P Fix These Problems?

The .P2P system is decentralized and peer to peer. That means that it is run by a distributed network of users rather than a central authority – this means that there simply is nowhere for governments to go to seize or censor a website. Because the information is stored on many different machines there is no single point of failure and no single authority with the ability to remove a domain name from the system.

Registering and updating a domain just requires your private key – a password of sorts – and can be done by anybody without the need to upload your personal details to a central server.

Owners of domain names can issue their own security certificates using the cryptography of the block chain, reassuring their users that they are safe from scams and hackers without having to pay unfair fees to the large corporations who currently hold a virtual monopoly on internet security.

Domain name squatting is discouraged by two methods. Firstly there is a unique price discovery mechanism through which valuable domain names are sold via auctions in which losing bidders get back their bid amount plus a small profit. This allows the name to find its market price without a small number of people hoarding a large number of domains. Also because .p2p domains must be purchased using the same .p2p tokens which entitle you to a share in the profits generated by this system, including these auctions (see below), there is expected to be more profit to be gained from simply keeping the tokens and taking the profit from people willing to buy domains for a useful purpose that there will be in hoarding domain names in the hope of selling some of them on.

What is a DAC and What Does it Mean for .P2P

A decentralized autonomous company is effectively a business which does not have a single owner or operator, but is instead owned and operated by 'the crowd'.

Anyone wishing to use .P2P services must pay for them using .P2P coins. These coins are a kind of token which also doubles up as a proof of ownership of the company, meaning that anybody who owns them effectively becomes a shareholder in the company. Thanks to Bitshare's 'distributed proof of stake' shareholders have complete control over what happens to the profits generated by the company, and this is done through voting for 'delegates'.  If you own 1% of the coins, your vote counts for 1% of the total vote to choose 100 delegates. These delegates control all of the DACS income from charges levied for its services, and perform two roles – building up the network to expand and improve services, and paying out dividends to regular .P2P owners. These dividends are paid by destroying coins, which tips the balance of supply and demand to make each coin more valuable. You can see how many coins a delegate has chosen to receive and how many will be automatically destroyed before you vote. Anyone can stand to be a delegate.

All of this ensures that .P2P remains democratic – owned an operated by the people and for the people, resistant to censorship and seizure, and with security and privacy built in from the start!

1 https://torrentfreak.com/uk-porn-filter-triggers-widespread-internet-censorship-140702/
2 http://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/item/37516-nsa-tags-tor-users-and-priv

Thanks!
« Last Edit: August 08, 2014, 09:24:18 am by profitofthegods »