Yeah I'd love to see distributed internet and maybe some people here can figure out a model that could align the incentives just right to make it feasible. But you'll be up against some big aggressive players.

I was following the OLPC-project very  closely and liked their solution, unfortunately, because that project did not run a certain operating system and did not need a certain manufacturers expensive cpu, a lot of time and effort went into diversion tactics in the shape of netbooks and forcing said bloated os on a system it was not suited for. The meshnetworking or any other concepts were not integrated into the netbooks and the bloated os helped kill  the project. The diversion was a succes and besides making some ripples in the industry, real disruption had been halted. But who cares, why would anyone want a screen you could use in direct sunlight anyways?

Anyways I'm a big fan of the concept of mesh-networks and I've been trying to think up ways and combinations with cryptocurrencies that would make it feasible. This looked promising but I have not seen an update or sign of life from them for close to a year now. My current line of thought is that there might be a way to get several services to essentially piggy back ride on each other and with their combined utility value be able to foster and sustain a mesh network.

As for blocktimes, I agree with bytemaster that that is not a concern at all. You only need to transmit a valid signed message, the message itself does not to be confirmed several blocks deep. Even with bitcoin that is actually not a requirement. If you can do a quick check if the paying account has the funds and if you can be certain that enough nodes have seen the payment, then why would you need to wait for the transaction to be confirmed several blocks deep?

I didn't say anything about several blocks deep.  I said 10 minutes, which in Bitcoin would be one block (on average).  Why wait for a confirmation before giving away resources to an anonymous buyer?  Simple:  you don't want to be cheated.  This is a big problem with 10 minute block confirmation.  For instance, someone could place a 10 minute phone call through your mesh node, or get 10 minutes of web browsing and then not pay.

Remember also that in a mesh network the node providing the connectivity to the phone/tablet/computer, is paying another node for that bandwidth (and that node is paying another node, etc.).  So it's not like someone came by and used some of your unlimited comcast bandwidth.  You actually lose money because you have to payout to the upstream nodes.

Even with BTSX's 10 second confirmation times and a bond posting scheme it's still a problem.  If you let people start using the internet before their bond is confirmed they can potentially get a few seconds of connectivity without paying for it.  Not a big deal if you only get a few seconds, but if they didn't post the bond then they can just keep doing it over and over to leach free bandwidth.  People could write cheating apps for smartphones that allowed you to send free text messages, synchronize email for free, etc. in 10 second increments without paying.  Ideally to avoid cheating applications like that, you could get the confirmation times down to just a couple of seconds. 

For instance, here is one way to get confirmation times down to a few seconds:  Even if the transaction is not officially confirmed, if you can monitor the network for double spend attempts, and if after a few seconds there are none, then you know that your transaction has propagated to most of the network before a double spend and is thus at low risk of a double spend attack if delegates include the first spend they receive (and there are other things you can do to make the risk lower by tweaking how delegates choose which transaction to include in the case of double spend transactions).  In this scenario, even if you let people connect instantly you would only lose a few seconds of bandwidth.  Furthermore, a few seconds is short enough that you could let their upload data (e.g. http request) through instantly and hold on to their download data until after the seconds had elapsed, and it would still feel pretty seamless. (This would eliminate the incentive to cheat because the user couldn't get any return data from their request until after payment clears, while making the latency involved with paying for the connection appear lower because the return data is all queued up at the last hop and sent through as soon as payment clear.)

Isnt another big problem with incentivizing mesh networks and internet sharing is that users at the end of the mesh chain dont have any BitUSD/crypto to send to the other nodes?

Why is that an issue?  Can't they just buy some?

Identity is easily managed by having a bond posted in the blockchain that is forfeit if the node doesn't make good.  The two parties can then exchange receipts as quickly as they like and then claim it at the end of the day. 

There is a point where it is cheaper to extend a free sample than attempt to collect payment for it.

Hmmm...  I remember that proposal for bitcoin a while back.  Serious impediment if you have to wait 10 minutes for the bond to confirm, but if it's only 10 seconds that is not as big a deal.

But, imagine that you had to wait 10 seconds every time you wanted to make a phone call from a new location... even to connect your laptop to wifi, a 10 second delay would be pretty annoying.

Anyway, I think it's possible to get the delay down to a few seconds, which is just on the edge of a delay that won't seriously turn people off.

Bear with me as I explain an idea I had a few years ago regarding cryptocurrency and mesh networks, and let me know what you think:

As I'm sure most are familiar with here, the "last mile" problem refers to the incredible expense of wiring up a city for the last mile of connectivity.  There are hundreds of times more wire to run (and the expense of running that wire is much greater per mile) to connect each house within a city, than to run connections between cities.  That is a primary reason that there is virtually no competition for high speed internet access.  For instance, at my house, there is exactly one high speed internet company: Comcast.  However, if there were an inexpensive way to get internet to all the houses in the last mile, then the low cost of inter-city connectivity would drive down the cost of high speed internet (and drive up the speed).

Cellular service offers limited competition to broadband providers.  However, cellular technology makes very poor use of spectrum and thus cannot provide nearly the bandwidth necessary to become a real competitor.  To communicate with a single phone, each cell tower broadcasts a powerful signal over a broad swath of space, thus making that spectrum unavailable to communicate with other phones throughout that entire space.  This inefficient use of spectrum places a severe constraint on the amount of data that be transmitted.

Mesh networks can use spectrum much more efficiently because they can broadcast very weak signals over very short distances.  The weaker the signal the smaller the area monopolized by the transmission.  If the signal is only strong enough to reach the neighboring house, virtually no area is monopolized.  This leaves the spectrum available to all the other neighborhoods in the city to use simultaneously.  With efficient use of spectrum, wireless transmission can provide faster connectivity and higher throughput than the best broadband providers currently offer.  A simple illustration:



In the first image, user 1 monopolizes the spectrum for the entire neighborhood.  In the second image user 1 monopolizes the spectrum for only a small area allowing user 2 to simultaneously transmit.

If mesh networking solves the last mile problem, why do broadband providers still have monopoly power in the broadband markets?  Why are prices so high and speeds so slow?  Mesh networks have a critical problem that has yet to be resolved.  Mesh networks depend on wide spread participation to be effective but there is very little incentive to invest in hardware, electricity, setup costs, etc., in order to relay other people's data.  To incentivize people to participate in the network, there needs to be some kind of payment for relaying data.  Existing payment networks do not handle micropayments well.  Bitcoin is better than traditional payment networks but its transaction costs are too high and confirmation times too slow.

To make a mesh network successful, there must be a payment network that can send pennies of value with confirmation times of just a few seconds.  Very small transactions that are quickly confirmed will allow *streams* of payments to be sent in exchange for *streams* of data, reduce the opportunities to free loading and stealing, and eliminate the need for trust between anonymous nodes.  Then each hop in the mesh network can charge according to how much data it is passing and what the cost of the alternative routes are.  This will drive competition to install mesh nodes in busy areas of the network where they are needed most.  If you happen to live in a busy area, you can buy a mesh wifi router, plug it into your wall and collect a stream of income everyday.

BTSX transaction times are too slow and transaction fees are too expensive.  BUT, it may not be that way for long.  BTSX is currently the closest of any payment network to meeting the requirements of such a mesh network.  The actual cost of propagating, confirming and storing transactions is much lower than the current BTSX transaction fee, so the price has room to drop.  And with certain protocol advances (based on knowledge of propagation times of competing double spend transaction, and delegate voting) it may be possible to "confirm" transactions before they are included in a block, thus achieving transaction times of just a few seconds.  With transaction fees less than a penny and confirmation times of only a few seconds, streaming payments are a reality and a mesh network could thrive.

It would revolutionize the communications industry.  It would compete with not just broadband providers but also cellular providers.  It would eliminate the last mile problem and throw open the doors to competition.  It would be a trillion dollar disruption.

Quote from: fussyhands on September 27, 2014, 07:08:57 pm

Quote from: Xeldal on September 27, 2014, 06:53:09 pm

Quote from: fussyhands on September 27, 2014, 05:56:04 pm

Quote from: fluxer555 on September 27, 2014, 05:39:04 pm

BitUSD are not USD. They are a dynamic bundle of BTSX. BitUSDs increase the supply of USD as much as mining BTC does. In other words, they don't. More BitUSD doesn't even directly affect the market cap of BTSX, since all BitUSD are not created "out of thin air" and are collateralized by BTSX. (However, since they are collateralized by 200%, this increases the demand for BTSX, thus having the effect of driving up the price )

I said the EFFECT is to create USD.  I know that it doesn't actually create USD, but it creates something that can serve as USD and thus dilutes the demand for USD.  Supply and demand determine price.  If you create something that can serve interchangeably with USD that increases the supply and dilutes the demand, reducing price.

In order to create 1 bitUSD, which may be used as 1 USD equivalent.  You would first have to tie up 2 USD (equivalent) worth of BTSX to do it.  So your effectively decreasing not increasing the available supply of spendable USD and its equivalents. 

You've taken 2 USD out of circulation to produce 1

Not really.  Lets say you use 2 USD to by 2 USD worth of BTSX and then use those BTSX to short/create 1 BitUSD.  Now there are 3 "USD equivalents" floating around.  The 2 USD that you spent on BTSX (which were not destroyed, but where promptly spent by the person selling their BTSX) and the 1 BitUSD.

By that same logic, just by me giving someone 2 USD for 2 USD worth of BTSX there are now 4 USD equivalents floating around. I'm taking 2 of those equivalents and making 1 by creating 1 bitUSD, so your right there are 3, but there were 4.

I don't think so.  "2 USD worth of BTSX" is clearly NOT the equivalent of "2 USD".  There is very different demand for "2 USD worth of BTSX" compared to "2 USD", largely because of the volatility of BTSX.  However the demand for BitUSD may actually be very similar to the demand for USD.  This would mean that increasing the supply of BitUSD may have a similar effect as increasing the supply of USD, but increasing the supply of BTSX would not have a similar effect as increasing the supply of USD.

Quote from: fluxer555 on September 27, 2014, 05:19:00 pm

If BM and the dev team really don't want account transferring, perhaps they could implement an 'account burn' feature, which allows you to permanently disable an account from sending/receiving/transacting. Any person attempting to send this account funds would get their funds sent back, with the memo that the account burner used in their burn transaction.

On second thought, maybe the memo feature would be too useful to an account hacker, eg "btercom has a new address, please send funds to xxblademasterxx for all future deposits instead."

When you revoke an account it would make everyone else's wallet be super paranoid about that account. That is better than being able to transfer which makes compromises deadly.

In your example, the memo field could be crossed out in red with a tooltip "this account is revoked - do not trust any interactions with this account", and disable transferring at the wallet level.

That's smart.

Although it screws me.  I registered my favorite names on a computer I don't fully trust (basically any internet connected computer).  Now I can never really trust them.  If I could transfer them to my cold storage wallet they would be rehabilitated.

Obviously revocation like you described is necessary for when you know you've compromised.

An alternative to revocation only, would be to allow transfers, but make them official only after a week (or the equivalent number of blocks) passes without revocation from the old key.  That would ensure that people have time to revoke compromised addresses, but also provide the flexibility to upgrade your security.

As an example, I encrypt all my backups, but sometimes encryption schemes are deprecated (e.g. truecrypt, and many others with NSA revelations).  Now all my backups, some of which have traveled over the internet are potential leaks of my wallet.  I know that TODAY I have exclusive control over my wallet (because no one has emptied it), but I don't want to depend on that forever.  So I want to renew and upgrade my security by transfer to a fresh wallet.  With my BTC wallets, I went through a number of increasingly paranoid wallet transfers as the price went up.

It's sad that I'll have to leave my account names behind in order to be responsible about wallet security.

I understand the concerns about squatting, but the fact is that most of the names worth squatting are already taken anyway!  Giving people who want those names the ability to buy them increases their freedom of exchange.  It doesn't protect people from squatters to prevent people from having any way to get the name that they want.  Free market and all that...

Quote from: fussyhands on September 27, 2014, 05:31:23 pm

Sub accounts?  Where do I learn about those?  Can I create those already in the client?

If you own "bar" you can create AND register ie "foo.bar"

Interesting.  And no one else can register foo.whatever?

And I can spend from foo.bar on my hot wallet, even while the keys that secure it the name are only stored on my cold wallet?

How does that work?

Quote from: fussyhands on September 27, 2014, 05:15:39 pm

Quote from: xeroc on September 27, 2014, 05:08:07 pm

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=9333.msg121407#msg121407

He asked a question that could show you that gold is only volatile in terms of $ value .. not in terms of bitGLD value .. he wanted to point you towards the right direction such that you can figure it out your self .. don't take anything tony says personally .. (I made that error too)

Then I pointed out that gold is highly volatile in BUYING POWER, not just in terms of $ value.  That is a fact.  Go look it up if you don't know that already.  His response to that was to imply that I was an idiot, say he was "done with" me, and leave the conversation:

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=9333.msg121447#msg121447

Someone who engages in ad hominem attacks and ends conversations whenever the FACTS don't agree with his ideology is an idiot.

Fussyhands,

The statement: "the buying power of gold is highly volatile" is a subjective statement rather than a "FACT". When you use words like "highly" "extremely" you are making a subjective judgment and these statements must be considered in context.  In the context of the discussion taking place about altcoin cryptocurrencies I think it is fair to say that the buying power you can expect from gold is significantly less volatile and more predictable than the buying power you can expect from most altcoins.  Rather than present the statement as incontrovertible fact, perhaps if you explained more specifically what "highly volatile" means to you there would be opportunity for agreement.

I definitely would have been open to exploring the meaning of "highly" and clarifying that I did not mean in comparison to altcoins, but rather to major currencies.  We were talking about the properties necessary to be a good currency so in context I think its pretty obvious that I'm talking in comparison to healthy currencies.  But I would have been happy to clarify and continue exploring in an open and civil way.

Instead, the response I got was:  "Are you really that...., or you just play one here? Anyway I am done with you also."

That didn't really invite mutual exploration.