10 ms·

Announcing Blockstream Satellite

85 points by ca98am79 9y ago

Veratyr 9y ago
So looking at their network page (https://blockstream.com/satellite/satellite/ https://blockstream.com/satellite/satellite/), it seems they've "rented" (is that the right word?) chunks of spectrum on existing communications satellites, so they haven't bought their own or anything (which is what I thought they meant). Anyone have any idea how much renting spectrum from a comm satellite costs? Apparently this startup has $55M in funding but if I was an investor I'd be wondering what the hell they're doing right about now.
- tuxxy 9y ago
  Well, their main product is a blackbox you put in your data center and if anyone tampers with it, it detonates thermite inside to prevent access. I wouldn't be surprised if they're trying to pivot to something else...
  - sgt101 9y ago
    Interesting, I would not be keen to use any datacentre which will accept this kind of device! After all - what could go wrong?
    - RustyRussell 9y ago
      Yeah, I work at Blockstream and this is as idiotic as it sounds. We don't do it.
  - nadaviv 9y ago
    I'm pretty sure their main product is sidechains? https://blockstream.com/about/ https://blockstream.com/about/ > Blockstream's primary area of innovation is in sidechains, a technology invented to extend the capabilities of Bitcoin's blockchain. Sidechains create the opportunity for new models of trust, extending and improving upon the properties of Bitcoin.
  - kobeya 9y ago
    What the heck are you talking about?
- repomies691 9y ago
  > Apparently this startup has $55M in funding but if I was an investor I'd be wondering what the hell they're doing right about now. Blockstream is quite a weird company in the bitcoin space. No one seems to have much idea what their business model could be. At the same time they are quite involved with bitcoin core development, which has caused people to make all kind of conspiracy theories etc about them. They probably put a lot from that VC investment to Bitcoin, so they probably have cash to do all kinds of funny things for quite a long time still.
  - nadaviv 9y ago
    No one seems to have much idea what their business model could be. It's not such a mystery, really. One of their investors, Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn co-founder, sits on Blockstream's board of directors) laid it out pretty clearly: > In this instance, the first objective is to increase the public good by strengthening the overall openness and functionality of the Bitcoin ecosystem through “sidechains” technology. Delivering returns to investors is an objective as well – but it’s a secondary objective. ... > And that’s why I’m participating in this first-round financing as an individual investor, and why Blockstream itself will function similarly to the Mozilla Corporation. Here, our first interest is maintaining and enhancing Bitcoin’s strong open ecosystem. And the structure we’ve chosen will give us the freedom and flexibility to prioritize public good over returns to investors. > Over time, I believe this ecosystem-first approach will ultimately create massive economic value – for everyone in the Bitcoin universe, including individual users, businesses of all types, developers, entrepreneurs, and investors. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141117154558-1213-the-future-of-the-bitcoin-ecosystem-and-trustless-trust-why-i-invested-in-blockstream https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141117154558-1213-the-futur... quite involved with bitcoin core development There's a common misconception that Blockstream showed up and started hiring bitcoin developers. That is not the case: Blockstream was founded by developers that contributed to bitcoin for many years before starting a company together.
    - tlrobinson 9y ago
      > And the structure we’ve chosen will give us the freedom and flexibility to prioritize public good over returns to investors And perhaps those investors happen to also have investments in Bitcoin or other companies that depend on the success of Bitcoin.
pmorici 9y ago
This is a PR stunt. Average transaction fees on the bitcoin network are approaching $5. That prices a huge swath of the population out of the network. A direct result of the small block policy so forcefully advocated by blockstream affiliates.
- eyezick 9y ago
  Scalability too. You could even boast a crazier achievement like a full node capable of running on every smart-phone, but the potential is handcuffed as the network can only handle ~7 transactions a second.
  - pmorici 9y ago
    Yup, it's nuts. They have turned it into a ultra luxury car. Any one can view one only a privleged few can afford to drive.
  - nadaviv 9y ago
    Not all transactions has to be on the main chain. Scaling will happen on top and to the sides of bitcoin, using sidechains, extension chains, off-chain payment solutions like Lighting and TumbleBit, and new solutions that we haven't thought of yet.
- icebraining 9y ago
  How much does Western Union charge to send a few hundred dollars to some country with poor Internet connectivity? And how much does it cost to travel to the nearest post? Nobody's paying for a coffee cup with this, but if you can send a chunk of cash and trade for local currency in one (or few) transactions, it might still make sense.
  - candiodari 9y ago
    To spend the money once received ? Zero ...
  - colordrops 9y ago
    What does that have to do with Blockstream's small block agenda? The fees are too high and don't need to be compared to existing shitty solutions.
qume 9y ago
SDR work on things like this generally use quite a lot of processing power. So the cost in power usage I would imagine would be significant in areas which have no internet. I used to do a bunch of digital SDR on my boat but it used too much power so I gave up (was living on solar)
- wmf 9y ago
  It does seem weird that they are using SDR instead of much cheaper DVB-S equipment. There are even cheap Android STBs that you could run a Bitcoin node on.
- wbl 9y ago
  It's a QAM signal on a fixed frequency. Old-school techniques will work just fine.
mrb 9y ago
A blockchain, needing to be received by every user at the same time, is literally the perfect use case for satellite broadcasting. It was just a matter of time that someone was going to do it. Jeff Garzik has (had?) plans to launch micro Bitcoin satellites... And, no, Blockstream didn't launch their satellites, they simply used an existing satellite service provider. I used to work for Smartjog who did the same. In fact I wrote the software (RBC, Reliable Bit Cast) used to send the actual satellite data packets through our provider Intelsat. The way it works is pretty simple. We had a server collocated in Intelsat's "teleport" in Riverside (http://www.intelsat.com/global-network/intelsatone/teleports/ http://www.intelsat.com/global-network/intelsatone/teleports...). I walked into their data center, racked our server, hooked it up (yeah I did IT too, we were a small company back then.) And they tell you to send a stream of UDP/IP packets to one of their TCP endpoints, which ingests data into their satellite infrastructure. On the receiver's end all you need is a standard dish hooked to a DVB card. Can't remember which one we used, but it had a Linux driver that presented a virtual network interface, and Linux received the IP traffic just as if it was a standard Ethernet NIC. I don't know the cost of this Intelsat service, but it can't be that high, maybe $5-20k/month for the lowest bandwidth option. On another side note, more companies broadcasting the blockchain and covering more of the planet (the real time map shows Asia as not covered) will eventually put the "block propagation delay" argument in the tomb, for those arguing against big blocks.
- nosuchthing 9y ago
  I can't imagine any benefits from satellites in blockchains unless everyone has access to broadcast their transactions which would seem to necessitate satellite uplink hardware for any node which I highly doubt will become affordable or common anytime soon and until it does, the nodes running sattalite uplinks would be in a position similar to mining pool operators which can MITM your transactions to manipulate for their malicious benefit. Also latency on satellites is atrocious.
  - mrb 9y ago
    The sat link is downstream only. The benefit is obvious: you can run a full node with the cheapest lowest-bandwidth internet connection, while shifting the majority of your network traffic to the (free) sat link. You use your regular internet connection only for the occasional retransmissions, or transactions you emit, or blocks you mine.
LeoPanthera 9y ago
Is this why Blockstream doesn't want large blocks? Presumably it would cost them more to broadcast larger blocks.
- discombobulate 9y ago
  Maybe a worthwhile trade-off for > decentralisation.
  - LeoPanthera 9y ago
    It's hard to imagine anything more centralized than a satellite broadcasting service owned by a single company.
    - discombobulate 9y ago
      What about if another started up?
RandVal30142 9y ago
Blockstream jumps the shark.
repomies691 9y ago
This is what I would do if I had to invent something fun to do with the VC money, while avoiding actual work.
ris 9y ago
This does make me wonder whether a single party having such a disproportionately large broadcast capacity would make a 51% attack more feasible.
- kobeya 9y ago
  ...no? 51% is about having more hash power.
- kanzure 9y ago
  see "eclipse attack" https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/263.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/263.pdf and https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=bandwidth&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=5%2C44&sciodt=0%2C44&cites=4560703012762650843&scipsc=1 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=bandwidth&btnG=&hl=en&a...
KaiserPro 9y ago
Why sattellite? Its expensive to run and difficult to receive.... LW/HF is simpler and cheaper to run. Its way more simple to design a reciever for as well. Granted RTLSDR dongles will need an upconverter, but compared to installing and running a dish, its trivial.
forcer 9y ago
I don't get it. Is this bidirecrional communication, so users can also send transactions? If not, I don't see it that useful for bitcoin adoption.
- Maakuth 9y ago
  A transaction receiver could be implemented with this technology without any internet connection. Just a satellite dish and dvb card would do. That could be useful for vending machines or similar things.
quickthrower2 9y ago
How can you trust what the satellite is sending is the consensus chain?
- smokeyj 9y ago
  Wait for the next block broadcasted and make sure it references the last block. If you need more assurance you can wait for more confirmations.
  - quickthrower2 9y ago
    It could be a fork though? With normal Bitcoin an attempt to do this would be massacred by the collective hashing power. But if all you have is the satellite link and no internet, you can't get confirmation from other peers.
    - smokeyj 9y ago
      It could be a fork, but forks dont last past two or three blocks. Unless you're the target of a massive double spend its not a big threat. So simply waiting for more blocks is good enough.
      - nicpottier 9y ago
        Forks don't last more than few blocks because the miners won't get paid. But I think GP raises a fair point that if the idea here is that we are broadcasting the current chain to places that have no other connectivity, then you have to trust that broadcast. By definition you don't have access to other peers to check. So if you imagine blockstream as an attacker, they could broadcast their version of the chain which say doesn't include payments they made on the main chain so that they could "double spend" them in places that rely solely on the satellite for truth. Or am I missing something? --- edit: I guess there's no way for blockstream to create blocks at the appropriate difficulty level fast enough, so it would be pretty obvious if they were trying to create their own fork. So I guess this does work..
ploggingdev 9y ago
The post mentions that the satellites can only broadcast the blockchain, so does that mean it's not possible to use it for transactions? How does the company intend to make money off of these satellites? > the value of a digital currency and payment system that is not controlled by governments, banks, or companies, but instead where each user directly owns their money. In theory it sounds good, but the reality seems to be that most users just use an exchange to store their coins with KYC norms. And if bitcoin adoption increases among non-tech users, it's likely that they would just use a hosted wallet. On a related note, can someone comment on my understanding of the block size debate : small blockers (Core devs + Blockstream) want to build the Lightning network, which is currently a white paper and promises low transaction fees + micropayments. The big blockers argue that this introduces centralization and accuse companies like Blockstream of wanting to turn monetize these Lightning hubs and potentially introduce KYC norms. The big blockers want to scale Bitcoin by increasing the blocksize, which is lucrative for the miners (a large portion of mining takes place in China). This solution will work for a while, but it's impossible to reach VISA level transaction rates with big blocks alone. Some points the big blockers make is that it's in line with Satoshi's vision and also maintains the p2p nature of Bitcoin where exchanges and KYC norms play a lesser role. So this seems like a fight for the monetary spoils more than anything else : big blocks mean the miners mint money and small blocks mean side chain technologies become lucrative (which favours Blockstream and the core devs). Whether bitcoin uses small blocks + segwit + side chains or uses big blocks (Bcash), it's hard to maintain the p2p + pseudonymous nature of transactions if it goes mainstream. KYC norms seem inevitable, whether at exchanges, hosted wallets, or to make a legal purchase using bitcoins. So to me, what people really seem to want is an anonymous (crypto)currency that can be used to make purchases over the internet without any KYC norms. That used to be the primary use case for Bitcoin and probably still is. So, long term, what's the point of Bitcoin/Bcash if it's not truly p2p, where coins are held in hosted wallets and where KYC norms are necessary. I just don't see how Bitcoin can replace or even complement the traditional currencies. Would love to hear comments on this rant. (I am not on any side of the size debate, just a curious bystander)
- nicpottier 9y ago
  That seems like a pretty good summary according to the understanding I have and I've been following things fairly closely. Couple additions: - there are a few lightning implementations already out there (see https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd), three I believe, and they have worked on being interoperable. Getting segwit activated was a big blocking (hah!) point towards being able to actually use those, and that happens soon so we may start seeing some more activity in that space very soon now. - I don't think lightning necessarily means KYC, at least no more so than any other bitcoin->bitcoin transaction. It is basically all the same thing as current bitcoin transaction except things are kept off chain until someone wants to settle (or the channel approaches its timeout). This took me a long time and many videos to grok but it is pretty clever and has me excited about Bitcoin scaling to everyday use again. But ya, though the specter of regulation is always looming there isn't anything in lightning that necessarily makes that worse. The whole big block / small block thing is absolutely nuts in the amount of trolling that takes place, so totally expect some crazy replies to this.. troll on brothers!
ianmiers 9y ago
In terms of making finance available to the impoverished, this does nothing. It's just marketing. 0) Biggest barrier is probably TX fees which range from cents to $5 per transaction. (see argument down thread for arguments over how much). 1) you still need a network connection to send payments. 2) Given that connection, you can query for proofs a TX was included in a block fairly cheaply. Anyone interested in an actual payment system for developing world that works without networking should look at DigiTally [0]which has seen some real world usage, works with sim cards and feature phones, and does not require a network connection The satellite does lower the bandwidth costs of operating a node, since block distribution is literally a broadcast network. Its cool. But beyond the marketing angle, I am lost as to why Blockstream chose to do this now. [0] https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~kabhb2/papers/DigiTally_SOUPS2017.pdf https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~kabhb2/papers/DigiTally_SOUPS2017.... …
- sktrdie 9y ago
  Honestly it's a step towards making off-chain payments work (Lightning Network) in these remote places. You can imagine a hub per small town acting sort of as a "bank" which is listening to the blockchain. You make payments with your local peers through some mesh-network, and once a week (or whenever the channels with the hub are open) they go to close the channels out at the hub. I'm more worried about how these people will acquire their first Bitcoins.
  - ianmiers 9y ago
    It doesn't seem like a necessary step really. The hub still needs a network connection to open channels. With that connection it can run some kind of SPV like client. The bandwidth costs of that approach are larger, but still minimal. I suppose the one thing it does is make it easier for the hub to monitor for channel closure? But you could contract a third party service that messages you when that happens. Granted, that's a less verifiable trust assumption in a third party than they are broadcasting every block they get.
arcaster 9y ago
This seems like a cavalier marketing stunt from BTC maximalists. It's cool, but really just a glorified form of APRS being broadcast over digipeaters, except the digipeaters being used are in orbit.

85 points by ca98am79 9y ago

So looking at their network page (https://blockstream.com/satellite/satellite/ https://blockstream.com/satellite/satellite/), it seems they've "rented" (is that the right word?) chunks of spectrum on existing communications satellites, so they haven't bought their own or anything (which is what I thought they meant). Anyone have any idea how much renting spectrum from a comm satellite costs? Apparently this startup has $55M in funding but if I was an investor I'd be wondering what the hell they're doing right about now.

tuxxy 9y ago
Well, their main product is a blackbox you put in your data center and if anyone tampers with it, it detonates thermite inside to prevent access. I wouldn't be surprised if they're trying to pivot to something else...
- sgt101 9y ago
  Interesting, I would not be keen to use any datacentre which will accept this kind of device! After all - what could go wrong?
  - RustyRussell 9y ago
    Yeah, I work at Blockstream and this is as idiotic as it sounds. We don't do it.
- nadaviv 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure their main product is sidechains? https://blockstream.com/about/ https://blockstream.com/about/ > Blockstream's primary area of innovation is in sidechains, a technology invented to extend the capabilities of Bitcoin's blockchain. Sidechains create the opportunity for new models of trust, extending and improving upon the properties of Bitcoin.
- kobeya 9y ago
  What the heck are you talking about?
repomies691 9y ago
> Apparently this startup has $55M in funding but if I was an investor I'd be wondering what the hell they're doing right about now. Blockstream is quite a weird company in the bitcoin space. No one seems to have much idea what their business model could be. At the same time they are quite involved with bitcoin core development, which has caused people to make all kind of conspiracy theories etc about them. They probably put a lot from that VC investment to Bitcoin, so they probably have cash to do all kinds of funny things for quite a long time still.
- nadaviv 9y ago
  No one seems to have much idea what their business model could be. It's not such a mystery, really. One of their investors, Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn co-founder, sits on Blockstream's board of directors) laid it out pretty clearly: > In this instance, the first objective is to increase the public good by strengthening the overall openness and functionality of the Bitcoin ecosystem through “sidechains” technology. Delivering returns to investors is an objective as well – but it’s a secondary objective. ... > And that’s why I’m participating in this first-round financing as an individual investor, and why Blockstream itself will function similarly to the Mozilla Corporation. Here, our first interest is maintaining and enhancing Bitcoin’s strong open ecosystem. And the structure we’ve chosen will give us the freedom and flexibility to prioritize public good over returns to investors. > Over time, I believe this ecosystem-first approach will ultimately create massive economic value – for everyone in the Bitcoin universe, including individual users, businesses of all types, developers, entrepreneurs, and investors. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141117154558-1213-the-future-of-the-bitcoin-ecosystem-and-trustless-trust-why-i-invested-in-blockstream https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141117154558-1213-the-futur... quite involved with bitcoin core development There's a common misconception that Blockstream showed up and started hiring bitcoin developers. That is not the case: Blockstream was founded by developers that contributed to bitcoin for many years before starting a company together.
  - tlrobinson 9y ago
    > And the structure we’ve chosen will give us the freedom and flexibility to prioritize public good over returns to investors And perhaps those investors happen to also have investments in Bitcoin or other companies that depend on the success of Bitcoin.

pmorici 9y ago

This is a PR stunt. Average transaction fees on the bitcoin network are approaching $5. That prices a huge swath of the population out of the network. A direct result of the small block policy so forcefully advocated by blockstream affiliates.

eyezick 9y ago
Scalability too. You could even boast a crazier achievement like a full node capable of running on every smart-phone, but the potential is handcuffed as the network can only handle ~7 transactions a second.
- pmorici 9y ago
  Yup, it's nuts. They have turned it into a ultra luxury car. Any one can view one only a privleged few can afford to drive.
- nadaviv 9y ago
  Not all transactions has to be on the main chain. Scaling will happen on top and to the sides of bitcoin, using sidechains, extension chains, off-chain payment solutions like Lighting and TumbleBit, and new solutions that we haven't thought of yet.
icebraining 9y ago
How much does Western Union charge to send a few hundred dollars to some country with poor Internet connectivity? And how much does it cost to travel to the nearest post? Nobody's paying for a coffee cup with this, but if you can send a chunk of cash and trade for local currency in one (or few) transactions, it might still make sense.
- candiodari 9y ago
  To spend the money once received ? Zero ...
- colordrops 9y ago
  What does that have to do with Blockstream's small block agenda? The fees are too high and don't need to be compared to existing shitty solutions.

qume 9y ago

SDR work on things like this generally use quite a lot of processing power. So the cost in power usage I would imagine would be significant in areas which have no internet. I used to do a bunch of digital SDR on my boat but it used too much power so I gave up (was living on solar)

wmf 9y ago
It does seem weird that they are using SDR instead of much cheaper DVB-S equipment. There are even cheap Android STBs that you could run a Bitcoin node on.
wbl 9y ago
It's a QAM signal on a fixed frequency. Old-school techniques will work just fine.

mrb 9y ago

A blockchain, needing to be received by every user at the same time, is literally the perfect use case for satellite broadcasting. It was just a matter of time that someone was going to do it. Jeff Garzik has (had?) plans to launch micro Bitcoin satellites... And, no, Blockstream didn't launch their satellites, they simply used an existing satellite service provider. I used to work for Smartjog who did the same. In fact I wrote the software (RBC, Reliable Bit Cast) used to send the actual satellite data packets through our provider Intelsat. The way it works is pretty simple. We had a server collocated in Intelsat's "teleport" in Riverside (http://www.intelsat.com/global-network/intelsatone/teleports/ http://www.intelsat.com/global-network/intelsatone/teleports...). I walked into their data center, racked our server, hooked it up (yeah I did IT too, we were a small company back then.) And they tell you to send a stream of UDP/IP packets to one of their TCP endpoints, which ingests data into their satellite infrastructure. On the receiver's end all you need is a standard dish hooked to a DVB card. Can't remember which one we used, but it had a Linux driver that presented a virtual network interface, and Linux received the IP traffic just as if it was a standard Ethernet NIC. I don't know the cost of this Intelsat service, but it can't be that high, maybe $5-20k/month for the lowest bandwidth option. On another side note, more companies broadcasting the blockchain and covering more of the planet (the real time map shows Asia as not covered) will eventually put the "block propagation delay" argument in the tomb, for those arguing against big blocks.

nosuchthing 9y ago
I can't imagine any benefits from satellites in blockchains unless everyone has access to broadcast their transactions which would seem to necessitate satellite uplink hardware for any node which I highly doubt will become affordable or common anytime soon and until it does, the nodes running sattalite uplinks would be in a position similar to mining pool operators which can MITM your transactions to manipulate for their malicious benefit. Also latency on satellites is atrocious.
- mrb 9y ago
  The sat link is downstream only. The benefit is obvious: you can run a full node with the cheapest lowest-bandwidth internet connection, while shifting the majority of your network traffic to the (free) sat link. You use your regular internet connection only for the occasional retransmissions, or transactions you emit, or blocks you mine.

LeoPanthera 9y ago

Is this why Blockstream doesn't want large blocks? Presumably it would cost them more to broadcast larger blocks.

discombobulate 9y ago
Maybe a worthwhile trade-off for > decentralisation.
- LeoPanthera 9y ago
  It's hard to imagine anything more centralized than a satellite broadcasting service owned by a single company.
  - discombobulate 9y ago
    What about if another started up?

RandVal30142 9y ago

Blockstream jumps the shark.

repomies691 9y ago

This is what I would do if I had to invent something fun to do with the VC money, while avoiding actual work.

ris 9y ago

This does make me wonder whether a single party having such a disproportionately large broadcast capacity would make a 51% attack more feasible.

kobeya 9y ago
...no? 51% is about having more hash power.
kanzure 9y ago
see "eclipse attack" https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/263.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/263.pdf and https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=bandwidth&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=5%2C44&sciodt=0%2C44&cites=4560703012762650843&scipsc=1 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=bandwidth&btnG=&hl=en&a...

KaiserPro 9y ago

Why sattellite? Its expensive to run and difficult to receive.... LW/HF is simpler and cheaper to run. Its way more simple to design a reciever for as well. Granted RTLSDR dongles will need an upconverter, but compared to installing and running a dish, its trivial.

forcer 9y ago

I don't get it. Is this bidirecrional communication, so users can also send transactions? If not, I don't see it that useful for bitcoin adoption.

Maakuth 9y ago
A transaction receiver could be implemented with this technology without any internet connection. Just a satellite dish and dvb card would do. That could be useful for vending machines or similar things.

quickthrower2 9y ago

How can you trust what the satellite is sending is the consensus chain?

smokeyj 9y ago
Wait for the next block broadcasted and make sure it references the last block. If you need more assurance you can wait for more confirmations.
- quickthrower2 9y ago
  It could be a fork though? With normal Bitcoin an attempt to do this would be massacred by the collective hashing power. But if all you have is the satellite link and no internet, you can't get confirmation from other peers.
  - smokeyj 9y ago
    It could be a fork, but forks dont last past two or three blocks. Unless you're the target of a massive double spend its not a big threat. So simply waiting for more blocks is good enough.
    - nicpottier 9y ago
      Forks don't last more than few blocks because the miners won't get paid. But I think GP raises a fair point that if the idea here is that we are broadcasting the current chain to places that have no other connectivity, then you have to trust that broadcast. By definition you don't have access to other peers to check. So if you imagine blockstream as an attacker, they could broadcast their version of the chain which say doesn't include payments they made on the main chain so that they could "double spend" them in places that rely solely on the satellite for truth. Or am I missing something? --- edit: I guess there's no way for blockstream to create blocks at the appropriate difficulty level fast enough, so it would be pretty obvious if they were trying to create their own fork. So I guess this does work..

ploggingdev 9y ago

The post mentions that the satellites can only broadcast the blockchain, so does that mean it's not possible to use it for transactions? How does the company intend to make money off of these satellites? > the value of a digital currency and payment system that is not controlled by governments, banks, or companies, but instead where each user directly owns their money. In theory it sounds good, but the reality seems to be that most users just use an exchange to store their coins with KYC norms. And if bitcoin adoption increases among non-tech users, it's likely that they would just use a hosted wallet. On a related note, can someone comment on my understanding of the block size debate : small blockers (Core devs + Blockstream) want to build the Lightning network, which is currently a white paper and promises low transaction fees + micropayments. The big blockers argue that this introduces centralization and accuse companies like Blockstream of wanting to turn monetize these Lightning hubs and potentially introduce KYC norms. The big blockers want to scale Bitcoin by increasing the blocksize, which is lucrative for the miners (a large portion of mining takes place in China). This solution will work for a while, but it's impossible to reach VISA level transaction rates with big blocks alone. Some points the big blockers make is that it's in line with Satoshi's vision and also maintains the p2p nature of Bitcoin where exchanges and KYC norms play a lesser role. So this seems like a fight for the monetary spoils more than anything else : big blocks mean the miners mint money and small blocks mean side chain technologies become lucrative (which favours Blockstream and the core devs). Whether bitcoin uses small blocks + segwit + side chains or uses big blocks (Bcash), it's hard to maintain the p2p + pseudonymous nature of transactions if it goes mainstream. KYC norms seem inevitable, whether at exchanges, hosted wallets, or to make a legal purchase using bitcoins. So to me, what people really seem to want is an anonymous (crypto)currency that can be used to make purchases over the internet without any KYC norms. That used to be the primary use case for Bitcoin and probably still is. So, long term, what's the point of Bitcoin/Bcash if it's not truly p2p, where coins are held in hosted wallets and where KYC norms are necessary. I just don't see how Bitcoin can replace or even complement the traditional currencies. Would love to hear comments on this rant. (I am not on any side of the size debate, just a curious bystander)

nicpottier 9y ago
That seems like a pretty good summary according to the understanding I have and I've been following things fairly closely. Couple additions: - there are a few lightning implementations already out there (see https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd), three I believe, and they have worked on being interoperable. Getting segwit activated was a big blocking (hah!) point towards being able to actually use those, and that happens soon so we may start seeing some more activity in that space very soon now. - I don't think lightning necessarily means KYC, at least no more so than any other bitcoin->bitcoin transaction. It is basically all the same thing as current bitcoin transaction except things are kept off chain until someone wants to settle (or the channel approaches its timeout). This took me a long time and many videos to grok but it is pretty clever and has me excited about Bitcoin scaling to everyday use again. But ya, though the specter of regulation is always looming there isn't anything in lightning that necessarily makes that worse. The whole big block / small block thing is absolutely nuts in the amount of trolling that takes place, so totally expect some crazy replies to this.. troll on brothers!

ianmiers 9y ago

In terms of making finance available to the impoverished, this does nothing. It's just marketing. 0) Biggest barrier is probably TX fees which range from cents to $5 per transaction. (see argument down thread for arguments over how much). 1) you still need a network connection to send payments. 2) Given that connection, you can query for proofs a TX was included in a block fairly cheaply. Anyone interested in an actual payment system for developing world that works without networking should look at DigiTally [0]which has seen some real world usage, works with sim cards and feature phones, and does not require a network connection The satellite does lower the bandwidth costs of operating a node, since block distribution is literally a broadcast network. Its cool. But beyond the marketing angle, I am lost as to why Blockstream chose to do this now. [0] https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~kabhb2/papers/DigiTally_SOUPS2017.pdf https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~kabhb2/papers/DigiTally_SOUPS2017.... …

sktrdie 9y ago
Honestly it's a step towards making off-chain payments work (Lightning Network) in these remote places. You can imagine a hub per small town acting sort of as a "bank" which is listening to the blockchain. You make payments with your local peers through some mesh-network, and once a week (or whenever the channels with the hub are open) they go to close the channels out at the hub. I'm more worried about how these people will acquire their first Bitcoins.
- ianmiers 9y ago
  It doesn't seem like a necessary step really. The hub still needs a network connection to open channels. With that connection it can run some kind of SPV like client. The bandwidth costs of that approach are larger, but still minimal. I suppose the one thing it does is make it easier for the hub to monitor for channel closure? But you could contract a third party service that messages you when that happens. Granted, that's a less verifiable trust assumption in a third party than they are broadcasting every block they get.

arcaster 9y ago

This seems like a cavalier marketing stunt from BTC maximalists. It's cool, but really just a glorified form of APRS being broadcast over digipeaters, except the digipeaters being used are in orbit.