7 ms·

There's a lot of projects that sound exactly like this. What they all have in common is that they all use an Ethereum (ERC20/22) token and all have very large a

by ve55 9y ago

There's a lot of projects that sound exactly like this. What they all have in common is that they all use an Ethereum (ERC20/22) token and all have very large amounts of money flowing into them, from private investors, companies, ICOs, etc. It would be nice to see more projects take routes that projects like tor take, where the founders do not accept millions of dollars of money before they even have a working and complete protocol. Ethereum has some amazing potential and technology behind it but I lost interest in this the second I saw they had already raised $5M and haven't even done their ICO yet. Their FAQ section seems woefully incomplete given this amount of money.

herbst 9y ago
This should be on the top. They did not even put a lot effort in their current presentation but already are millions "in dept". As novel as the idea sounds, i doubt this is it this time but lets hope for the best.
ddevault 9y ago
Check out cjdns for a less stupid, less blockchain BS take on fixing the internet. https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
  - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
    Here's the tl;dr: a practical encrypted mesh network that can work over the traditional internet protocol (IP) or over real-world links and radio antennas.
    - kpcyrd 9y ago
      Since the parent was deleted and I couldn't comment by the time I finished typing, here's the non-tl;dr: The main advantage is non-hierarchical routing. Your ip address is in fact the fingerprint of your public key, which is used to encrypt all traffic. Because of this the address allocation works a lot different and there's no need for a central authority. The lack of a central authority is usually a problem if you ever tried to merge two large internal networks you might have run into the issue that both networks have used 10.0.0.1 for something. This isn't possible in cjdns because you can just generate as many key pairs as you want, which would map to one out of 2^120 possible addresses which are very unlikely to collide. Merging two networks is just a matter of configuring one or more peers and the networks are able to see each other (this is so easy, it might happen by accident). The main difference to other projects is that you don't need to write code to support it. If your application supports unicast ipv6, your application is able to run on top of cjdns.
      - tscs37 9y ago
        That sounds like a good way to get very inefficient routing. Supposed I have keypair A at a friend and keypair B for me, how is cjdns going to find the fastest route between me and my friend?
        eleitl 9y ago
        https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/doc/Whitepaper.md https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/doc/Whitepape...
        tscs37 9y ago
        Tbh, this doesn't look like something that could scale to Tbps Bandwidths... It seems a lot of processing is required to properly route the packet to the next hop and that happens independently of whether the next hop is even remotely an ideal one. Atleast, as far as I can tell from this page.
      - eleitl 9y ago
        There are some issues with cjdns with pure DHT on small footprint devices with poor connectivity. The author is hence currently introducing experimental supernodes, which are stable fat nodes with large memory which can build routes quickly.
    - thinkloop 9y ago
      Two questions about mesh networks: 1. at some point there will be an expensive hop across the ocean, or between cities, that will likely only be built once, then shared. Won't whoever owns that hop have similar centralized control of any non-local traffic, similar to an isp? 2. how meshy should mesh networks be? On one extreme, every computer can be directly connected to every other computer in the world. On the other, every computer can be connected to just one neighbor, and requests are routed through many hops. What is the prevailing wisdom on the optimal amount of peers nodes should have on average in a mesh network?
- th-ai 9y ago
  Is cjdns more of same address-centric hosting? If y, would not NDN content-addressing be the more smarter internet fix? http://youtu.be/opKJsVTcofg#t=164 http://youtu.be/opKJsVTcofg#t=164 Ask the network for what you want. Not say 'who' you wanna talk to, but say 'what' you want.
  - detaro 9y ago
    Smarter for what exactly? content-addressing is great if what you are looking for is pieces of content, it's not if you want to talk to services.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  One question I still haven't found answer to: what's with the name? What does it mean / why is it the way it is? Should it be read as CJ DNS, i.e. something to do with DNS? Or CJD (author's initials) NS (??? again, name server?)? C (?) J (JavaScript/Node) DNS? Related, what the hell it is, actually? You say in other comment that it's a mesh network, they say it's a network, but I see a program to install. How a program is a network? What does it do?
  - roblabla 9y ago
    Tor is a network, and yet you have to install a program to connect to it. You can think of the cjdns program like a driver that allows you to connect to a cjdns network. To answer your question on what it does : cjdns is a routing protocol that intends to replace the current IP protocol. Like the standard IP protocol, it needs a way to communicate with another node to function (the default gateway). From there, you can communicate with the rest of the network. Your packets will go to the default gateway, who will then redirect it to the "closest node" recursively, until it reaches its destination. You can setup cjdns over the current internet (essentially making cjdns an "overlay network" like tor) using UDP, or through an ethernet link.[1] CJDNS indeed works in a mesh : anyone can route other people's traffic, somewhat similarely to tor. The only difference is that you need to manually configure your "Entry Node" (to lift tor terms). See [0] for the reasoning. About the name, the creator is Caleb James DeLisle, so I guess CJDNS stands for Caleb James DeLisle's NameServer ? Doesn't really make much sense but I don't see how bad a thing it is. [0]: https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns#2-find-a-friend https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns#2-find-a-friend [1]: https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/doc/configure.md#connection-interfaces https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/doc/configure...
    - lgierth 9y ago
      Caleb James Delisle's Networking Suite
  - imw 9y ago
    Lead author is CJD. cjdns == cjd network suite
- mrmondo 9y ago
  While the project is interesting, what is up with running it off nodejs!?
  - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
    What? It's written in C.
    - lgierth 9y ago
      The build system is written in nodejs -- it turned out way faster than both CMake and classic Makefiles.
paulsutter 9y ago
The best thing about the project is that the tokens will be valued by use from the beginning and not with an ICO. Could you name the other projects that you think are better? Given the interest in this article I’m sure others would be interested as well.
g_simonsson 9y ago
What's wrong with raising money? Is it more ethical to build systems while living of one's savings? One of the reasons why there's is a lot of Ethereum-based projects currently raising a lot of money is because token-based systems avoid relying on the traditional financial system for payments and value transfers. If your app is using traditional payments it can be shut down by your payment provider. Blockchain-based tokens allow users to be in control of their own funds and not have their payments tracked or tied to their identity. I'd say that's a pretty big win. Moreover ERC20-based tokens allows for engineering of incentives in a way that is far more efficient than company shares. It can accelerate network effects in a way that was simply not possible before blockchain technology.
- CryptoPunk 9y ago
  There's nothing wrong with raising money. One reason open source projects without large corporate sponsors haven't succeeded in attaining mass consumer adoption is that they haven't had effective compensation and incentivization mechanisms. With cryptocurrency/ERC20-based-tokens, now they do.
- fauigerzigerk 9y ago
  Raising money to fund work is not the issue in my view. But raising money from venture capital firms has implications that I find hard to reconcile with the stated goals of this particular project. Venture capital funds many projects in the hope that a tiny share of them will pay for all the others and a profit on top of it. So for this project to meet the expectations of its owners it would have to be extremely lucrative way beyond funding the work put into it. Is that really the right structure to fund a foundational protocol with non-commercial goals that are potentially in conflict with very powerful interests?
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Even worse: VC still expect even the "failed" projects to maximize their return. They don't fund things pro bono, and they will force every project to make decisions that put investor returns before sanity and basic human decency.
zapt02 9y ago
The money raised is a total turnoff. How can this be an independent effort with all that big-name backing?
parkingonthe 9y ago
Projects like bitcoinereum will try to make ICOs more reasonable. You don't preprogram how much the founders get. It's less susceptible to abuse. It's the bitcoin blockchain implemented on ethereum and lets anyone mine by competing with transactions.
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
Since you brought up TOR and money, I would say one advantage this project has is that since payments are sent with packets, that will provide an stronger incentive for transmitters other than just for goodness of humanity.
ejanus 9y ago
I agree with your point . But there is a company out there called Althea-mesh,http://altheamesh.com http://altheamesh.com. They have not raised a dime, however they have proof of concept products. Their next move is building commercial products.
emerged 9y ago
Exactly. I ditched one of these save-the-world projects recently because they did little but talk about fundraising and how to distribute their buttload of tokens to each other.

by ve55 9y ago

herbst 9y ago

This should be on the top. They did not even put a lot effort in their current presentation but already are millions "in dept". As novel as the idea sounds, i doubt this is it this time but lets hope for the best.

ddevault 9y ago

Check out cjdns for a less stupid, less blockchain BS take on fixing the internet. https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
  Here's the tl;dr: a practical encrypted mesh network that can work over the traditional internet protocol (IP) or over real-world links and radio antennas.
  - kpcyrd 9y ago
    Since the parent was deleted and I couldn't comment by the time I finished typing, here's the non-tl;dr: The main advantage is non-hierarchical routing. Your ip address is in fact the fingerprint of your public key, which is used to encrypt all traffic. Because of this the address allocation works a lot different and there's no need for a central authority. The lack of a central authority is usually a problem if you ever tried to merge two large internal networks you might have run into the issue that both networks have used 10.0.0.1 for something. This isn't possible in cjdns because you can just generate as many key pairs as you want, which would map to one out of 2^120 possible addresses which are very unlikely to collide. Merging two networks is just a matter of configuring one or more peers and the networks are able to see each other (this is so easy, it might happen by accident). The main difference to other projects is that you don't need to write code to support it. If your application supports unicast ipv6, your application is able to run on top of cjdns.
    - tscs37 9y ago
      That sounds like a good way to get very inefficient routing. Supposed I have keypair A at a friend and keypair B for me, how is cjdns going to find the fastest route between me and my friend?
      - eleitl 9y ago
        https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/doc/Whitepaper.md https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/doc/Whitepape...
        tscs37 9y ago
        Tbh, this doesn't look like something that could scale to Tbps Bandwidths... It seems a lot of processing is required to properly route the packet to the next hop and that happens independently of whether the next hop is even remotely an ideal one. Atleast, as far as I can tell from this page.
    - eleitl 9y ago
      There are some issues with cjdns with pure DHT on small footprint devices with poor connectivity. The author is hence currently introducing experimental supernodes, which are stable fat nodes with large memory which can build routes quickly.
  - thinkloop 9y ago
    Two questions about mesh networks: 1. at some point there will be an expensive hop across the ocean, or between cities, that will likely only be built once, then shared. Won't whoever owns that hop have similar centralized control of any non-local traffic, similar to an isp? 2. how meshy should mesh networks be? On one extreme, every computer can be directly connected to every other computer in the world. On the other, every computer can be connected to just one neighbor, and requests are routed through many hops. What is the prevailing wisdom on the optimal amount of peers nodes should have on average in a mesh network?
th-ai 9y ago
Is cjdns more of same address-centric hosting? If y, would not NDN content-addressing be the more smarter internet fix? http://youtu.be/opKJsVTcofg#t=164 http://youtu.be/opKJsVTcofg#t=164 Ask the network for what you want. Not say 'who' you wanna talk to, but say 'what' you want.
- detaro 9y ago
  Smarter for what exactly? content-addressing is great if what you are looking for is pieces of content, it's not if you want to talk to services.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
One question I still haven't found answer to: what's with the name? What does it mean / why is it the way it is? Should it be read as CJ DNS, i.e. something to do with DNS? Or CJD (author's initials) NS (??? again, name server?)? C (?) J (JavaScript/Node) DNS? Related, what the hell it is, actually? You say in other comment that it's a mesh network, they say it's a network, but I see a program to install. How a program is a network? What does it do?
- roblabla 9y ago
  Tor is a network, and yet you have to install a program to connect to it. You can think of the cjdns program like a driver that allows you to connect to a cjdns network. To answer your question on what it does : cjdns is a routing protocol that intends to replace the current IP protocol. Like the standard IP protocol, it needs a way to communicate with another node to function (the default gateway). From there, you can communicate with the rest of the network. Your packets will go to the default gateway, who will then redirect it to the "closest node" recursively, until it reaches its destination. You can setup cjdns over the current internet (essentially making cjdns an "overlay network" like tor) using UDP, or through an ethernet link.[1] CJDNS indeed works in a mesh : anyone can route other people's traffic, somewhat similarely to tor. The only difference is that you need to manually configure your "Entry Node" (to lift tor terms). See [0] for the reasoning. About the name, the creator is Caleb James DeLisle, so I guess CJDNS stands for Caleb James DeLisle's NameServer ? Doesn't really make much sense but I don't see how bad a thing it is. [0]: https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns#2-find-a-friend https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns#2-find-a-friend [1]: https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/doc/configure.md#connection-interfaces https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/doc/configure...
  - lgierth 9y ago
    Caleb James Delisle's Networking Suite
- imw 9y ago
  Lead author is CJD. cjdns == cjd network suite
mrmondo 9y ago
While the project is interesting, what is up with running it off nodejs!?
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
  What? It's written in C.
  - lgierth 9y ago
    The build system is written in nodejs -- it turned out way faster than both CMake and classic Makefiles.

paulsutter 9y ago

The best thing about the project is that the tokens will be valued by use from the beginning and not with an ICO. Could you name the other projects that you think are better? Given the interest in this article I’m sure others would be interested as well.

g_simonsson 9y ago

What's wrong with raising money? Is it more ethical to build systems while living of one's savings? One of the reasons why there's is a lot of Ethereum-based projects currently raising a lot of money is because token-based systems avoid relying on the traditional financial system for payments and value transfers. If your app is using traditional payments it can be shut down by your payment provider. Blockchain-based tokens allow users to be in control of their own funds and not have their payments tracked or tied to their identity. I'd say that's a pretty big win. Moreover ERC20-based tokens allows for engineering of incentives in a way that is far more efficient than company shares. It can accelerate network effects in a way that was simply not possible before blockchain technology.

CryptoPunk 9y ago
There's nothing wrong with raising money. One reason open source projects without large corporate sponsors haven't succeeded in attaining mass consumer adoption is that they haven't had effective compensation and incentivization mechanisms. With cryptocurrency/ERC20-based-tokens, now they do.
fauigerzigerk 9y ago
Raising money to fund work is not the issue in my view. But raising money from venture capital firms has implications that I find hard to reconcile with the stated goals of this particular project. Venture capital funds many projects in the hope that a tiny share of them will pay for all the others and a profit on top of it. So for this project to meet the expectations of its owners it would have to be extremely lucrative way beyond funding the work put into it. Is that really the right structure to fund a foundational protocol with non-commercial goals that are potentially in conflict with very powerful interests?
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Even worse: VC still expect even the "failed" projects to maximize their return. They don't fund things pro bono, and they will force every project to make decisions that put investor returns before sanity and basic human decency.

zapt02 9y ago

The money raised is a total turnoff. How can this be an independent effort with all that big-name backing?

parkingonthe 9y ago

Projects like bitcoinereum will try to make ICOs more reasonable. You don't preprogram how much the founders get. It's less susceptible to abuse. It's the bitcoin blockchain implemented on ethereum and lets anyone mine by competing with transactions.

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago

Since you brought up TOR and money, I would say one advantage this project has is that since payments are sent with packets, that will provide an stronger incentive for transmitters other than just for goodness of humanity.

ejanus 9y ago

I agree with your point . But there is a company out there called Althea-mesh,http://altheamesh.com http://altheamesh.com. They have not raised a dime, however they have proof of concept products. Their next move is building commercial products.

emerged 9y ago

Exactly. I ditched one of these save-the-world projects recently because they did little but talk about fundraising and how to distribute their buttload of tokens to each other.