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Mercury Protocol: Communication Platform Built on the Ethereum Blockchain

mercuryprotocol.com

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Re: Mercury Protocol: Communication Platform Built on the Ethereum Blockchain

#41

Post by ricardobeat »

brndnmtthws wrote: post #29
indescions_2017 wrote: post #27

Implementation issues around Mecury aside, a "fee-based" Reddit is a worthy experiment. Justin Kan had a similar idea with his Whale App. Get experts to answer serious questions regarding entrepreneurship and be compensated for their time. The market for this exists. I also like the idea of reputation managed via distributed ledger. Hard coding trust is a raison d'etre for smart contracts to exist and although a pers…

Check out Steemit: https://steemit.com/ It's pretty much a "fee-based" Reddit, where people who post content are rewarded for doing so.

Argh. The top post is so full of BS it completely kills any excitement about the platform: https://steemit.com/joy/@teamsteem/on-the-path-to-a-fairer-f...

Re: Mercury Protocol: Communication Platform Built on the Ethereum Blockchain

#42

Post by [deleted] »

atomical wrote: post #40
dmitrygr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But YOU wouldn’t pay to participate in a place where they can do that :)

My scenario is just me thinking out loud. Most people don't participate in online discussions. It's a very small part of the population that logs onto the internet to critique news articles and spread their agenda. I don't participate in that sort of thing at all.

[deleted]

Re: Mercury Protocol: Communication Platform Built on the Ethereum Blockchain

#43

Post by zero-x »

tylersmith wrote: post #37
zero-x wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally, solving that issue is the most challenging thing. A middle ground could be democratized voting where users can vote to keep or remove messages.

That invalidates the need for a blockchain. Censorship resistance isn't for popular content.

Yeah good point.

Re: Mercury Protocol: Communication Platform Built on the Ethereum Blockchain

#44

Post by cwkoss »

zero-x wrote: post #31
jjawssd wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem with uncensorable platforms is the proliferation of illegal content especially illegal images.

Totally, solving that issue is the most challenging thing. A middle ground could be democratized voting where users can vote to keep or remove messages.

Decentralized system where 'retweeting' is rehosting. You traverse trust network n-levels deep and only access the content which has distributed trust to you. Every view is unique that user and their network.

Re: Mercury Protocol: Communication Platform Built on the Ethereum Blockchain

#45

Post by sliken »

atomical wrote: post #21
dmitrygr wrote: post #15

I read the paper. Still not sure how this solves anything besides transferring wealth from the gullible to the authors: * Noted are the transactions-per-second limits, but solution is missing behind some handwaving * Lots of talk of fees for doing things like sending messages and lots of mentions of "premium" offerings. This is not a free messaging app (which means likely nobody will use it and the network effect wil…

I don't know about messaging, but paying per comment would be a really interesting idea. There are a lot of people out there who are very aggressive about posting in tabloid and newspaper comment sections. The comments are usually so argumentative, angry, and spiteful that I have to think that just having the comment itself appear on the page is worth quite a lot to those people.

Well a newspaper is different, few contributors and many readers. Normal chat is either 1 to 1 or a small group of people in a channel/room.

Just like email, I'd happily pay a small amount, say $0.10 to email a person the first time. Especially since even a small fee, negligible to most would be catastrophically expensive to spammers.

Might also create an income stream so that it would be easier to compete with gmail, microsoft, and yahoo.

As spam bots become more common on social and messaging networks I don't see why it couldn't be a similarly effective measure.

Re: Mercury Protocol: Communication Platform Built on the Ethereum Blockchain

#46

Post by knrz »

dmitrygr wrote: post #15

I read the paper. Still not sure how this solves anything besides transferring wealth from the gullible to the authors: * Noted are the transactions-per-second limits, but solution is missing behind some handwaving * Lots of talk of fees for doing things like sending messages and lots of mentions of "premium" offerings. This is not a free messaging app (which means likely nobody will use it and the network effect wil…

I came to understand it as users of the app willing to put a price on their visual attention, giving advertisers the ability to bid on users' attention based on the users' own tolerances, and then it all becoming an ad bidding network.

Except the marketers would pay you money (I guess, the coin) to show you the adds, and not say, a TV network.

I'd probably put a high price to my attention — $5 per second. If I get an ad maybe someone messed up, but I get paid dearly. A lot of people I imagine would be down to get paid some fraction of a cent per view, probably seeing more ads, but also probably making enough revenue for a handful of coffees every month.

Here the blockchain is the distribution network.

Re: Mercury Protocol: Communication Platform Built on the Ethereum Blockchain

#47

Post by sliken »

dmitrygr wrote: post #22
atomical wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about messaging, but paying per comment would be a really interesting idea. There are a lot of people out there who are very aggressive about posting in tabloid and newspaper comment sections. The comments are usually so argumentative, angry, and spiteful that I have to think that just having the comment itself appear on the page is worth quite a lot to those people.

But YOU wouldn’t pay to participate in a place where they can do that :)

If HN wasn't financially viable would people pay $0.10 to post?

Would $0.10 per post decrease participation?

Would $0.10 per post significantly offset the cost of running HN?

Would $0.10 be enough to improve the forums, maybe have it notify you when your comment was replied to?

Re: Mercury Protocol: Communication Platform Built on the Ethereum Blockchain

#48

Post by sliken »

hackerboos wrote: post #10

How is this different than Bitmessage? https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page

Last I checked bitmessage basically formed a ring of all clients, who forward the traffic. That way it's very difficult to do traffic analysis since you can't tell who received the message.

No block chain, just message forwarding and public key crypto.

Re: Mercury Protocol: Communication Platform Built on the Ethereum Blockchain

#49

Post by sliken »

ricardobeat wrote: post #41
brndnmtthws wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out Steemit: https://steemit.com/ It's pretty much a "fee-based" Reddit, where people who post content are rewarded for doing so.

Argh. The top post is so full of BS it completely kills any excitement about the platform: https://steemit.com/joy/@teamsteem/on-the-path-to-a-fairer-f...

Dunno, people getting paid by who valued the content sounds pretty good to me. Sure there's hype/BS in promotional type messages... but don't pay for that one.

I'd certainly put more into my posts if I thought that some modest popularity resulted in a few $100.

Seems like micro-transactions were mostly a non-starter because the credit card companies want high transaction fees. Fortunately these days there are alternatives.

Re: Mercury Protocol: Communication Platform Built on the Ethereum Blockchain

#50

Post by xj9 »

primeblue wrote: post #33

Has Ethereum been fixed since all those DAO hacks?

the problem isn't actually Ethereum, but the tools they provide for writing smart contracts. the exploits are in contracts, not EVM.

that doesn't actually make it better, but it does highlight the problem of using code as an absolute arbiter b/c it can be hard to tell if it describes your intent accurately or not.

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