Orchid: a new surveillance-free layer on top of the existing Internet

The orchid protocol is an open-source overlay network that runs on top of the Internet. Its fully decentralized, because rather than traffic being routed through central authorities—your ISP or your VPN—it’s instead routed randomly through a network of bandwidth contributors who sign up to share their surplus bandwidth and activate their Internet-connected device as a “node.”

Users that want to access an uncensored Internet (bandwidth consumers) pay the bandwidth contributors in Orchid tokens through a peer-to-peer exchange. Because neither the traffic nor the payments can be monitored by central authorities, both contributors and consumers of bandwidth enjoy a fully anonymous, surveillance-free experience.

Also of note:

Who are the founders?

Stephen Bell: Steve started companies in Europe, the U.S., and China before founding Trilogy VC China, where he spent 10 years backing Chinese seed stage startups.

Brian J. Fox: Brian is an entrepreneur and open-source advocate, the first employee of the Free Software Foundation, and the author of the GNU Bash shell.

Jay Freeman: Jay is a software engineer and the developer of the Cydia software distribution platform used on millions of jailbroken iOS devices.

Gustav Simonsson: Gustav is an engineer and developer who helped launch Ethereum in 2015, working with core protocols, clients, and security auditing.

Dr. Steven Waterhouse: Steven is an experienced investor and entrepreneur, having co-founded RPX Corp, led cryptocurrency projects at Fortress and Pantera Capital, and the Honeycomb product at Sun Microsystems.

[Edit] I _think_ they are trying to create something like Etherium but for decentralized internet.

Re: Orchid: a new surveillance-free layer on top of the existing Internet

#4

Post by qeternity » Sat, Oct 28, 2017, 9:58 PM UTC

They call it a protocol but this is very much a startup/ICO, having raised nearly $5m in seed. Not that there is anything wrong with this, it seems like a very cool project. But it does seem to be very intentionally presenting itself as something that is closer to a not-for-profit a la Tor.

Re: Orchid: a new surveillance-free layer on top of the existing Internet

#5

Post by saurik » Sat, Oct 28, 2017, 10:16 PM UTC

Hello! My name is Jay Freeman (saurik), and I was both deeply involved in the design of Orchid's protocol as well as in charge of the initial implementation of the networking and routing logic, and am happy to try to answer any questions people might have about what we are working on!

(edit:) g_simonsson, who now has an account on Hacker News and has joined this thread, is Gustav Simonsson, another developer working on this project in charge of our smart contracts and payment logic. He was one of the core developers who worked on Ethereum, specifically focussing on blockchain security.

Re: Orchid: a new surveillance-free layer on top of the existing Internet

#6

Post by xwvvvvwx » Sat, Oct 28, 2017, 10:19 PM UTC

This is a funded startup.

How do they intend to make money?

Re: Orchid: a new surveillance-free layer on top of the existing Internet

#7

Post by someguydave » Sat, Oct 28, 2017, 10:23 PM UTC

saurik wrote: post #5

Hello! My name is Jay Freeman (saurik), and I was both deeply involved in the design of Orchid's protocol as well as in charge of the initial implementation of the networking and routing logic, and am happy to try to answer any questions people might have about what we are working on! (edit:) g_simonsson, who now has an account on Hacker News and has joined this thread, is Gustav Simonsson, another developer working…

How do you solve the problem of penetrating NATs and firewalls without relying on a central coordination server?

Re: Orchid: a new surveillance-free layer on top of the existing Internet

#8

Post by woodandsteel » Sat, Oct 28, 2017, 10:25 PM UTC

The FAQ says

"Bandwidth contributors simply install Orchid and activate their Internet connected device as a node - either as a relay or proxy - and then they set permissions like sites they want to blacklist or whitelist, and they earn tokens into their Orchid wallet for sharing their bandwidth."

So hopefully the blacklisting will eliminate the problem of nasty content that plagues anonymous networks like Tor.

Re: Orchid: a new surveillance-free layer on top of the existing Internet

#9

Post by saurik » Sat, Oct 28, 2017, 10:25 PM UTC

qeternity wrote: post #4

They call it a protocol but this is very much a startup/ICO, having raised nearly $5m in seed. Not that there is anything wrong with this, it seems like a very cool project. But it does seem to be very intentionally presenting itself as something that is closer to a not-for-profit a la Tor.

It is maybe worth noting that we had actually looked into whether we could be registered as a non-profit and still raise money by these means to build out our implementation and market it to the world, and that was simply not possible :/. We are, however, all deeply committed to open source, and are working on how to best ensure that this is enforced in the company's charter (such that even if there are any future changes, there will never be any fear).

All of our work is to be released under the AGPL3; and, while we have filed for a patent, we will be licensing the patent to the world in a manner similar to how Mozilla manages their patent portfolio. Brian Fox, who is in charge of making sure we have a successful and inclusive open source project, was the original developer of the bash shell, was for a while the maintainer of GNU emacs, and was the first employee of the Free Software Foundation (as Richard Stallman was a volunteer), and so is keenly aware of how important it is for technology to be available to everyone.

Re: Orchid: a new surveillance-free layer on top of the existing Internet

#10

Post by kirillseva » Sat, Oct 28, 2017, 10:25 PM UTC

xwvvvvwx wrote: post #6

This is a funded startup. How do they intend to make money?

ICO