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

orchidprotocol.com

111–120 of 196 posts

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

#112
> we believe will force anyone trying to block our traffic to end up blocking large areas of the internet--such as every server being hosted on Amazon Web Services--which would cause a serious problem for Chinese business people, deeply affecting commerce, as well as quality of life for the average Chinese citizen.

Not really. China has several replacement solutions for AWS. Ali Cloud, Baidu Cloud, etc.

It would just mean blocking a few more websites hosted on AWS and used by Chinese people, GitHub maybe? Then again, it is easy to build a GitHub clone within China with the decentralized (irony much?) git protocol.

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

#113
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite with the simple one - How is this different from Tor? (IMO this and the 'how do you plan to make money for investors' should be in the FAQ)

There are a number of differences (which one might say would take an entire whitepaper to describe ;P), but as one high-level and in my mind very interesting example, Tor actually is a centralized service where nine directory servers are able to decide the state of the network; we are accepting nothing less than a fully-decentralized system.

I'd really like to see a comparison to TOR. Because honestly, from randomly clicking through the website I don't see why you're better than TOR and why I should use ORCHID.

I cannot (easily) find answers to pretty much every question I have, and sorry, I'm not going to read through a 50 page whitepaper before I decide if it's worth it.

What is it, onion routing? There's some talk of ethereum, so presumably you can get eth for spending traffic? Exit nodes? hidden services? (I'm not going to run an exit node for obvious reasons)

Maybe I'm just tired or stupid but I can't really find anything that isn't marketing blurbs without going through the whitepaper?

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

#114

I understand the plan is to be open source, but can someone help me understand why it's not developed in the open? I mean, you can tell people you're not accepting external input at this stage, but why not let people watch it being developed? I can't think of any reason that doesn't make me think that the goal may be openness/transparency but not the practice. Or did I miss the link to the repo?

There is no code. This is a cash grab. The author politely states they needed review of white paper concepts, so no they are not sure it will even be worth writing. The idealology of decentralization also reforms the patent system, so this project will fall like other over hyped icos, will get normalized on listing. Probably a huge discount for "seed".

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

#116

Why were venture capitalists interested in funding this? What do they get out of it? How and when do you intend to ‘exit’? (Apologies for the skeptical tone, I think this seems like a cool idea.)

Good question, especially since we made it clear to them that we have no business model and no plans to ever have one.

There is a fixed number of Orchid Tokens that are used for payments within the network of relayed traffic (source nodes pay relay and exit nodes).

The only way for anyone to gain financially is for these tokens to appreciate in value, which is tied to the utility of the network.

So there's no exit, rather it's a continuous token incentive for all stakeholders similar to the Ethereum network which was funded by selling the promise of future tokens.

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

#117
post #94

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 co…

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…

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.

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

#118
post #113
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a number of differences (which one might say would take an entire whitepaper to describe ;P), but as one high-level and in my mind very interesting example, Tor actually is a centralized service where nine directory servers are able to decide the state of the network; we are accepting nothing less than a fully-decentralized system.

I'd really like to see a comparison to TOR. Because honestly, from randomly clicking through the website I don't see why you're better than TOR and why I should use ORCHID. I cannot (easily) find answers to pretty much every question I have, and sorry, I'm not going to read through a 50 page whitepaper before I decide if it's worth it. What is it, onion routing? There's some talk of ethereum, so presumably you can ge…

If only there was a document describing the details of the design that you could read

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

#119
post #113
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a number of differences (which one might say would take an entire whitepaper to describe ;P), but as one high-level and in my mind very interesting example, Tor actually is a centralized service where nine directory servers are able to decide the state of the network; we are accepting nothing less than a fully-decentralized system.

I'd really like to see a comparison to TOR. Because honestly, from randomly clicking through the website I don't see why you're better than TOR and why I should use ORCHID. I cannot (easily) find answers to pretty much every question I have, and sorry, I'm not going to read through a 50 page whitepaper before I decide if it's worth it. What is it, onion routing? There's some talk of ethereum, so presumably you can ge…

"I'm not going to read through a 50 page whitepaper before I decide if it's worth it."

It sounds like this project is probably a little too early stage for you then?

Maybe let people play with it for a couple if years and distill it down a bit. If it still exists maybe try again.

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

#120
post #94

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 co…

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