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

orchidprotocol.com

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

#151

Post by tlrobinson »

saurik wrote: post #142
tlrobinson wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the reasons she might use it are: * you install it on her computer * it has a simple user interface * it has a non-technical sounding name Is that correct? What if you reinterpret "my mother" to be "average internet user, in a country with average internet freedoms, who doesn't read HN etc"?

You could make that same argument about VPNs in general, which happens to be a 25-30 billion dollar industry. While I may or may not have reasons why a random "average" person might use this service, I find the question confusing... is the product not capable of being a success if people exist who don't want to use the service? This kind of question always comes up for just about every service ever developed, and as…

If the answer is "the same reasons someone might use a VPN or Tor" that's fair enough, and a much better answer than "you install it on her computer".

(Though there are a variety of use-cases for VPNs and I doubt Orchid addresses most of that $25-30B market)

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

#152

Post by TeMPOraL »

ddevault wrote: post #104
ve55 wrote: 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…

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

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?

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

#153

Post by fauigerzigerk »

g_simonsson wrote: post #109
ve55 wrote: 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…

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?

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

#154

Post by TeMPOraL »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #153
g_simonsson wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 lucr…

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.

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

#155

Post by TeMPOraL »

saurik wrote: post #129
paradite wrote: post #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…

We believe, as do many people as far as I have seen, that if a country like China could block the entire world of Internet, they would. Regardless: I consider it my mission to make them have to seriously consider doing just that, and if I read a news report saying "in a shocking turn of events, China has decided to cut off all access to the Western Internet in an attempt to shut down Orchid", I will consider myself t…

> We believe, as do many people as far as I have seen, that if a country like China could block the entire world of Internet, they would.

I don't feel this is a correct belief. China is a secular nation state, not a religious cult. They don't block parts of internet out of ideology, but for political and economical reasons. Cutting off the Internet, even if within realm of possibility for them, doesn't make economical or political sense.

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

#156

Post by fauigerzigerk »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #154
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lucr…

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.

Yes. But I think what we don't know is what the agreements really look like in this case. I don't know what a SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens) is. So maybe this investment is structured differently than regular venture capital deals.

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

#157

Post by noddy1 »

The liquidity offered by the token model means that early VC/hedgefund backers often get heavily discounted tokens in the presale, and can then turn round a month or two later and dump a portion of their tokens on public investors for a sweet profit or to mitigate their own risk.

Polychain did this with 0x project: https://www.reddit.com/r/0xProject/comments/6w3zv0/0x_being_...

The effect was attenuated in this case by the success of the project, however in lower performing ICO's like Kik's Kin, where the market price is 50% of public sale price or less, big early investors dunking on public token sale participants feels pretty wrong.

In addition to this, VCs are also often playing a role in promoting public sales shortly after their own pre-sale investments, without disclosing their own discount or terms of obtaining tokens. Its kinda like telling people to buy a bunch of stock at $10 when you bought all yours last week for $5 and you're keen to dump a portion of them for $15.

https://medium.com/@rzurrer/raiden-fundamental-infrastrucutr...

It may be legal, you may think it's their right, and to be fair there is risk involved in being an early backer in a potentially failed project, however it is something to think about.

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

#158

Post by roblabla »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #152
ddevault wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 progr…

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 [1]: https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/doc/configure...

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

#159

Post by lgierth »

roblabla wrote: post #158
TeMPOraL wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 progr…

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 c…

Caleb James Delisle's Networking Suite

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

#160

Post by imw »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #152
ddevault wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 progr…

Lead author is CJD. cjdns == cjd network suite
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