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If bitcoin is to be the global currency, it needs more channels to propagate than just public internet. Public Internet is too censorship receptive for system like Bitcoin. Broadcasting the block and tx data to the world via satellite gets us one step closer. Great work Blockstream!
In places where there’s no phones or Internet you have to trade face to face.
In most places where Internet is censored you’re not allowed to arbitrarily set up your own comms either.
Last but not least, you need to have electricity and a computer. And some sort of Internet access to download and update your OS and app software.
If bitcoin is to be the global currency, it needs more channels to propagate than just public internet. Public Internet is too censorship receptive for system like Bitcoin. Broadcasting the block and tx data to the world via satellite gets us one step closer. Great work Blockstream!
Quote from Jeff Garzik about the Blockstream satellite: > It’s cheap to write a check to another satellite provider to do a broadcast for you. It’s a centralized data service, with a centralized [satellite] provider, and carries plenty of shutdown and censorship risk. > It’s also a great way to centralize everybody on Blockstream’s version of the blockchain, as it appears that Blockstream are the only ones transmitti…
Garzik has something of a conflict of interest encouraging fudding this effort. After I originally proposed back in 2011/2012 doing a broadcast like the eventual blockstream effort, Garzik ran with it and raised money from the public ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=334701.0 ) to do Bitcoin satellite broadcast. He creeped the scope to the point of proposing to launch a "cubesat" (why? Unclear, it would be a lot less useful due to their short life and the inability to use fixed antennas) and as a result ultimately failed to deliver anything at all.
Blockstream built something more practical and useful than a swarm of cubesats, and instead of just raising money and putting out hype then failing they put out a running system. In fact, Blockstream's system was up and running on the day the very first public announcement was made. I urged Garzik to do something like Blockstream's system as a MVP before sinking a fortune into trying to actually launch satellites...
And yes, absolutely anyone else can setup a similar system (though it isn't anywhere as simple as 'cut a check' unless you want to pay through the nose and don't want to support reception with $100 of deniable commodity hardware)... that isn't a minus, it's a plus and a direct counterpoint to your 'centralized chokepoint' claim if the fact that the next alternative to using the sat is the centralized chokepoint of your ISP wasn't enough.
This blockchain broadcast specific talk ignores the really cool "API" which they announced today: receiving a sat broadcast with commodity hardware is likely the most strongly anonymous communication method available... and this is something they've made available to everyone, paid for with Bitcoin micropayments.
The broadcast is global, the ability to recieve the broadscasts is... uh.... an implementation detail left to the user! (NB: involves satellite dishes)
Buy data transmission for an obscure currency, use obscure lightning software to use the obscure currency to pay a company to transmit data to something you need to buy dedicated hardware for. Hapless optimism aside it’s hard to see what benign purpose this could possibly be used for. It’s sort of strange to bother with anything custom. Bitcoin signatures have a free, encrypted data channel within ECDSA signatures. Y…
If bitcoin is to be the global currency, it needs more channels to propagate than just public internet. Public Internet is too censorship receptive for system like Bitcoin. Broadcasting the block and tx data to the world via satellite gets us one step closer. Great work Blockstream!
Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum (and probably other coins) all work over SMS. They are actually substrate-agnostic. You can technically deliver your transaction to a node with a pigeon, as long as the node accepts pigeons.
Quote from Jeff Garzik about the Blockstream satellite: > It’s cheap to write a check to another satellite provider to do a broadcast for you. It’s a centralized data service, with a centralized [satellite] provider, and carries plenty of shutdown and censorship risk. > It’s also a great way to centralize everybody on Blockstream’s version of the blockchain, as it appears that Blockstream are the only ones transmitti…
As I remember it he went to far as to solicit donations for the project. There was a lot of articles written about it at the time (Bitcoin! In space!) but nothing ever came of it.
I wonder why they're using SDR instead of a standard like DVB-S2.
We tried to keep the equipment cost down, to support emerging market. Reusing existing 45cm/60cm TV satellite dishes is part of it. The usb SDRs cost $10-15 on ebay.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not actually related to blockchains, is it? Aside from accepting cryptocurrency for their fees, anyway.
They also broadcast the Bitcoin blockchain over satellite which makes some sense since the blockchain is public and all full nodes need copies of it. In theory this could reduce the cost of running a full node in places where bandwidth is very expensive. Of course in practice this a zeroth world problem.