Bitcoin, the peer-to-peer cryptocurrency is
taking the conventional financial system by storm. The Bitcoin boom
has inspired developers to explore additional applications of the
same fundamental protocols. Ambitious Bitcloud developers are
asking, why not the use the same tools to decentralize the
Internet?
BBC News
quotes the project’s anonymous founders issuing this call to
arms:
If you’re interested in privacy, security, ending internet
censorship, decentralising the internet and creating a new mesh
network to replace the internet, then you should join or support
this project.
The advantages of a Bitcloud network are many. Bitcloud’s
decentralized structure would allow users to sidestep National
Security Agency (NSA) snoops. While natural disasters and wars
threaten a centralized structure, a decentralized structure would
mean the Internet is more likely to remain intact.
How does it work? Under the current system, consumers are
dependent on concentrated Internet Service Providers, businesses
like Comcast and AT&T, that offer Internet access. Just as
Bitcoin removes financial intermediaries from the system, Bitcloud
hopes to displace intermediary ISPs. While ISPs are at risk of
interference, a decentralized system is irrepressible. Shutting
down a decentralized internet would require targeting and
destroying each individual node.
Bitcoin requires miners who contribute computing power to
process transactions. Similarly, Bitcloud rewards users for
contributing bandwidth. Basically, ISPs would be replaced by
individuals whose computers “would perform tasks such as storing,
routing and providing bandwidth, in return for payment.”
Some tech intellectuals have called for a decentralized Internet
structure, or mesh networks, in the past. Primavera De
Filippi, a Harvard research fellow of distributed online
architectures,
argues that beyond the “obvious benefits” like
NSA-resistance and enhanced reliability, it provides some
interesting cultural benefits. “What’s really revolutionary about
mesh networking isn’t the novel use of technology. It’s the fact
that it provides a means for people to self-organize
into communities and share resources amongst themselves: Mesh
networks are operated by the community, for the community.
Especially because the internet has become essential to our
everyday life” she wrote in Wired.
According to BBC News,
Bitcloud developers hope Bitcloud will ultimately supplant the
Internet. De Filippi, on the other hand, thinks mesh-networks would
make a good supplementary tool.
But either way, BitCloud is a revolutionary project with global
reach. It would provide users with more reliable Internet, handicap
government surveillance, and maybe even save
lives.
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