To Beat Online Censorship, We Need Anonymous Payments
(www.coindesk.com)
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I've been saying exactly this for many years, so I'm in full agreement. But I must say the idea of bundling micropayments with traffic is one I hadn't considered.
This is very interesting because it incentivizes network development and traffic handling. At the packet level you get resource contention based on the value the sender is placing, which goes straight into the node-manager's bank.
This bypasses the problem posed by the solutions that big actors like Google and Netflix have taken, where they invest directly into infrastructure and then get to (try to) behave like they own it in perpetuity. It's a sticky problem because they should be compensated well for creating a network where before there was something shitty or nothing at all.
But this solution of inverting the bandwidth problem from being a pure cost to a cost-benefit balance (because of its intrinsic value thanks to bundling value with data) means that there is a natural incentive to service traffic instead of a natural disincentive requiring compulsion to see the traffic through.
I like this concept very much. And I'm surprised also that it never occurred to me. It's a smart, simple, answer to the problem of incentive in a pure resource-drain system like network traffic service.
You just need to be careful that the system you set up doesn't incentivise things like getting end user's PCs to upload masses of data to some random server in Russia so that bad actors can collect the data delivery fees. We don't need newer, even more profitable, reasons for scammers and virus writers to ply their trade.
That's always a risk so expect malware that will do this. If there is a "white list" only payment setting then no site gets money unless you explicitly approve it in your account, as long as that can't be manipulated by third parties as well.
Systems that will time-gate your payments so that it's not per click or per visit while you receive notifications of each site you are sending money to can also help reduce the risk.
Nothing is risk free though.
The 51% problem needs to be solved too. The CCP owns 75% of bitcoin mining. Xi could freeze the ledger at will. That kind of uncertainity will preclude mass adoption.
Mass adoption has been blockchain's problem since it started.
The balance: running a node needs to be worthwhile for individuals and small businesses but not so profitable a large operation has incentive to swoop in and effectively restart the problem.
That is an issue that is difficult to solve because it is hard to turn people away from high value. The fact that 1 node isn't equal to 1 person means that capital and other means can always be leveraged to take over a node-based system. Even if it was 1 node per person, technology isn't equal if it's using something like proof-of-work.
Unfortunately, you'll never get truly anonymous payments (anonymous payer and payee) because the
cartelgovernment will always demand a cut, and therefore demand to know all parties involved to ensure they get it.