Proof of area, an idea that uses geological IP as consensus mechanism

[nyoa]

First things first. This is only a rough idea I came up after thinking about the problems that might crop up with PoW and PoS algorithms because tokens and hashing power can both be bought quite easily, which might result into a certain party owning the sovereignty of the network. I'm not sure if an idea such as this has been discussed before nor if it's technologically feasible or if it's even useful at all. I might be ignoring some crucial parts here so you can feel free to point them out and give your own opinions.

I believe that a system that expanses it's "pool of workers" only when new geological regions are added might solve this problem because single region can have multiple nodes, but it still only counts as one worker.  Most of the urbanized, and less urbanized, areas are inhabited by the people, not the banksters or the elite so it would make sense to let those people create a consensus by the area they cover rather than the hashing power or money they have.

The rough outline would be something like this

The network

-Regions based on geological IP which all have their own ID's
-Each area will be recorded on chain as long as there is one node in it
-Each region forms a small network which exchanges region spesific information (such as the ID and private key)
-Nodes in area each share an area specific private key
-Once a block is found the new block will contain a stong encryption done by another regions public key
-Weak encryption (should only take seconds to decrypt without key) will be solved by all the nodes in the region and fastest one claims the block
-When the block is created, the creator sends a poll to a public multicast address
-If no response is recieved from an existing region during the listening time the region is dropped off
-If there are new regions they are added to the chain by a response to the poll

The nodes

-A new node joining the network will probe for an existing area for it's geological IP
-If found he will be given the area specific private key
-If not found it creates a region specific key combination and sends the new region information

The reward system

-A reward is always split by the creator of the block and "invaders" (the other nodes dwelling in the same region)
-The amount could be split either equally or by the geological proximity to the creator

Problems I came up with:

How to differentiate neighboring/overlapping regions?
Is all the information exchange feasible to do securely?
What if a region is lost right when a new block lands on it?
Can an entity easily procure enough nodes in the majority of the regions, or create enough regions to hijack the network?
The effects of tunneling (VPN)?
The mobile miners?
If a new list is required to be made every time a region is added/dropped the chain can easily be bloated. Maybe add every single region individually, include the block number to the ID (so that the chain can be easily searched after the listing moment to check if it's been dropped) and have a cooldown period of certain number of blocks before the same IP can relist a region?

[ImHash]

what will it be? does this suppose to be  something like block chain? poa instead of pow? any one uses tor?

[nyoa]

what will it be? does this suppose to be  something like block chain? poa instead of pow? any one uses tor?

It would be kinda like a delegated PoW because the first hard problem would be easily solved only be the nodes in a certain region, but the second and easy problem would be solved in seconds by the nodes dwelling in the chosen region.

[Quickseller]

It is generally trivial to control a nearly unlimited number of IP addresses that are diverse both geographically and otherwise. It is often difficult to tell that these IP addresses are that of a VPN.

There is also the issue of who "decides" where each IP address geolocates to. You would need some kind of central authority to decide this.

[Indianacoin]

Its a new concept but has several responsibilities.
I don't think it can be made decentralized as per as location of a user is concerned.

I think you can start by developing some beacons and distribute them across the world.
Then you can observe how the world reacts with them.

It is generally trivial to control a nearly unlimited number of IP addresses that are diverse both geographically and otherwise. It is often difficult to tell that these IP addresses are that of a VPN.

There is also the issue of who "decides" where each IP address geolocates to. You would need some kind of central authority to decide this.

Also someone might spoof his IP address and geolocation through any GPS spoofer in order to hide his actual identity.

[nyoa]

It is generally trivial to control a nearly unlimited number of IP addresses that are diverse both geographically and otherwise. It is often difficult to tell that these IP addresses are that of a VPN.

There is also the issue of who "decides" where each IP address geolocates to. You would need some kind of central authority to decide this.

It's true that botnets would be powerful attack tools because with this system because every device is equal and only the geographical position matters. I wonder what effect the scale of the regions would have, for instance if the scale of the region would be as big as 1000KM² or 10000KM². The big question would be if the botnet attacking would be more diversified than the legit nodes (if the network would attract an attack from a huge botnet before the legit nodes spread out enough).

The VPNs aren't actually that big of a problem, because every node funneled through a VPN would be included to the region the VPN provider dwells in.

The issue with geolocation might be the hardest to solve. I have no idea how that could be solved in decentralized fashion unfortunately.

[franky1]

trying to say that someone is only able to mine or use bitcoin because he is not in a large populous area is bad.

think about it.
imagine there was a concentration of users in 10 different locations.
new york, london, sydney, tokyo, etc

this is not due to "collusion" or some conspiracy efforts, but purely because in these highly populated area's lots of people are talking about it, OP proposes code toauto ban people just because of where they live... (facepalm moment)

people would end up spoofing IP's and tweaking code instead of moving home, just to get access when they are auto-banned due to such restrictions the OP proposes.. effectively within months the code rules are made useless because people have found a work around and the end result is that smart people continu using it, but the naive/noob users see it as a headache and barrier for entry.

its like mining. people have found a way around the GPU mining limitations and created ASICS. now naive/noob users find that mining has a barrier of entry where the every day average person cannot mine without getting large amounts of equipment.

i do not think that causing a barrier of entry for every day people, while knowing the barrier can be worked around by knowledgeable people would do anyone any good.

stop with the racial bias.. yes there are 1.2 billion people in china so ofcourse bitcoin is going to be more concentrated there, simple by social and mathematical logic.. but no one was crying when bitcoin was USA dominant by a country of only 300million (mathematically higher chance of collusion)

[Quickseller]

It is generally trivial to control a nearly unlimited number of IP addresses that are diverse both geographically and otherwise. It is often difficult to tell that these IP addresses are that of a VPN.

There is also the issue of who "decides" where each IP address geolocates to. You would need some kind of central authority to decide this.

It's true that botnets would be powerful attack tools because with this system because every device is equal and only the geographical position matters. I wonder what effect the scale of the regions would have, for instance if the scale of the region would be as big as 1000KM² or 10000KM². The big question would be if the botnet attacking would be more diversified than the legit nodes (if the network would attract an attack from a huge botnet before the legit nodes spread out enough).

The VPNs aren't actually that big of a problem, because every node funneled through a VPN would be included to the region the VPN provider dwells in.

I was not even thinking of botnets, but yes that would be another problem. I was referring to the fact that there are enough datacenters and datacenter-like facilities that allow users to rent their equipment (and IP addresses) that someone could rent a diverse number of IP addresses.

The same is true with VPN providers. VPN providers often offer multiple gateways that allow people to access the internet "from" multiple locations throughout the world, and often these gateways have multiple servers located in diverse locations in a city/state/country.

I also believe that you somewhat need to trust the entity issuing the IP address if you are to trust the geolocation of a particular IP address. 

[stri8ed]

Nice topic. I was actually thinking about the same exact thing a few days ago. Proof of location, theoretically, seems like the only way to prevent centralization, and ensure one vote per entity. Of course the problem then is, how can you prove your location in a manner that can be easily validated. IP address is surely a no go. Also, you have the problem from POS systems, namely nothing at stack to deter a mob from tampering with the blockchain. Granted, there being so many entities on the network, it would be hard to gather a majority for malicious purposes.

[calkob]

sounds like n interesting idea and would like to see it in practise 

[serjent05]

It is generally trivial to control a nearly unlimited number of IP addresses that are diverse both geographically and otherwise. It is often difficult to tell that these IP addresses are that of a VPN.

There is also the issue of who "decides" where each IP address geolocates to. You would need some kind of central authority to decide this.

I agree that this will be an issue if you implement this kind of approach.  You cannot control people from using  virtual private networks or proxies to change their regions.  Unless you got something in your sleeve to control this kind of stuff then it is really an interesting idea.

[nyoa]

trying to say that someone is only able to mine or use bitcoin because he is not in a large populous area is bad.

think about it.
imagine there was a concentration of users in 10 different locations.
new york, london, sydney, tokyo, etc

...

It's not really as bad a problem as it might sound at first because mining wouldn't require huge amounts of computing power and the reward would be split among everyone residing in the area. The only drawback would be that you'd get a smaller split of the coins, but I don't think that would be a problem for a regular user. It would actually make "professional mining" much harder.

[countryfree]

I don't like the idea of localization. BTC has been created without borders, to be international, so we should not try to modify this. I understand some kind of centralization is happening. With China's the world's largest country, it's only logic that there are more transactions and more mining in that country, but nobody said this shall last forever. In 20 years from now, there might be more people living in India, doing more transactions, and more mining than in China.

We see that in some big companies or universities where there is a positive discrimination system which calls for a given number of blacks (only an example) no matter how talented they may be. I can't imagine a system where the miner's reward would be automatically sent to miners in Egypt or Ethiopia, only because there are so few mining in that country, compared to China or the US.

[franky1]

It's not really as bad a problem as it might sound at first because mining wouldn't require huge amounts of computing power and the reward would be split among everyone residing in the area. The only drawback would be that you'd get a smaller split of the coins, but I don't think that would be a problem for a regular user. It would actually make "professional mining" much harder.

proof of location wont make the block creation encryption any stronger, which is more important then the distribution of rewards or nodes.(yes node distribution is important, but so is the difficulty)

if POL was used to limit ASIC farms from being in one location. then POL can be faked to spread out the asics in code while still being in same physical location.

also if POL was used to help split the rewards between close neighbors then people will fake it to a location with no neighbours so they dont have to share the reward..

but the important part is POL wont actually do anything to ensure strong encrypted blockdata, so it can be easily 51% attacked.