This is all terribly exciting. Seeing all the ideas and suggestions flowing is great, but it's also like watching a room full of 1st year university marketing students jointly working on some sort of project their lecturer has set them.
I think before we get too carried away with all the hoopla about what this TOR-like thing is going to earn in DRK/$ for MN operators and what we'll call it, I'd like to get far more detail on how it will work. So far from Evan we have:
Utilizing the Masternode network - DarkTor
One of the future goals is to turn the masternode network into a decentralized business for masternode operators. To do this we’ll add features that improve the privacy of end users and compete with centralized businesses. Our first endeavor into this is to make a completely private tor network within Darkcoin.
The Darkcoin network will begin to offer anonymous internet access via the masternode network. As a user, all you’ll have to do is pay a fee for 24 hours of access. This fee will be paid to a masternode in much the same way the masternode fees are paid, using a deterministic algorithm for distributing the payments evenly across the whole network.
There’s a few benefits to running a private tor network through Darkcoin.
Sybil resistant - Due to the cost of obtaining masternodes, it will be very difficult for any one person to view all traffic.
Anonymous Payments - Users can pay anonymously for the service
Private Network - Our tor network will be internal to darkcoin only. All traffic will be paid traffic, so the cost of running the service should be profitable for the masternode operators.
Faster than tor - Tor has historically been very slow. This will be a lean version, that has much higher throughput.
- What I'd like to know is how will it be usable?
(By that I mean, will you need a special browser that connects to the MN network? Or will you just use your normal browser with it pointing at some sort of "DarkTor" proxy client installed on your system?)
- If you do use your current browser, what are the ramifications of that same browser then connecting to websites directly without going through DarkTor? (i.e. cookies, history, cache, etc)
- If you need to use a special browser, what are the development and maintenance ramifications of this?
- Will you be able to browse to any current website anonymously and will everything work like it currently does?
- Is it likely there will be websites that sit exclusively within the DarkTor network? What special advantages might they have? What would be a high level domain associated with this and what are the technical ramifications of this?
- What about bandwidth issues if the user wants to stream video, share desktops, etc?
- What about protocols other than HTTP(S)? Will we open it to all sorts of things or restrict it?
And with regards to the name, I have a few ideas too, but firstly:
- Who will use this service?
- What would we expect the demographic to be (which is important in terms of pricing)?
- Who is offering the service? (obviously, it's the collective MNs, but is that "DarkCoin")
- If it's "DarkCoin" offering the service, what are the risks to the value of DRK if the service is compromised?
- Is it likely we'll travel along unscathed or will DarkTor likely become a magnet for guv hackers everywhere to break or takedown?
- Will the risk we're exposing DRK to via this service be worth it?
- Will DarkTor (or whatever it will be called) being associated with DarkCoin impact the wider adoption and take-up of DRK as a payment option?
Can you see where I'm going with this? A whole lot more discussion is needed on what this is, how it meshes (DarkMesh?) into the rest of DarkCoin's plan and strategy and what the long term potential is. There needs to be a lot more clarity and then I think a name will be chosen that's likely to be more accurate for the service's ultimate goal. It's very easy to get all hyped up early on, pick a name that ultimately doesn't make sense (anyone remember Apple's Lisa?). Iris sounds good and all but when you look at the definition of iris (from wikipedia)...
"The iris (plural: irides or irises) is a thin, circular structure in the eye, responsible for controlling the diameter and size of the pupil and thus the amount of light reaching the retina"
...that concept "the amount of light reaching the retina" isn't really a metaphor for what this service is about. We're not "restricting the amount of light reaching the retina" I would think, we're opening everything up but making the light invisible (DarkInvis perhaps?)
Anyway, some things to consider.
