While you wouldn’t know it look at it, money is merely a store of value. Throughout history, we’ve seen the usage of physical and digital currencies change hands. You’d be surprised to see how many people still use physical cash in daily life. However, many people are beginning to rely on digital currency such as cryptocurrency. These currencies are becoming much more popular than anyone expected, and it’s changing how the world relates to money!
The advent of the blockchain has allowed users to store their value on a distributed ledger that can be accessed anywhere. This means that users can eliminate the need for a middleman to exchange currency from any location. While this may not seem like a big change, it’s expanding how we use and transfer currency in the world. There are two types of currency in the world: physical and digital.
Physical currency, like paper money, is regulated by governments to some extent. Meanwhile, digital currency or cryptocurrency is decentralized and secure. Bitcoin, a type of cryptocurrency, was created to make transactions more reliable and to overcome the control of asset flow worldwide. However, blockchain or cryptocurrency still relies on traditional infrastructures, such as computing and software, which means there are some flaws in the system i.e. the irony of bitcoin’s decentralized design being subsumed into dependency on a small number of exchanges.
The fact that cryptocurrencies have grown immensely in the past couple of years and that many exchanges went too fast in the process is one of the reasons the market is entering a cycle of collapse. Fortunately, the individuals behind the development of Bitcoin have foreseen this and have been working on a very important solution to prevent this from happening. It’s called the “Lightning Network” and it’s one of the most important parts of Bitcoin’s growth.
It’s a layer built on top of the blockchain to increase its speed and scalability. We just need to make sure that this is done as soon as possible due to the huge risk of the collapse of Bitcoin and to avoid the market from entering a cycle of over-regulation.
One of the biggest issues of Lightning Network is that it cannot route a payment in mesh networks. The reason for this problem is that the source-based routing scheme of Lightning Network does not fit the mesh networking very well. For mesh networking to be a scalable and practical solution, it must be able to route a payment from a sender to a receiver even across many hops of nodes. In other words, the network must maintain a record of the route’s origin and the route’s information has to be small. It must be able to do this with a large number of nodes and a small number of hops between nodes. A solution to these problems must be the solution of the Lightning Network.
What is Skynet?
Skynet is a decentralized platform technology that is designed to function on a set of low earth orbiting (LEO) satellites that provide a path for any transaction without relying on conventional internet or ground-based relaying infrastructure.
Currently, there is a lack of a blockchain protocol that can function in an environment with low latency and high transaction volume. But by building a cryptocurrency and blockchain network in outer space, we can create a network that is fast, reliable, and capable of supporting the entire world’s population.
The philosophy behind this paper is to build a platform of hardware components in space as a blockchain network’s backhaul. By decentralizing and distributing ownership of the network to the community, we can extend blockchain’s reach beyond any centralized institution. This will introduce scalability and allow us to achieve von Neumann’s computing architecture.
There are three main points of this paper. The first is, that space exploration can be made cheaper and easier with blockchain technology. Instead of using satellites in geostationary orbit to access the outer world, blockchain can be used to build a decentralized network and allow it to easily scale to meet demand. The second is that blockchain tech can be used to create a decentralized mesh network. The mesh network will connect anything that has a computer chip with an internet connection. The third is that crypto is the backbone of the internet.
Crypto will replace fiat currency and it’ll be used to pay for space exploration, space habitat maintenance, and research. All in all, this paper aims to explore the possibilities blockchain technology has in outer space. Today, space technology has advanced to the point where (CubeSats) Cubesats can be launched into space with ease, and with their small size and mass, technology has advanced immensely.
Although the (Cubesat) concept is relatively new, the idea to build a decentralized hardware network by the public was born in the (Crypto community) which was looking for a way to avoid centralization in the hardware market. This paper tries to find the relationship between the two and to find a suitable place for such network where it can be compatible with the technology.
As the newer Flare routing protocol reduces routing overhead and network management, the physical topology of a network, also known as network topology, also changes. This newer network infrastructure allows smoother communication between nodes and reduced latency, resulting in much more robust networks and a better overall user experience. While the new Flare routing protocol does introduce some difficulties to the user experience, it is clear that the new advances in technology will lead to much better networks and a more efficient system overall.
related: What is Mirror Protocol?
What does Lightning Network do?
Lightning Network is a distributed network of nodes that uses smart contract functionality in blockchain to enable instant payments across a network of participants. Every transaction is recorded onto the blockchain, so that the transactions are resistant to reversal. This is the first large-scale implementation of a multi-party Smart Contract on the blockchain. The idea behind the Lighting Network is to enable fast and cheap transactions between participants. To achieve this, the transactions are being conducted off-chain, freeing up the blockchain to be able to handle a higher number of transactions.
Flare is a hybrid wireless mesh network protocol that supports proactive, table-driven routing and reactive routing with a combination of proactive and reactive nodes. A node might have both capabilities: it can be both a beacon and an orbital node. In this case, it will broadcast beacons and listen for beacons from other nodes, and it will also actively monitor the network for packets from other nodes, even if it didn’t hear their beacons. If a node only has the capability to be a beacon or an orbital node, it will broadcast beacons and will only listen for beacons.
The Ring Road is a constellation of Nano-satellites in low-Earth orbit and a set of ground stations providing low-cost access to the Lighting Network, a peer-to-peer payment system that settles in seconds using off-the-shelf computing equipment. A constellation of Nano-satellites using delay-tolerant networking to provide low-cost access to lighting network. With the projected cost of 0.1$ per 1 Giga Bit per month, the Ring Road will create the perfect low latency high speed network, ideal for machine to machine traffic, IoT communication, and decentralized applications.
- The satellites will be built in a modular form, which will allow to increase the number of satellites in orbit, to expand coverage area and to reduce the operating costs.
- The special system of Nano Satellites will allow us to minimize the cost of the ground segment, by reducing the number of ground stations.
- The unique technical characteristics of Nano-satellites allow to improve the quality of the received signal, to reduce the noise in the communication channel and to minimize the probability of information interception.
- The main goal is to create a reliable and independent communication network, which will not be under the control of any government or big corporation.
- Pay for the satellite bandwidth you use!
- Unmatched security and encryption.
- The satellites are in geostationary orbit, which means they never move.
- Skynet is a decentralized platform, meaning every satellite acts as a node.
- Each satellite is constantly connected to other members of the network.
- Each satellite is constantly connected to the entire network.
- It’s an open network, which means anyone can join.
- Super-fast communication.
- Using blockchain technology, smart contracts, and encryption, the network is secure and virtually unhackable.
I drafted this concept to inspire folks who are looking to contribute to their communities in ways they may not have thought of before. The Ring Road has a synergy of use with Bitcoin that could be a mission-enabling innovation for the greatest social project in history.
More details can be found in the attached Research Paper.
Images sources: freelancer.com
