How far can the blockchain revolution go? Have you ever seen so much skepticism and excitement and rapid innovation all at once? The last time there was this much uproar around technology was when the World Wide Web blossomed in the 90s. Lo and behold, there may be a new blockchain-based internet surfacing, one that could democratize the internet to an extent no one has yet seen. But the stakes are high and the questions plentiful.
In July of 2017, Skycoin, a new cryptocurrency with lofty goals including addressing the problems with Bitcoin published a blog post on its vision for a new internet. This coincided with Skycoin’s initial coin offering (ICO), the result of 80 developers collaborating via Github since 2012. The Skycoin project isn’t just about cryptocurrency, the blog post states. It’s also the fuel behind Skywire, a peer-to-peer network that boldly seeks to replace the current internet landscape with something better.
Skywire is a mesh network, which is basically a system of nodes, or wireless connection points (antennas, pods, or other hardware) that communicate a data signal with each other. It’s a decentralized network in which all nodes share the workload. Mesh networks are typically localized there’s one in New York City called NYC Mesh but Skywire aims to build a global mesh network. In order to do this, Skywire will pay cooperating users Skycoins in exchange for sharing content and services.
Skycoin’s use of the word services is very pointed. The developers want to divorce the internet from corporate internet service providers, which would effectively render the end of net neutrality obsolete. In other words, Skycoin wants to create a neutral, democratic, free internet.
Revisiting the Net Neutrality Debate
To evaluate Skycoin’s idea, it will first help to revisit the net neutrality debate. It seems cut and dry. Small business techies and other neutrality advocates argue the repeal will hurt entrepreneurs because entrepreneurs don’t have money to shell out to ISPs in order to get privileged, fast lane loading speeds for their websites.
But other techies argue against net neutrality because they want ISPs like Verizon and Comcast to compete for our business. The argument goes: if telecoms have to compete, we’ll end up with faster, cheaper internet options because ISPs will have to capitulate to laws of supply and demand.
Furthermore, as the anti-neutrality reasoning goes, it’s reasonable to be suspicious of the US government as a regulator of net neutrality. If we can’t trust the government to respect our privacy, how can we trust it to not favour certain ISPs? The government could claim that, in order to monitor whether ISPs are being fair, it needs to install programs that track equanimity. These programs could also be used for heightened surveillance of citizens.
The obvious response is the government is already collecting and monitoring its own citizens’ data. The House voted to retain FISA surveillance and block privacy safeguards in January of 2018. Post 9/11, the only thing that’s changed is the government can’t collect bulk records of people‘s domestic phone calls. Net neutrality or no, the government will still surveil citizens through the internet as it is today. When it comes to nefarious government actions regarding things like surveillance and unfair privilege to certain corporations, we rely on watchdog organizations, whistleblowers, and the press. Ending net neutrality won’t end this state of affairs.
The anti-neutrality argument makes more sense when it talks about competition being good for consumers. Competition theoretically drives prices down and makes for higher quality service. Yet this doesn’t obliterate the fact that it’s possible for ISPs to create fast lanes for high-paying clients. If certain ISPs do that, you and I will have to change service providers to make sure the market performs its proper function, which is to reward companies for consumer-friendly business practices.
When it comes down to it, there’s still the fact that I have to pay a service provider for access to something that could be free, and now service providers can try and implement schemes to make even more money from companies and publishers. ISPs need consumers, businesses, and publishers in order to exist, not the other way around. Why should ISPs have so much power as middlemen? That’s where Skycoin’s idea comes in.
What Skycoin Is Proposing
As mentioned earlier, people could earn Skycoin cryptocurrency by operating as service providers for the Skywire internet. Here’s the thing: according to Skycoin’s blog, Using Skywire will be free, but users can pay nodes in the network for forwarding their traffic, to receive better bandwidth and priority service. Sounds an awful lot like fast lanes, doesn’t it? If a user is a company, they could simply fork out more cash in order to get priority on the network, just like they’ll be able to do with ISPs.
The idea cuts out the middleman, but will consumers want to compete with companies for bandwidth? Consumers would be getting the internet for free, but instead of being able to pay an ISP for faster internet if they want it, they’d have to pay a node they’d have to pay someone who has a piece of (or multiple pieces of) the hardware that is part of the mesh network. So, cryptocurrency miners are replaced with people who maintain the mesh and earn cryptocurrency for doing so.
This still presents the idea of a slower internet for some, a faster one for others based on what you pay, which is the way it has always been, only with one important difference: each person would be a VPN with baseline free internet access. Like any cryptocurrency endeavour, this will only gain real traction if there are enough people onboard. Will complacency win out? That will depend on whether the end of net neutrality really starts to pinch people’s pocketbooks.