To be honest I kind of wish someone would build a proof-of-bandwidth crypto. Miners would overtake data centers with cheap transit, driving the build out of more long-haul network. Some would then move to different neighborhoods just to get FTTH access, enabling more incentive for last-mile build out.
It looks like you can't become a "miner" (sell bandwidth) without becoming a partner. All of which are existing VPN companies - who probably have their abuse handling well ironed out at this point.
(I am the lead developer of Orchid.) Can you tell me where you read that bit about "without becoming a partner"? It is sort of correct--like, I can see how that argument could be made--but not really true in any fundamental sense... it certainly isn't true enough that I would have personally said it to someone, as if you want to provide bandwidth you absolutely can, it is just highly unlikely anyone will buy it, as they would have to explicitly leave the only-loosely-fenced-off garden we provide by default (but I also don't work on the current UI or the documentation, so for all I know this is extremely hard to know). Really I am just curious what specifically you saw, as you seem to have come to that conclusion pretty quickly for something I only consider half true ;P.
Definitely, though: you join a market like this because you know what you are doing and what you are getting yourself into; I personally could not in good faith recommend that an end user sell access to their home Internet connection.
The only "documentation" I was able to find researching how to mine it was a Reddit thread suggesting that you have to stake a large amount of OTX to in turn be able to sell bandwidth and in turn make OTX. Previously in my hunt for documentation I stumbled upon the partners page with 4 VPN providers featured at the top of the page and the whole thing sort of clicked. I did find a Github mono-repo for what looked like the end user clients (at least from what I was able to find in the docs directory).
If my statement was incorrect (which by your half-acknowledgement I don't believe it was), then I am sorry for misrepresenting your project. A healthy dive into howtos for miners, and unwalling your garden, would clear that up.
(I didn't read this comment before as I simply forgot about this thread at the time; I imagine you won't see this reply, now, though ;P. And, sadly, I can almost guarantee I won't see a reply to this message if you did leave one, for reasons even deeper and more compounded.)
FWIW, I feel like there is nuance that is being lost in your sentence about whether your statement was somehow either incorrect or correct. My half-acknowledgement of the premise would to me indicate that neither absolute on such a statement could be "correct"?
The server--which is in that exact same monorepo you found, it being a monorepo and all ;P--can be easily compiled (or merely downloaded from the GitHub releases) and it doesn't take too much messing around with it to run it... as a developer (not an end user) You certainly don't need to be a "partner".
The client, also, will happily connect to you... if the user "opts our" of only using a list of people that happens to right now only include "partners". This is where I appreciate that the software--right now--has not a "walled" garden but a lightly-fenced garden: the difference is important, as anyone who wants to can go play outside the walls. This isn't like Apple or Facebook: the term "walled garden" simply doesn't apply.
The "half-acknowledgement" is, of course, that if not many people are playing outside the garden then you are likely going to be lonely. But as there is no wall, the project absolutely let's you sell bandwidth there... there just aren't many buyers. You see how that's different, right?
In some sense, being allowed to do something isn't a guarantee that it is a good idea. Imagine a world where anyone can make a restaurant, but almost all customers search for food on Yelp... is it true that only Yelp partners can sell food? No: anyone can sell food! But I appreciate--in that it isn't black and white--that it isn't exactly true that anyone can succeed at selling food.
And this is the rub, right? It is like the difference between a right to sell something and a guarantee of customers, which are related in a certain sense but aren't even slightly the same :(.
This is then why I wanted to ask after where you came to the quick idea that, with Orchid, one """can't become a "miner" (sell bandwidth) without becoming a partner""", as that statement isn't correct (but I appreciate neither is its opposite!!) in a way that makes me sad, as there are a lot of projects for which it is correct: where there are walls of authentication and permission or softwares that must be licensed... and I am very proud that Orchid isn't that?
That said, I feel like--with your emphasis on documentation (not in the passing way I mentioned it, which would include high-level discussion, but some expectation of "here is how to do it")--you are somewhat "moving the goalpost": instead of analyzing whether the software does or allows something, you are asking whether the project encourages something... and that is just very very different to me.
The reality is that--partner or not--you will probably be unhappy selling bandwidth as there isn't much traffic being purchased on the system right now, and I would rather not guide people down paths that will make them unhappy... particularly when I know that, if it were actually profitable, there would be a large cottage industry of third-party guides telling you how to do it ;P.
Potentially for more favorable routing? There are some other potential niche things like maybe load testing, or doing load testing from weird IPs. It's not entirely clear to me either without having some kind of storage (in which case it would make sense as a CDN).
Assuming Orchid even harnesses blockchains at all--I built it and notably don't have any clue what the marketing people meant when they wrote that sentence (I hate that website)--I agree that "blockchain" should be plural.
> To be honest I kind of wish someone would build a proof-of-bandwidth crypto.
https://pkt.cash/ exists "built to incentivize the growth of infrastructure," and "PKT Network is designed to decentralize internet access around the world by enabling anyone to become an ISP." [0]
If I were to own a transit for the purpose of profitting from proof-of-bandwidth, ignoring the regulation and law for the communication infrastructure, would I?
A) Let everyone have their fair share of bandwidth
B) with DPI, choke other miners so I'm relatively better in the whole miners.
Also, bandwidth will be wasted just for the sake of proof-of-work instead of traditional work that have real values on its own.
