Blockchain seems to be like a wonder tech, because we wake everyday and hear about new use cases of blockchain and cryptocurrency. 10 years ago when Bitcoin was launched, not many people envisaged it would get to the point where the underlying technology would be used for different purposes across industries and sectors.
Blockchain Technology Applications
According to a recent research carried out by GoTenna, a company for mobile mesh networking, they explored the possibility of having a decentralized mobile communications system, by using Bitcoin’s lightning network.
In times past, developers have been exploring the blockchain technology, and sort out ways to create blockchain-based programs that gave users more power over their data than when traditional systems were used. GoTenna is known for creating mesh network devices to facilitate connections without the internet.
The GoTenna team came up with a report explaining how there could be mesh networks that are decentralized and used for mobile communications, while such mesh networks will be facilitated via Bitcoin micro-payments. Furthermore, they have gone several steps into the idea by establishing Global Mesh Labs LLC, which is a subsidiary of GoTenna, and the subsidiary would be used to drive the development of the project.
Telecommunications
According to the GoTenna team, they are of the opinion that while more than 80 billion messages get transferred through different telecomm network systems and internet service providers, it is possible to have a better system that is decentralized, anti-fragile, and can take connectivity to areas and geolocations where centralized networks cannot reach.
One of the challenges faced by mesh networks and their adoption is that there are no incentives for people to facilitate the effective operations of the infrastructure needed to take send data through the network. GoTenna intends to fix this challenge, by proffering a solution of a protocol that is trustless, and will have bitcoin’s lightning at the core. Basically, when it becomes decentralized, users will get incentives for their data relays. Richard Myers who is an engineer at GoTenna explained that any node on the network will be able to earn rewards for data relays.
It may interest you to know that the proposal is dependent on some proposals from Bitcoin, and these protocols have been discussed in times past, however, there hasn’t been any incorporation of the proposals. Two of the protocols are sighash_noinput and Schnorr. Before GoTenna can create and test the protocol, those bitcoin protocols need to be added, and the addition is dependent on the decisions of the Bitcoin community about whether the changes are good or not.
The GoTenna paper explained that in order to bring about a reduction of the incentive protocol overhead, some structures would need to be functional, and they include: payment channels, simplex payment channel updates, and signature aggregation.
Blockchain and cryptocurrency are proving to be very useful tools for proffering solutions to different challenges, and interestingly, it does not matter the industry where the solution is being applied. We will keep our fingers crossed and hope that GoTenna can bring their idea to life.